up bits of paper, or is given some other equally odious penance. Much the same system obtains in Los Angeles. At Hollywood Boulevard a unique signal has been installed. The long semaphore arm is operated by the captain of the boys' patrol; it reads, "Children crossing stop." This semaphore protects children coming from the Grant School two blocks away. In Buffalo, the Boy Scouts have been used in safety movements. At one time these youngsters were impressed into duty to help train pedestrians to obey the synchronized traffic lights. Recalcitrant walkers were given warning slips, but the great majority were induced to stay on the sidewalk until the signal flashed.

The Chicago Motor Club has fostered the school boy patrol idea, and believes that this activity is doing much to reduce accidents. The patrol boys are setting a splendid example for the other children, but this work necessarily is somewhat limited, consequently a new plan drawn up by the Chicago Motor Club, which has received the endorsement of Superintendent William McAndrew and the Chicago Board of Education, is now in effect not only in the Chicago schools but in many of the public and parochial schools throughout the club territory which covers thirty-one counties in Illinois and seven in Indiana. This campaign calls for an accident prevention poster to be placed in every classroom in the club territory, a new poster once a month. The campaign calls for 15,000 posters each month. They are done in two colors and deal with some phase of accident prevention work as it applies to children. One poster depicts the danger of playing in the street; a boy on a skooter is sailing blithely along, and has reached a point directly in front of an oncoming car; the boy is carefree, because he does not see the danger; tragedy, however, is pictured in the face of the motorist. Another poster shows the danger of winter sports in streets crowded with traffic, still another shows boys crossing a street in the middle of the block, and the

danger of hitching is brought out in a fourth poster which says, "Boys who do not hitch are never hurt hitching." Superintendent McAndrew, for many years an advocate of safety instruction in the schools, has given this idea his hearty approval and has issued instructions that teachers give a safety talk on the subject-matter of the poster every Friday afternoon. The data used by the teachers as well as the posters themselves are supplied by the Chicago Motor Club.

These methods of teaching safety will make a more careful rising generation and the safety talks will do more, they will reach back to the adults at home who, in their youth, were not taught safety. Ninety per cent of all persons are visual minded, hence the teaching of safety by means of posters should be most effective. There are others, however, whose visua! memory is poor but who can remember things they have heard, the auditory minded. The latter will benefit most by the instructions of the teachers. Still others can remember movements, and to these children the drill of the school boys' patrol will be most impressive; they will remember waiting for the signal to cross streets, they will remember their movements under instruction.

The railroads have made an enviable record in cutting down accidents among their own employes; this has been done solely by means of education. What has been done by the railroads can be done in the realm of highway safety. We need more of the educational method and less of the hysterical unscientific method which demands many laws and regulations for motorists, utterly oblivious to the fact that safety is a two-sided question.

Not long since, Charles M. Hayes, President of the Chicago Motor Club, and for many years an ardent safety worker, said,

Science has made tremendous progress during the past twenty-five years in cutting down fatalities fre

children's diseases. Specifics have been discovered for diseases that formerly had a high fatality rate. Wh

the scientist has done in his laboratory in his calm emotional manner, we who are interested in acciden

prevention must do. We must use laboratory methods

The day of the emotional sob sister campaign has passed. These sentiments are echoed everywhere in advanced accident prevention circles. Statistics show that the drunken, reckless, joy-riding driver, who, in popular superstition, has been blamed for the bulk of our accidents, is in reality such a minor quantity that he may be left out of all consideration of the problem. He is usually caught and when he is his punishment is swift and sure. But fatal accidents are caused by law-abiding, careful and considerate Americans; men with families who would rather by far wreck their own machines and jeopardize their lives than arm an innocent child.

When one considers that last year in the United States more than 6,000 children vere killed by automobiles, it becomes apparent that all classes of drivers were con

cerned. Take the accident figures of Chicago. The figures apply to all of Cook County, but the majority of the accidents occurred in Chicago. Last year in Cook County 201 children under the age of sixteen were killed by automobiles.

