e-Dcn<> 
 
 BY 
 
 P 
 
 rvv/r I 
 
 ^DODBRIE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHN' 
 
 A, I). MAC!* 
 502 Boylutou Streit. 
 
Air and the School House 
 
 BY 
 
 PROF. S. H. WOODBRIDGE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 A. D. MACLACHLAN 
 502 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
A 
 
 SX. K 
 
 - 
 
 '09 
 
Air and the School House 
 
 The subject of this study is a single phase of school 
 hygiene. 
 
 As a first and indisputable premise on which to base 
 the study, it is proposed to assert the human right to health, 
 and to whatever health is properly contributary ; that health 
 is the asset of highest value, either possessable or usable, 
 and that to be robbed of any measure of it is to suffer a pre- 
 datory loss of a boon inalienable and priceless. 
 
 As a second and hardly less debatable premise, it is 
 further proposed to assert that the school is the appropriate 
 pkce for the wisest, the fullest and the insistent practice 
 of hygiene, and also the most effective field for illustrating 
 and for teaching the principles and practice of that bene- 
 ficent science. 
 
 Considered in its largest sense the inherent, constitu- 
 tional, and therefore the inalienable, right of the human 
 race is to life, health and happiness. The desperate tenacity 
 with which man holds to life, and to his right to it, is a 
 matter of common knowledge and experience. Life is 
 vital being; health is the fullness, the completeness, of 
 that being; happiness is the joy incident to the experience and 
 reward of that being. Life is that which makes health 
 and happiness possibilities, the sine qua non of those pos- 
 sibilities. It is therefore of all things most prized, and in 
 the first, and to the last, degree contended for as a right, 
 
< 
 
 4 Air and the School House 
 
 and held fast to as an experience. It is because of this 
 preeminence of life, solely as a state of being, that its 
 legitimate accompaniments and possessions of health and 
 happiness are too commonly relegated to an undeservedly 
 inferior rank in the order of values of the inalienable 
 rights. Man is so content with the fact and the experience 
 of mere being that he too often fails to aspire to and set 
 a true value upon the largeness and richness and reward of that 
 being which are equally his inalienable right and privilege with 
 being itself. Hence the need of continuous appeal to stim- 
 ulate him to a knowledge and appreciation of the possibili- 
 ties and the value of the larger and richer rights of his 
 inheritance as the summit and the highest nobility of a 
 Universe Creation. 
 
 The scope of the immediate discussion is confined to 
 the human right to physical health. To prove that, as a 
 whole, human health is miserably in arrears of its attain- 
 able possibilities requires no elaborate demonstration. 
 The shortness, the ailments, the suffering, the ineffective- 
 ness of human life are seen upon all sides and are too often 
 read in the faces of the multitude. The unseen and the 
 unread evidence of that lapse are as much greater than 
 the seen and the read as are the hidden tales of the sea 
 vaster than those spread on its surface. 
 
 Some students of anatomy and physiology affirm that 
 the normal length of animal life, brute and human, is five 
 times the period required for the full development of the 
 skeleton, or frame work, upon which the body is built. 
 Because of the intelligence with which man is endowed, 
 his superior ability to protect himself by housing and cloth- 
 ing against stress of cold and heat and storm, because of 
 his range and choice of foods adapted to his varied needs, 
 his available aids in medical and surgical science and prac- 
 tice, and skilful nursing and serviceable drugs, man should 
 logically far outstrip the brute in the proportion of his 
 actual to his theoretical length of days. 
 
 The reverse is woefully true. The full development of 
 the human frame is reached at the age of twenty-one years, 
 
Air and the School House 5 
 
 and theoretical life should therefore run through one hun- 
 dred and five years. Forty years ago the average life of 
 man was but little more than thirty years. Today, because 
 of enlarged and better diffusion of knowledge relating to 
 the fostering and protection of life, the average age in civ- 
 ilized communities has advanced to and a little passed 
 forty years, and the race has at the present time possessed 
 itself of forty per cent, of its birth right to length of vital 
 being. Brute life, — with an intelligence limited to instinct, 
 with narrowed resources for the sustaining, protecting and ad- 
 vancing of life, beset by the stress of adverse weather, the 
 blight of disease and without man's protection against the 
 menace of destroying foes, — in humiliating fashion far out- 
 strips human life in the stamina, superabundance, superb- 
 ness and percentage longevity of its life. 
 
 The cause of such disparity in favor of brute life is not 
 unavoidably inherent in the constitution and environment 
 of man; but, rather, is made possible in the superior organism 
 and faculties with which he is endowed and which exalt 
 him above the brute, and give to him the powers of intelli- 
 gence, choice and will. The more complex and refined 
 the organism, and the conditions of its dependence and 
 functions, the more sensitive it is to changes in those de- 
 pendent conditions. In this respect man pays a high price for 
 his exaltation to the head of the vital terrestrial creation. 
 In his body man is liable to ills from which the brute is 
 either wholly or relatively free. There are infectious dis- 
 eases which decimate the human race that do not invade 
 brute life. The glory of man, — his faculties and powers 
 which most differentiate him from the brute, of reason, 
 of imagination, of refined and exquisite sensation, of in- 
 vention, — in these are his dangers as well as his exaltation. 
 Man suffers in himself, and inflicts suffering on others, 
 through diseases, abnormalities and degradations in the 
 uses of his powers and faculties which are unknown to and 
 impossible in the brute. He is the victim of his own evil 
 choices and vices from which the brute is exempt. In his 
 creative power, and in his hold upon, and large industrial 
 
6 Air and the School House 
 
 use of Nature's vast store of energy, he is maimed and 
 crushed by the very forces he harnesses. 
 
