Community Civics and Rural Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 466 pages of information about Community Civics and Rural Life.

Community Civics and Rural Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 466 pages of information about Community Civics and Rural Life.

1915, No. 4, The health of school children.  No. 21, Schoolhouse sanitation.  No. 50, Health of school children.

1917, No. 50, Physical education in secondary schools.

1919, No. 2, Standardization of medical inspection facilities.  No. 65, The eyesight of school children.

Publications of the Children’s Bureau, Department of Labor.

See, for example, Rural Children in Selected Counties of North Carolina, Rural Child Welfare Series No. 2, and Baby-Saving Campaigns.  A Preliminary Report on What American Cities are Doing to Prevent Infant Mortality, Bureau Publication No. 3.  See list of publications issued by the Bureau.

In lessons in community and national life

Series B:  Lesson 14, The United States Public Health Service.

Series C:  Lesson 19, How the city cares for health.

Reports of the Rockefeller Foundation, 61 Broadway, New York City.

CHAPTER XXI

SOCIAL, AESTHETIC, AND SPIRITUAL WANTS

HAPPINESS THROUGH SERVICE

Several times in the preceding chapters reference has been made to our national purpose “to transmute days of dreary work into happier lives.”  This does not mean to get rid of work; for happiness can be attained only in work and through work.  Happiness in work depends largely upon our freedom and ability to choose the kind of service for which we are best fitted, and upon the extent to which we prepare ourselves for it.  It also depends to a large extent upon good health (p. 309).

SATISFACTION OF HIGHER WANTS

But there never was a truer statement than that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  In return for his work every citizen is entitled to enough compensation to enable him to provide not only for the bare necessities of life, such as food and shelter, but also for the pleasure that he derives from the satisfaction of his higher wants, such as social life and recreation, an education that will give him a richer enjoyment of life, pleasant surroundings, religious advantages.

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY TO ENJOY LIFE

All these things have much to do with our national well-being and our citizenship.  Our nation is democratic only in proportion to the equality of opportunity enjoyed by all citizens to satisfy these wants.  Moreover, the efficiency of each citizen in productive work and as a participator in self-government depends more than we sometimes think upon his opportunity to “enjoy life” in pleasant surroundings and in wholesome social relations.  In the past the citizen has been left largely to his own resources and to purely voluntary cooperation to provide for these wants.  Government has not even adequately protected his rights of this kind, to say nothing of positively promoting them.  At present, however, community team work through government is being organized as never before both to promote and to protect the interests of all citizens in the fullest possible enjoyment of life.

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Community Civics and Rural Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.