higher ideals of life. But the new day waits for a new race. Modern
emphasis on the child is a part of present reaction from materialism.
New social ideals are personal. We seek a better world for the sake of a
higher race. The emphasis on child-welfare has a social rather than a
sentimental basis. The family is our great chance to determine childhood
and so to make the future. The child of today is basic to the social
welfare of tomorrow. He is our chance to pay to tomorrow all that we owe
to yesterday. The family as the child's life-school is thus central to
every social program and problem.


§ 3. WIDER CHILD-WELFARE

This age knows that man does not live by bread alone. Interest in
child-welfare is for the sake of the child himself, not for the sake of
his clothes or his physical condition. Concern about soap and
sanitation, hygiene and the conveniences of life grows because these all
go to make up the soil in which the person grows. There is danger that
our emphasis on child-welfare may be that of the tools instead of the
man; that we may become enmeshed in the mechanism of well-being and lose
sight of the being who should be well. To fail at the point of character
is to fail all along the line. And we fail altogether, no matter how
many bathtubs we give a child, how many playgrounds, medical
inspections, and inoculations, unless that child be in himself strong
and high-minded, loving truth, hating a lie, and habituated to live in
good-will with his fellows and with high ideals for the universe. Modern
interest in the material factors of life is on account of their potency
in making real selfhood; we acknowledge the importance of the physical
as the very soil in which life grows. But the fruits are more than the
soil, and a home exists for higher purposes than physical conveniences;