 A study of this matter discloses a situation not credi- 
 table to man's present standing in the vital scale. He is 
 yet far from entering into a full possession of his right to 
 life. He is prone to find his satisfaction in the fact, rather 
 than in the fullness, of existence ; in days, rather than in 
 length and fulness of days ; in conscious being, rather than in 
 the richness and completion of being. In this is the "total 
 depravity" of man, and the rationale of all human and divine 
 altruistic effort to bring man to his better self through a 
 knowledge and due appreciation of the greatness of his 
 right to life in its abundance, to the largest health and the 
 richest happiness. 
 
 The theme of this study involves, and is limited to the 
 dependence of life's physical well being on air. For pro- 
 tection against adverse weather conditions, of wind, storm 
 and cold, man devises and builds for himself houses. In 
 doing so he considers chiefly the things which most im- 
 mediately and forcibly impress themselves on his delicate 
 sensorium. The vital relation to his well being of the 
 purity of the invisible air, which he shuts out by his build- 
 ing, is a matter of relative indifference to him because of 
 his ignorance, indifference, or incredulity. The unseen 
 and not immediately sense-impressing things of life do not 
 appeal to or concern him as do the seen and more forcibly 
 impressing things. He lives in the immediates and the 
 evidents of his day. What he devises and puts up for 
 his protection is likely to become the harbor of atmospheric 
 impurities which ultimately become the causers of depleted 
 vitality and fatal disease. By the act of temporary pro- 
 tection against a tangible and seen danger he invites and 
 hastens premature destruction through occult sources. It 
 is in the region of the occult where the deep sources of life 
 lie, and yet it is there where man's knowledge is most de- 
 fective and his need of education is the largest. 
 
 It is the house which man builds for his protection 
 which must be saved from becoming his destruction, 
 
Air and the School House 7 
 
 which the regenerating work must first reach, and in which 
 it must be ultimately done. What the house and home are, 
 the town, the state, and the nation are. 
 
 II 
 
 Mankind is in sore need of enlightenment touching his 
 inalienable rights, even the primal rights to life. The race 
 must be educated as it is not today before it can know the 
 high value and far reaching meaning of that right. All 
 facts relating to that right are of basic importance, and 
 must be given a large place in all development of human 
 conception, knowledge and rational activity and effort be- 
 fore man attains to his true place in the universal order of 
 creation and vital being. 
 
 In this is the highest function of the school, in that 
 education which most closely and fundamentally relates to 
 life itself, to qualify for individual, domestic and community 
 life. Woe must be the ultimate lot of any land where the 
 aim and end of the school is material, industrial, mercenary. 
 These are in the territory of the R's, a letter of subordinate 
 place in all the alphabets of the human race. The Hs have 
 a relatively superior place, and should be given that place 
 practically and permanently. Reading, 'Riting and 'Rith- 
 metic are the distorted trinity of rudimentary action. Hy- 
 giene, Health and Happiness are the beauteous trinity of 
 exalted being. In the common schools, as also in the 
 higher, the themes of being should outrank those of inci- 
 dental and even of fundamental relationship thereto. 
 
 Of primary importance is the user, of secondary im- 
 portance is the tool. The combination of a tool and a 
 fool results in waste,— of material, time, energy, purpose, 
 patience, and generally of the tool itself. Drugs on the 
 shelf of the apothecary cure no disease. In the hands of 
 the novice, or quack, they are quite likely to tempt disease 
 or deal death. In the hands of the trained physician, fitted 
 to use them, they may ease pain, remove obstacles to the 
 restorative work of vital processes, stimulate vital ener- 
 
8 Air and the School Hotise 
 
 gies. "The man behind the gun" determines the effect- 
 iveness of the Aveapon. The Hs behind the Rs determine 
 the effectiveness of all the work of our elaborate and costly 
 enginery of education. The Rs are worth all they cost; 
 the worth of the Hs cannot be measured by their cost. 
 The first right of the race is to be, and health is the 
 measure of being. The second right is to the elementary 
 tools through which being may assert itself. The primal 
 rights of life are two : first of being, second of action ; the 
 one, of the Hs, the other of the Rs. The school that does 
 not duly guard and foster both, is itself in sore need of pri- 
 mary education. 
 
 The public school stands for public good. In every- 
 thing in which that good may be fostered through the 
 school, should the school be made to serve its largest and 
 broadest purpose. The strength of a nation is not meas- 
 ured by its masses, but by energies multiplied into masses. 
 The health of a nation is the chief factor in its energy. 
 Therefore, as a matter of appropriate service, the public 
 has the right to demand that the school shall serve the 
 interests of the state by continuously teaching and prac- 
 ticing the principles of hygiene. 
 
 To adopt the principle, as many ignorant, and there- 
 fore reluctant taxpayers do, that it is enough that school 
 houses and school house practices should be as hygienic 
 as the homes and the household habits from which scholars 
 come, is to reason loosely, superficially and unprofitably. 
 Scholars come from hygienically good, and hygienically 
 bad, homes. Shall those who come from the best sanitary 
 conditions be subjected in the school house to the worst 
 home conditions reproduced in the school? Or, shall those 
 who come from the poorest home environment be given in 
 the school the benefit of that wholesomeness found in the 
 homes of the best cared for children? Or, shall the school 
 house be the compromise composite of the home hygiene 
 of all the houses which the school represents? Shall the 
 school be content to simply avoid the most menacing of 
 hygienic dangers? Shall it not rather insist upon, illus- 
 trate, and inculcate hygienic excellencies? 
 
