Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/104

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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

general receiving centre of the Brain. There, what has been carried is fused, changed, transformed, and in that transformation everything is represented. There is a strange tenacity of the new life as regards all it has received or conquered. The brain at almost any period can store up impressions, as some kinds of metallic plates store solar rays, but in childhood the hold on these is all the surer because they are swung, as it were, into the general and rapid movement of a growing, energizing organ. If the material is stinted then, and if movement and experience are confined to one part of the organism, we have reason to think the mischief wrought will be final. We have reason to think this, not only from the teaching of brain specialists, but also from the experience of teachers as well.

During the past year Dr. Thomas, an assistant school doctor of the London Education Committee, has made an attempt to find out the real effect of overwork plus hand lethargy on the wage-earning children of London.

He began by making an examination of some thousands of children (unemployed children, that is non-wage-earning, and attending school regularly) so as to get figures which would serve as a standard of comparison when he began to examine wage-