It used to be thought that a high birth-rate was a sufficient indication of national well-being.

It is now seen that a low death-rate and a high level of strength and vitality, of health and mental power, are still more the required national asset.
As Dr.Helen D.Putnam well says, "Democracy must finally depend on its department of education for establishing the right: for mothers, intelligence, health, economic opportunity to care for their babies; for babies, either rich or poor, intelligent, physically competent caretakers," If this be true, then the work of Health Boards and kindred agencies is a part of general education as it has long been a part of accepted charitable duty.

The children stand first in line for receipt of that health education because they are the promise of the future.
We must take humane care of all the misfits, all the crippled, all the weak, all the defective, all the abnormal and the insane.

This is now admitted.

We must prevent, so far as we are able, such weight and burden falling upon our children and our children's children, as charity now presses upon us.