Air and the School House g 
 
 The assertion of this paper is that from the school 
 house, as a fountain head, should run out to every home and 
 community of homes it serves, or can serve, streams of 
 largest benefit; not merely knowledge of spelling, penning 
 and figuring ; but, more than all, that of life and of living. 
 
 The school house is a place, and generally the only 
 place, to which, under a more or less rigid compulsion of 
 law, the public sends its children. Compulsion does not 
 end with that sending. The school house door is not a 
 dividing gate between responsibility on the outside, and ir- 
 responsibility on the inside. The responsibility which com- 
 pels the child to enter the school house door, equally com- 
 pels the public to exercise a proper care for the child after 
 he has entered. The public is without right to send, if 
 having sent it fails to protect. Its right in sending is limited 
 by its efforts and its success in protecting. It sends to 
 acquire the Rs. It protects to promote the Hs. The ratios 
 of the respective values of the Hs and the Rs fix also the 
 relative weights of obligation with respect to them. 
 
 The school, therefore, is the appropriate place for the 
 hygiene, not of the unhealthy homes, nor of the average 
 healthy home, but of the healthiest, — actual and practical. 
 In matters of hygiene the school house should be the 
 teacher of, and object lesson to, the home. In the school 
 house, vital energy should be emphasized above any instru- 
 ment of its use, health above books, pens or blackboards. 
 And, finally, the building into which the public compels its 
 children to go, and to live and work, that public must main- 
 tain in wholesomeness, and the more so as dangers to 
 health increase with the herding of all sorts and conditions 
 of individuals together within confined spaces. 
 
 The hygiene of the school house includes everything 
 which effects the health of the school house occupants. 
 It begins with the hygiene of location and environment; of 
 soil, of dwellings and of dwellers in the neighborhood ; of 
 
io Air and flic School House 
 
 occupations and industries which do or do not taint the 
 earth, the sky, the air, the water, or offend the sight or 
 pure sense of the school community. It concerns itself 
 with recreation grounds and facilities, with exercise, with 
 bathing and clothing, with floors and walls, with desks and 
 chairs, with light and color, with school lunches and the 
 home diet, with water supply and drinking cups, with 
 books and pencils, and with such an ethereal thing as air. 
 
 Any one of these subjects, fully treated, is quite enough, 
 and some of them are more than enough, for a single hour 
 theme. The limits of the present study are narrowed down 
 to one, and that one, air and the school house. 
 
 There is one fundamental 'fact of our being and ac- 
 tivity which at the outset must be clearly understood if 
 the relation of air to life is to be intelligently grasped, and 
 made the basis of correct theory and successful practice in 
 the field of school house hygiene. 
 
 All are so familiar in a crude way, with energy and 
 action, with force and motion, with life and industry, that 
 to devote even passing thought to a study of such matters 
 in such a brief discussion as that now undertaken may seem 
 quite uncalled for. Yet, if all that is involved in so simple 
 a procedure as the speaking of one and the hearing of 
 another could be set forth in its deepest and its truest 
 aspect, the disclosure would come to many as a revelation 
 startling in its wonderfulness, if not inspiring in its awful- 
 ness. 
 
 A speaker speaks, primarily, because there is within his 
 reach an energy ready and waiting his command for ac- 
 tion; and, secondly, an intelligence and will which lay hold 
 upon and direct that energy to chosen ends. That energy, 
 put into voice, is lost to the speaker ; is given to the air 
 which brings it to the listener's ears ; what was part of the 
 speaker's being becomes the air's action, and is no longer 
 his, but is gone, perhaps forever, beyond his command or 
 control, and is now beating with wave and ripple against 
 the tympana of the listener's ears, setting them in vibra- 
 tory motion, and that motion is transmitted through ex- 
 
Air and the School House n 
 
 quisite mechanism and sensor nerve to the perceiving brain. 
 All is done, the speaking, the air pulsating, the hearing, 
 the perceiving, by one and the self same energy, now the 
 speaker's by possession and control; now gone from him 
 and speeding through the air ; now lost to the air and resi- 
 dent in the vibratory motion of the ear drum ; now lost to 
 drum and caught by the nerves and carried to the brain ; — 
 that is the one-tenth of a second partial history of a bit, an 
 infinitesimal bit, of Universal energy in action; a one-tenth 
 of a second story in a history eternal of that small fragment 
 of energy. 
 
 Human agency did not create that energy ; human 
 knowledge and will and skill never did, do not now, 
 and never will create so much as that infinitesimal frag- 
 ment of energy. Men can apprehend and appropriate and 
 direct energy already existing ; that is all. It is that faculty 
 which in part differentiates him from the brute. The 
 brute's range of energy resource is limited to processes 
 within his own body. Man discovers, appropriates and 
 uses energy resident in matter outside his body, and which 
 is not and cannot be made a part of his body. Ages ago 
 he spread his sails and built his wind mills to catch the 
 dynamic energy of the winds for driving his ships and 
 grinding his corn, and put the buckets of his wheels into the 
 streams to dip out and to utilize the gravitation energy 
 of the waterfalls to do the work of his factory and mill. 
 And now, in this day of his intensest activity, he is appro- 
 priating and using the vast stores of but recently discov- 
 ered energy resident in the chemical relations in which car- 
 bon stands to oxygen. He changes the chemical energy 
 resident in coal and in air into the thermal energy of fire, 
 and changes that into the kinetic energy of steam, and that 
 again into the dynamic energy of enginery and machinery, 
 and so does his prodigious work. By thus laying hold of the 
 eternal energies stored within his reach and for his use in fuel 
 and in air, and in chemical energies elsewhere found, he today 
 propels his steamships, speeds his railway train, operates his 
 mills, carries on his industries, cuts his way through rocks, 
 
