Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

348 HENRY BAIRD FA V ILL
distinctly damaging. The fact, however, that the alternative
of school life for children is open to grievous objection
has absolutely no right to weight in discussing child
life as related to industrial conditions. Our problem involves
no balancing and disposing of all social contingencies.
Progress is not made that way. The problem before this
organization is that of weighing upon merit the advantages
and disadvantages in child labor and defining as accurately
as may be the territories of safety and desirability. So
when I approach this question of the effect upon the physique
of children of an^^ pronounced form of continuous labor,
I shall approach it without reference to the great mass of
shifting and complicating social
distinct
alternatives and upon the
ground of physiologic values.
There was a time when medical men and physiologists
were disposed to regard the problems of childhood as the
problems of mature persons in miniature. It is not very
long since this view has been recognized as fallacious, and
we are hence not in possession of abundant data from
which to propound unquestionable principles of child development.
There is, however, an abundance of knowledge at our
hand to justify emphatic expression upon many phases of
this question.
It is most valuable in analyzing the subject to consider
the notion clearl}' defined that youth is the period of
growth and formative activity and that mature life is a
period of fixed and relatively inactive growth processes.
Immediately arises the question, How much more can a
young animal be expected to do with his machinery of
nutrition than merely to grow and maintain a proper physiologic
balance"" We know that in isolated instances prodigious
feats can be accomplished by young animals and
by young humans, feats of mind and feats of body, but
that is in no sense an answer to the question.
With human
beings the question is not as to what the young can do, but