The manner in which these children met death, the hours at which the accidents occurred, and the ages and sex of the children killed, have a direct bearing upon the methods to be considered in reducing the number of accidents. One hundred and twenty-five of these children were killed in the middle of the block, many of them were killed while hitching ɔn wagons, playing ball, and roller skating in the street. The children who were killed in the middle of the block as well as the children who were playing in the streets were not the victims of careless driving; the drivers never had a chance to stop. The hours between four and six, after school is dismissed, are the peak hours. Fifty-one children were killed during these hours. It is significant that only three deaths occurred between the hours of 8:00 A. M. and 9:00 A. M.; children going to school do not play or dally on the way. Of the 201 children killed in this county, 148 were boys and only fifty

three were girls. Girls do not indulge in stealing rides, nor as a rule do they play in the streets. By far the most important element in the consideration of these fatalities is the age at which accidents occur. Thirty-eight children of the age of six were killed, whereas but nineteen of the half of the toll at the age of seven throws a age of seven were killed. This cutting in bright light upon the entire problem. The laboratory method has isolated a germ here. The average child starts to school at the age of six. Little feet that yesterday were pattering around the house with nothing more formidable than a hobby horse to stumble upon, are now trying to pick their steps amid a maze of traffic, no wonder that the huge monsters of the street terrify, no wonder that little brains refuse to function, no wonder that these tiny feet falter, no wonder that they dart directly in the path of oncoming cars, no wonder that bleak tragedy follows in the wake of such pitiful ignorance! But see what a year in school accomplishes. The safety lessons of the teachers, the warnings of the members of the boys' patrols have had their effect, education is accomplishing results, the accidents are cut in half. Parental education in the preschool age is imperative. The theory has been advanced that as a safety sense has been developed among animals during the this same protective sense. William Ullpast decade, human beings will acquire man, writing in the American Motorist, points out that in the early days of motoring, chickens, dogs and even horses were killed by automobiles because animals had not learned the menace of the automobile, but that every following generation has seen the development of a safety sense, and that if this is true of animals, will not human beings develop the same sense? Mr. Ullman does not rely upon this theory as a solution for the accident problem. In fact, he says that while. human beings may develop a protective instinct, the most vital factor in this

arts of living is essential if our children are to acquire those early habits of using their leisure wisely and well. Not only a class in English where the mechanics of writing is the sole purpose, but a class where poetry is loved and read for no other purpose than to acquire a desire for it that will be abiding. Surround our children with color and form and they will respond by creating it. They must live in It and be of it. One of the promising things Is the work of such schools as the Francis W. Parker and the University of Chicago experimental school, where this love for the arts of life is instilled from the start through plastic art, drawing, music, poetry. Here children create their own poems and songs, write and act their own plays, compose music, and create new dance rhythms. We must give every child, as far as he is capable, the ability to carry on and over into adult life a sensitiveness o color and form and rhythm, and a appiness in imagination and vision. Let as cultivate the Peter Pan spirit. We become materialists all too early.

A fundamental objective of education s the cultivation of the right attitudes oward life and the right tastes for those ctivities that make for the life more bundant. We must cultivate habits of lean, wholesome living. People are disinguished by their desires. If America prefers vaudeville, jingles, and jazz, it is because our education has been sadly eglected. Civilization is not judged by he factories built or the number of tin ans and phonographs turned out in one ay, but by the architecture, the music, he drama, the literature, and the morals f the people. And this cannot be developed y precept or memory or from a book but hrough an atmosphere where music and oetry is enjoyed and reveled in. Our tastes nd habits and desires are formed early. ust to give children a chance to create, to ing, to draw, to be happy with beautiful hings is a definite part of our school life. With this formality is incompatible; uccess depends on the atmosphere of

freedom and spontaneity and the personality of the teacher. Tests, examinations and measures are out of keeping here. That which creates self-consciousness defeats the end. The child should be lost in the sheer enjoyment of creating a little Christmas song or reciting the Nordic myths.

We need training for the wholesome and creative use of our leisure. Sound habits of play and recreation must be developed early so that the freshness, interest and clear-sightedness of youth will carry over into adult life in resourceful play, relaxation, and enjoyment. The great growth of commercialized amusements-the biggest American business today-proves the point. We race out of homes to pay for amusement in palaces of entertainment. Cabarets, amusement parks, poolrooms, "movies" with increasing seating capacity, theatres are thriving due to this loss of the art of creating one's own means of recreation. The old parlor parties, "spelling bees," "straw rides," "husking bees," and "neighborhood getogethers,' which, in spite of their crudeness, involved active participation and ingenuity, are gone. In our self-consciousness we no longer act charades. Instead, we depend upon the downtown "great white way" to afford us an evening of passive diversion at two-fifty a seat. It is regrettable to see traveling men arriving at a town of historic interest seeking relaxation and diversion in the card game, the flask of whiskey, and the cabaret. Our children must acquire the capacity of finding solace within themselves through the love of reading, of writing, discussion, through the out-ofdoors, and pure fun with friends.

City bred boys and girls cannot carry over the love of the rural life unless they experience the joy of life on the farm sometime during the Big Injun age of six to eleven. In the same way, during those 'teen ages when the imagination and dramatic tendencies are most at play, we must steep our boys and girls in the myths, the epics, and dramas of the ages.