12 Air and the School House 
 
 tunnels mountains, digs canals and hurls huge projectiles of 
 destruction at his foes. For the doing of all that he does 
 man creates, and can create, no energy. Apart from the 
 eternal energy he is as helpless, as lifeless, as energy-less 
 as a branch cut from its vine. He is more than that severed 
 branch only as he possesses himself of and directs to his 
 purposes the energy of his environment, energy which has 
 been, is now and will continue to be. Now it is within his 
 reach ; today he uses it ; tomorrow it will not cease to be, 
 but will be for the most part beyond his appropriation or 
 use. 
 
 Man, then, is a creature endowed with a beginning of 
 intelligence and of directive will, placed in the midst of an 
 inconceivably vast and eternal flood of energy, a rill of which 
 is now within his reach. He lives and moves and has his 
 being in and because of that energy. He is lifeless, power- 
 less, nothing apart from that. He is industriously great 
 and mighty in proportion as he discovers, appropriates and 
 wisely directs that energy. He is small, a weakling, a 
 degenerate, as he fails to make his own, and to direct to 
 his own uses, that energy, or, having it, dissipates it. 
 
 In this simple, all inclusive and to every thoughtful 
 mind awe insniring truth is hidden the profound secret of 
 human life, human possibility, human destiny. Humanity's 
 life and glory as the offspring of the Eternal, as also hu- 
 manity's death and ignomy, — as that of the foolish son 
 who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, or that of 
 the prodigal son who wastes his substance in riotous liv- 
 ing, — are all locked in this great truth hidden in man's 
 being. 
 
 O/v 
 
 IV 
 
 What has such truth to do with air and the school 
 house? Fundamentally everything. Air in its relation to 
 life cannot be apprehended in its full significance, in its 
 rationale, if the sources of vital energy are obscured from 
 
Air and the School House 13 
 
 view. Reason concerns itself with "why?", commercialism 
 with "what?", engineering with "how?". It is the rationale 
 of the subject with which the present study chiefly deals. 
 Why is air a requisite to health and vigor? And why is 
 purity of air essential to physical vitality at its best? These 
 basal questions first considered, attention will then be given 
 to some commercial aspects of the problem which more 
 especially interest the economist, the materialist and the 
 pockets of taxpayers. The engineering phases of the sub- 
 ject cannot be treated in the space at command, and are 
 discussed in another paper. 
 N. In the first place, then, what has air to do with life? 
 In its essence the question has already been answered. In 
 its application more remains to be said. The human body 
 is essentially an energy transformer and user. Placed 
 within its reach is food out of the earth on one side, and 
 the oxygen out of the air on the other. Either food or 
 air, without the other, is powerless to develop vital energy, 
 just as much as water or earth would be powerless without 
 the mutual attraction which is technically called "energy 
 of gravitation" to develop dynamic energy. Water alone, 
 or the earth alone, cannot turn the miller's wheel. Water 
 and earth, each possessing energy because of the mutual 
 gravitational relation existing between them, are set in 
 motion by those energies which change into a usable form 
 when that resident gravitation energy is transphased into 
 the active and kinetic form of the waterfall. The energy 
 called gravitation is thus changed to energy of motion in 
 the fall, and the motion of the water, yielded in part to 
 man's paddle which he dips into the stream, is transmitted 
 to the saw and other utilizing machinery. 
 
 So also with coal and air ; coal alone is inert ; the oxy- 
 gen of the air alone is equally so; yet, by virtue of the 
 relation they sustain to each other in the realm of chemical 
 affinity, they are mutually possessed of energy in the form, 
 or phase, known as chemical energy, which man may change 
 to thermal energy through fire, and draw upon through 
 boilers as he draws the energy out of the stream with the 
 
14 Air and the School House 
 
 scooping paddles of his wheel. Thus the gravitation en- 
 ergy resident in the above water and the below earth, and 
 the chemical energy resident in the unoxidized carbon in 
 coal and the uncarbonated oxygen in air are among the princi- 
 pal sources upon which man today depends for his in- 
 dustrial enterprises. The gravitation energy of the earth 
 and the water in the stream is changed by man's appre- 
 hension, appropriation and direction into the dynamic en- 
 ergy of the water wheel; and the chemical energy of the 
 coal and the air is changed in the same manner into ther- 
 mal energy, or heat, and in that phase is harnessed to 
 man's industrial work. 
 
 The greater part of the stores of energy in the midst 
 of which man has his transient being are about him in a 
 stable form of potential utility, such as gravitation energy 
 and chemical energy, and that active form which these same 
 energies take when changed, chiefly through man's volition 
 and agency, into phases of actual utility are brief and pass- 
 ing. One energy is in reposeful, the other in active phase. 
 One the mutual pull, or force, of masses under the action of 
 gravitation, or the mutual pull of atoms under the action of 
 chemical affinity. The other, the flow of water, or the motion 
 of the molecules which is known as heat, and which physicists 
 know as thermal energy. Both of these motions, — water in 
 the falls and molecules in vibratory action — are active and 
 transient; they are simply phases of transformation of energy 
 from one type into another. Man is gifted with the power of 
 changing energy forms from those of repose to those of 
 action, and of then using for his purpose those of action. 
 
