While it is deemed desirable that children who must be removed from their own homes, or who have no homes, should be cared for in families whenever practicable, there are those for whom it is not practicable; there are those who require special physical care or special training; there are those who are not placeable in free homes and for whom boarding homes are not available, or who are in communities where the boarding system is not in operation. Probably the proportions will later be reversed. Whereas three dependent children are now in institutions to one placed in a foster home, there may be one in an institution, prefer ably on the cottage plan, to three in foster families under proper supervision. At the same time, in stead of one in every three hundred of the whole population, we may hope, by relief at home and by preventive measures, that not more than one in a thousand of the children under sixteen will have to be cared for outside its own home or that of its relatives or adopted parents.
Among preventive measures which the White House Conference so emphatically prefers to cura tive, I would not include public out-door relief or widows' pensions. I would include social in
surance for sickness and widowhood. I would not include help by the state in furnishing school lunches, eyeglasses, clothing, or other personal equipment. I would include the physical examina tion of children, the visiting. of the home, and the enforcement when necessary of natural parental obligations. I believe, in other words, that the state should enforce a minimum standard of child care; but that the expense of providing such care should fall on parents and in case of their disability on some insurance fund to which when able they have contributed. I would advocate such a policy of insuring that children's needs are met as will strengthen and not weaken the family bond, de velop and not undermine the sense of family re sponsibility and solidarity, insure a fair opportunity for all and hold the individual responsible for mak ing the most of that opportunity for himself and his family.