would not only bring about the reformation of existing evils, but would also formulate an appropriate building code to protect the city from mammoth brick tenements and other evils which threaten to develop here as they have in other cities.  That the Nation’s Capital should be made a model for other municipalities is an ideal which appeals to all patriotic citizens everywhere, and such a special Commission might map out and organize the city’s future development in lines of civic social service, just as Major L’Enfant and the recent Park Commission planned the arrangement of her streets and parks.

It is mortifying to remember that Washington has no compulsory school attendance law and that careful inquiries indicate the habitual absence from school of some twenty per cent of all children between the ages of eight and fourteen.  It must be evident to all who consider the problems of neglected child life or the benefits of compulsory education in other cities that one of the most urgent needs of the National Capital is a law requiring the school attendance of all children, this law to be enforced by attendance agents directed by the board of education.

Public play grounds are necessary means for the development of wholesome citizenship in modern cities.  It is important that the work inaugurated here through voluntary efforts should be taken up and extended through Congressional appropriation of funds sufficient to equip and maintain numerous convenient small play grounds upon land which can be secured without purchase or rental.  It is also desirable that small vacant places be purchased and reserved as small-park play grounds in densely settled sections of the city which now have no public open spaces and are destined soon to be built up solidly.  All these needs should be met immediately.  To meet them would entail expenses; but a corresponding saving could be made by stopping the building of streets and levelling of ground for purposes largely speculative in outlying parts of the city.

There are certain offenders, whose criminality takes the shape of brutality and cruelty towards the weak, who need a special type of punishment.  The wife-beater, for example, is inadequately punished by imprisonment; for imprisonment may often mean nothing to him, while it may cause hunger and want to the wife and children who have been the victims of his brutality.  Probably some form of corporal punishment would be the most adequate way of meeting this kind of crime.

The Department of Agriculture has grown into an educational institution with a faculty of two thousand specialists making research into all the sciences of production.  The Congress appropriates, directly and indirectly, six millions of dollars annually to carry on this work.  It reaches every State and Territory in the Union and the islands of the sea lately come under our flag.  Co-operation is had with the State experiment stations, and with many other institutions and individuals.  The world is carefully searched for new varieties of grains, fruits, grasses, vegetables, trees, and shrubs, suitable to various localities in our country; and marked benefit to our producers has resulted.