 In the chemical relations existing between one pound 
 of carbon and two and two-thirds pounds of oxygen, there 
 is energy in repose, which, changed into energy of action in 
 the thermal state, is sufficient to do the work of raising a 
 ton weight from the sea level to the summit of Mount 
 Washington. The prodigiousness of man's work today 
 may be roughly gauged by the rate of his appropriation 
 and using of this single stored energy of repose. Out of 
 the "strength of the hills" he is digging the fuel factor in 
 
Air and the School House 15 
 
 that energy at a rate represented in three millions of tons 
 of coal a day. In the air about him is a vast store of oxy- 
 gen estimated at eleven hundred million millions of tons; 
 a supply which by a marvelous, stupendous and ceaseless 
 process of sustained replenishment is renewed as rapidly 
 as it is exhausted. 
 
 Until within a few years man has been in ignorance 
 of the immense reservoirs of energy-in-repose at his hand. 
 The sources of the immense industrial strides which have 
 marked the development of manufacturing and commercial 
 growth within the last century are found in the coal of the 
 hills and the oxygen of the air. 
 
 That strength of the hills and that quickening spirit of 
 the air, are only man's findings, and are none of his creat- 
 ings. The power that vitalizes the body, that speeds the 
 train, that propels the ship, is man's only because he can lay 
 hold, and in some measure has laid hold, of the flowing trails 
 of infinite energy, as with awing majesty it moves through 
 the stupendous sweep of a boundless universe, — the infinite 
 "I am that I Am." 
 
 What man purposely does with and through fuel and 
 air, he does less consciously with and through food and air. 
 The boiler furnace is fed fuel and is given draught. Man 
 eats food and breathes air. In both the process is one of 
 conversion of chemical energy into thermal energy, of en- 
 ergy of repose into energy of action. The furnace, boiler 
 and engine are, in combination, an energy transformer. 
 The human and the brute body is equally a transformer, — 
 a marvellous furnace, an exquisitely perfect mechanism, 
 in a combination which for dynamic economy the ingenuity 
 of man cannot match in any mechanical creation. The 
 body, supremely fitted to its function, is purposed and 
 fashioned to receive energy stored in food and air, to trans- 
 form that energy into vital energy, the dynamic energy of 
 muscle, the finer motor energy of nerve, the mysterious 
 and directive energy of brain. 
 
 Herein is the basal truth upon which the present study 
 rests. The life of the human body, all its voluntary and 
 
1 6 Air and the School House 
 
 involuntary activities, is energy in action, energy not cre- 
 ated of the body, not continuing within the body, not to 
 perish with the body ; but energy which was in other forms 
 and in other matter yesterday, is in vital form in the body 
 today, and will be in other form and matter tomorrow. 
 The body is the receiver, the director, the user of such tran- 
 sition energy as it can appropriate out of the infinite store 
 about it. It receives the energy in its chemical form, and 
 transforms it into its vital form. Therein is the rationale 
 of eating and of breathing, the necessity of aerating our 
 bodies, and of ventilating our dwellings and other habita- 
 tions. 
 
 Without air, fuel and food remain useless carbon ; 
 without the carbon of fuel and food, air contains useless 
 oxygen. Both are alike inactive in repose without the com- 
 bination which transforms energy of repose into energy 
 of action. 
 
 .V. 
 
 The process of vital energy production involves change 
 in both food and the air used in the process.The food once 
 so used is not usable again. The air once so used is no 
 further usable in like manner. The principal changes in 
 air resulting from its contribution to vital energy are five : 
 oxygen is withdrawn from the air, an equal volume of 
 carbon dioxide is added to the air, water vapor is yielded 
 and taken up by the air, the temperature of the air is 
 raised by the heat evolved in the process and imparted to 
 it, and organic matter, oozing out through the pores of the 
 skin, and eliminated from the body through the mucous 
 membranes, is floated on the air. The changes correspond 
 to those produced in air by a boiler furnace fire, — oxygen 
 reduction, production of gases, vapor, heat and smoke. To 
 repass the undiluted contents of the chimney through the 
 boiler fire would extinguish it as surely as water would 
 quench it. The rebreathing of undiluted expired air would 
 as quickly put out the vital flame. 
 
Air and the School House ly 
 
 The question then presents itself, what dilution of the 
 cast off products and residuals attending the energy trans- 
 formation processes which issue in vital energy is necessary 
 for the production of vitality at its best? If the question 
 be asked in reference to the food and drink factors in that 
 transformation process, the universal answer would be 
 strenuously emphatic in its demands for a purity of supply 
 which should completely eliminate the body wastes from 
 food and drinks. The very suggestion of contamination 
 of such sort is repulsive in the extreme. No one valuing 
 rightly his own health could knowingly be persuaded to 
 select for even temporary residence a house or a city which 
 discharges its excremental and other sewage up stream 
 and takes its water supply from the down stream of any 
 brook or river, unless it were of torrential proportions. 
 
 When, however, that same question relates to the at- 
 mospheric factor in the vital energy production process, 
 it is commonly treated either trivially or incredulously. 
 Yet not so if the fire is that of the boiler furnace rather 
 than that of the body. To feed undiluted waste chimney 
 gases to a fire would, by common intelligence, be ranked 
 in the same folly with feeding such fire with ashes, and to 
 mix chimney gases with the air-indraught to fire would be 
 judged as harmful to boiler efficiency as to mix ashes with 
 the coal fed to the fire. 
 
 As a matter of practical experience, the quality of air 
 fed to a fire is of larger importance than is the quality of 
 coal fed to it. Ask any experienced fireman as to the 
 first essential for maintaining a good fire and he will reply 
 "a good draught." Without that he can neither build nor 
 keep his fire, however good the coal may be, or however 
 skilful his stoking. Let the draught be good and the coal 
 poor, he can then make and keep a hot fire by dint of 
 hard and skilful stoking. 
 
 So also in the matter of stoking, or fire tending; the 
 quality of even that is of larger importance in the matter of 
 fire maintenance than is the quality of coal used in the 
 process. Poor stoking makes wasteful work of the burn- 
 
18 Air and the School House 
 
 ing of the best coal, and of the using of the best of draught. 
 Good stoking, on the other hand, may make a fine fire of 
 poor fuel with a good draught. The sequence of impor- 
 tance is, then, first, excellence of air; second, skilfulness 
 in stoking; third, excellence of fuel. 
 
 Turning now to the body, the physical energy trans- 
 former, the relative values of pure air, stimulating exer- 
 cise and pure food will be found to be the same as those 
 of draught, stoking and fuel for the boiler system. The 
 exact proportion of oxygen in the air is of vastly greater 
 importance than is the precise proportion of carbon in the 
 food. Even the quantity and quality of the stoking ex- 
 ercise, which stirs up and cleans out the animal fires, is of 
 a larger vital importance than is the proportion of carbon 
 in the food fuel. The average maximum of physical 
 strength and endurance for doing the world's hard work 
 is found in men of the dinner pail brigade, whose food is 
 for the most part coarse and too often ill prepared, and with 
 small reference to exact proportions of sugar, starch and 
 fats, of carbon and nitrogen; but whose abundant exercise 
 in open air does for his vital fires what good stoking does 
 for the boiler fires, which would otherwise become clogged 
 with ash and clinker. 
 
 i 
 
 VI. 
 
 A 
 
 Because that common, costless, abundant thing, air, 
 envelops man as the great ocean does the fish that is almost 
 lost in its waste of waters, he is prone to think it of com- 
 monplace and minor value, and its exact purity as of small 
 account. Yet with marvelous exactness the purity of that 
 waste of air is continuously maintained. Carbon and oxy- 
 gen in immense proportions are continuously combining 
 the world over in energy transforming processes, the daily 
 combination product of carbon dioxide reaching twenty- 
 two million tons, six million tons of carbon oxidized, and 
 sixteen million tons of oxygen carbonized. And while this 
 stupendous process is proceeding, vegetation is daily ab- 
 
Air and the School House 19 
 
 sorbing these twenty-two million tons of carbon dioxide, 
 keeping the six million tons of carbon for leaf and blade of 
 forest and field, and giving back to the air the sixteen mil- 
 lion tons of oxygen, so maintaining the richness of the air 
 on one side, and the world's supply of carbon in vegetation 
 on the other. 
 
 One, if not the principal, reason for the indifference of 
 the thoughtless with reference to atmospheric impurity is 
 in the general invisibleness of that menace, and its fail- 
 ure to instantly impress itself upon the physical sensorium. 
 The air and, for the most part, its contents, are invisible 
 either because of perfect transparency or the minuteness 
 of that in it which is not transparent. In this case that 
 which is transparent ceases to be apparent, and that which is 
 minute is not impressive. The fallacy of basing reasoning 
 solely on the impressions of sensation characterizes primi- 
 tive and un-schooled mentality. Yet the energies and causes 
 which lie back of, and are operative in, most visible phe- 
 nomena are invisible. The swift movement of the great 
 steamer through the sea, and of the flying express over its 
 track, are the motions of aqueous molecules transferred to, 
 and becoming the motion of, the ship and train. 
 
 The invisibly minute and imperceptible is there, as 
 A elsewhere, in primal relation to the visible and the im- 
 pressive. Back of, and in causal relation to, the great 
 plagues which have decimated the peoples of cities and 
 nations has always been a mal-aria — a badness of air — 
 which because of complete invisibility has been thought 
 to have been of the genus of an evil spirit. The unseen 
 dust particles in the air of dwellings and the street number 
 from thousands to millions in each cubic inch of air, and 
 among them are often found the microbes of deadly dis- 
 eases. Into one thousandth of a cubic inch could be 
 crowded the bacilli of tuberculosis in such multitudes that 
 if the individual bacilli making up that crowded colony 
 were evenly distributed through the air of a building of 
 one million cubic feet contents, the number in each cubic 
 foot of that air would be one thousand, and the number 
 
20 Air and the School House 
 
 inhaled with the breath fifteen thousand an hour by a 
 single breather. The microbic agencies productive of our 
 infectious and most dreaded contagious and malignant dis- 
 eases belong in a realm of minuteness too great for de- 
 tection by the natural sight. 
 
 An alteration by so much as an atom in the chemical 
 composition of substances may, and often does, so change 
 the character of a product as to make it hardly recognizable 
 as a relative of combinations to which it is constructively 
 closely akin. Two atoms of oxygen in combination with 
 one of carbon make a gas so harmless that when diluted 
 with air in proportion of one to twenty-five, the mixture 
 may be temporarily breathed with impunity ; whereas 
 one atom of oxygen in combination with one of carbon 
 produces a gas so deadly that one part diluted in one 
 thousand of air is quickly fatal. Metallurgists have found 
 that a change in carbon equal to one-thousandth part of the 
 total weight of steel so alters its hardness and ability to 
 resist wear that the degree of hardness attending the pres- 
 ence or absence of that thousandth part of carbon is quickly 
 evident in the life of railroad rails under the stress of use. 
 The variation of a thousandth part of carbon in the com- 
 position of the dies which put the nation's impress on its 
 coins changes the steel from that which can sharply stamp 
 forty-five thousand pieces, into that which fails before the 
 forty-fifth impress is made. 
 
 So also the variations in the methods of aggregation 
 of the selfsame molecules almost incredibly changes the 
 physical characteristics of the resulting substances. Char- 
 coal, graphite, camphor and the diamond are the same 
 in elementary substance. Ozone is intense, and oxygen 
 mild in oxidizing activity, though the only difference be- 
 tween them is that one is made up of three, and the other 
 of two atoms of oxygen. 
 
 What is true of atoms and of molecules in chemical 
 and adhesive combination is equally so of worlds and 
 systems in gravitation combination and celestial balance. 
 Neither immensity nor minuteness is, or can be, free from 
 
Air and the School House 21 
 
 the universal law of exactitude in the order, economy or 
 processes of Nature. All solar and stellar combinations 
 are as exactly poised in mechanical balance as are the 
 atoms of the laboratory compound in chemical balance. 
 Let but one of the multitude of bodies in any celestial sys- 
 tem forsake its orbit, and the perfect harmony of "the music 
 of the spheres" is broken, until finally chaos may take the 
 place of order, the balance be broken, and "the heavens roll 
 together as a scroll" and "melt with fervent heat." What 
 a stupendous final destruction consequent upon so small 
 an initial departure! In nothing is Nature haphazard or 
 approximate, but in everything, whether minute or im- 
 mense, inexorably exact. Nowhere and in nothing is it 
 safe to measure the proportions of final issues by the seem- 
 ing insignificance of initial causes. Everywhere and in 
 everything causes which seem insignificant, issue in results 
 which appear out of all proportion to the initiative. It is 
 the old and familiar story of the rudder and the ship, the 
 tongue and its issues, the little fire and the great matter 
 it kindleth, the wind and the whirlwind, the atom and its 
 transformation of the physical properties of compounds, 
 the diminutive microbe and the devastating plague. 
 
 Where conditions are most sensitive and processes 
 most delicate, the results consequent upon causes may be 
 expected to be more marked and decisive than when condi- 
 tions and processes are neither sensitive nor delicate. The 
 human energy-transforming system is one of exquisite sen- 
 sitiveness, and of supreme delicacy of adjustment and per- 
 formance as compared with the boiler system of energy 
 transformation and operation. If, then, it can be clearly 
 shown that the relation of air quantity and quality to the 
 complete performance of a boiler plant is one which seri- 
 ously affects the economic operation of that plant, it not 
 only may hypothetically, but it may reasonably, be inferred 
 that the vital energy output of the far more sensitive and 
 intricate human system must be at least equally effected 
 by change in atmospheric quantity and quality. The 
 draught through a boiler fire may be so excessive as to put 
 
22 Air and the School House 
 
 out the fire. A lesser, though too strong draught, lowers 
 the temperature of combustible gases and carries to chim- 
 ney as waste an excessive amount of heat produced. On 
 the other hand too little draught fed to the fire results in 
 incomplete combustion of fuel and the heavy waste attend- 
 ing but partially oxidated fuel. For results of highest ef- 
 fect, the draught must be adjusted with precision to the 
 combustion rate to be accomplished. 
 
 Waste attends any variation from the exactness of the 
 conditions upon which the completeness of desired results 
 depends. The effect on illuminating flames of minute 
 changes in air from its normal constituent proportions has 
 been already referred to, and further shown by recent ex- 
 perimentation. Remove from the air oxygen equal to one 
 five-hundredth of the air volume, and replace that oxygen 
 by the gaseous product of carbon oxidation, carbon acid 
 gas, and the luminosity of the candle flame drops one- 
 twentieth. That is, a change in air of one produces a 
 change in luminosity of twenty-five. It is highly significant 
 that such results should attend changes so slight in condi- 
 tions affecting the lifeless, senseless, unimaginative flame 
 of a candle, a lamp, a gas jet, and that there should be such 
 manifest responsive sensitiveness to slight changes in the 
 atmospheric conditions upon which ordinary combustion 
 and illuminating processes depend. The greater the deli- 
 cacy which attends and affects the combustion process and 
 the luminosity of the flame, the greater the ratio becomes 
 between the producing cause and the resulting effect in the 
 illuminating product. In the concentrated flame of the 
 German student lamp is an illuminating flame of the highest 
 development, intensity and illumination combined with sen- 
 sitiveness of conditions affecting luminosity. Breathe into 
 the inner tube supplying that flame with air a quantity of 
 expired breath which changes the composition of the total 
 air fed to that flame but one in two hundred, and the bril- 
 liant flame assumes a sickly paleness, and dwarfs into flick- 
 ering smallness useless for illuminating effects. 
 
 The higher and more intricate an organism, the larger 
 
Air and the School House 23 
 
 and more involved and involving are the effects upon it of 
 any change in the conditions upon which its processes and 
 functions are dependent. A plant has a form of life ; in its 
 organization and vital functions it is higher and more intri- 
 cate than the flame, and is therefore more susceptible than 
 is the flame, to variations from the normal in the conditions 
 upon which its vitality depends. At the Mt. Vernon home 
 of Washington are large conservatories filled now, as in 
 his day, with luxuriant growths of plant and flower. Those 
 conservatories are now heated with hot water circulated in 
 pipe coils within the enclosures. If unprotected, the pipes 
 grow rusty and shabby in appearance. The place is a Mecca 
 of national resort. The conservatories, even their pipes, are 
 on exhibition. An enterprising agent representing a manu- 
 facturer of paints interested the inexperienced custodian 
 in protecting and ornamenting those pipes with his paint. 
 It was applied to the pipes when the weather was warm and 
 plants were summering without. All through the hot sum- 
 mer and early fall that paint was given time and air to 
 dry. It dried hard, smooth, glossy, and became all that 
 was prophesied and desired in appearance. It had ceased 
 to emit any odor of paint, or to sensibly affect the air in any 
 way. Moreover, before the plants were rehabilitated for 
 the winter, the pipes were heated for expelling from the 
 paint all possible traces of volatile residuum. The plants 
 were then reinstated, all in a normally healthy condition. 
 It was soon noticed that the foliage began to wilt, and that 
 blossoms faded and drooped, and after a little all the life 
 of the conservatory plants was hopelessly gone. The sus- 
 pected pipes were then given a prolonged treatment with 
 superheated water. The conservatories were aired day and 
 night, until again not a suggestion of any abnormal qual- 
 ity of air could be detected, nor a trace of anything injurious 
 found in it. A second time the conservatories were stocked 
 with new and healthy plants ; and again, the flowers paled, 
 and the leaves, whitening at the edges, withered and died. 
 Then again those pipes were heated, this time in the 
 hot flame of a plumber's furnace, inch by inch, until brought 
 
24 Air and the School House 
 
 to a low glow of heat, and until everything organic and vol- 
 atile had been expelled and burned from the paint, and from 
 the very iron of the pipes ; and then, when again the en- 
 closures had been freely and lengthily aired, the renewed 
 installation of plants lived and grew and blossomed as well 
 provided for plants should live and grow and bloom. 
 
 Here, then, is the emphatic evidence of the lifeless 
 flame, and the equally significant testimony of the living 
 plant, to the effects of change in minute degree in the con- 
 stituent quality of the air. Neither flame nor plant repre- 
 sents the highest and most complex system of organism. 
 For that we look to man, endowed with sensation, with the 
 power and play of thought and imagination, with all their 
 introactive and reflex effects upon the vital flame. What 
 effect has change of air upon the intensity, the brilliancy 
 and the vigor of that flame? What physician does not know 
 it? What to thousands hovering between life and death has 
 change of air meant, from inland to seashore air, from low- 
 land to mountain air? What the quality difference in those 
 airs? What makes one life taking and the other life giving? 
 By what means can the difference be measured? What 
 chemical test so delicate as to determine it? If variations 
 which are so minute as to be termed "traces" are so potent 
 vitally, what shall be said of changes which are so gross 
 as to be easily measured by methods not refined, and which 
 need no delicate balance to detect their presence, but which 
 through rankness and density are often discerned by the 
 sense of smell, and made immediately and conspicuously 
 evident by the dullness and languor in animal or brute Kfe 
 exposed to them? If a change of one in the air produces 
 a change of twenty-five in the brightness of the candle 
 flame, what will a like air change effect in the vital flame? 
 
 The answer is incontrovertible in the volume of its 
 facts and in the value of its unimpeachable logic. Because 
 of the complexity, the delicacy, the sensitiveness, the sus- 
 ceptibility of the vital flame, what should be the expected 
 result? If the candle flame pales, why should not the vital 
 flame droop? If the glow of a candle flame changes to a 
 
Air and the School House 25 
 
 duller and a lurid hue, why should not the cheeks of the 
 breathers of the air, in which that candle so burns, redden 
 with feverish flush? If when the carbon dioxide of the air 
 changes from the normal, four parts in ten thousand, to 
 twenty parts, the candle loses one-twentieth of its brilliancy, 
 why should not alertness be changed to listlessness, quick 
 and clear insight to the slow grasping of the lethargic mind? 
 the keen edge of mental acumen be dulled? the finest 
 flower and highest color of vital energy droop? rapidity 
 and accuracy of productive work change to the plodding and 
 blundering effort of depleted energy? the exhilaration of 
 work with energy in surplus change to the burdensomeness 
 of toil when life's edge is dulled, and there must "be put to 
 the more strength" for every result achieved? 
 
 The quality of air in a school room may easily be such 
 as to effect a change in the clear brow and fine perception 
 of a scholar as great as that of the keen prow and fine lines 
 of an ocean racer transformed into the blunt prow and 
 flat bottom of a canal boat. In attempted answer to such 
 argument it has been said that men have lived and thrived 
 and have done the past great work of the world without 
 any such attention to air quality as is now advocated, and 
 even required by law. Many may remember the school-house 
 and rooms in which their early school experience was had, 
 those crowded, tight, close, stove-heated rooms, all of which 
 conditions have been survived in safety. Why then should 
 not the children of today equally survive like conditions? 
 
 Survive ! — the very word answers the question. It 
 means, by implication, a menace. The question for that 
 growing, developing, energy acquiring, that sensitive, ten- 
 der, susceptible school age should never be one of surviving, 
 but of reviving, and of vivifying. 
 
 In the years ago, when those, now the older boys and 
 girls, were pent up in stuffy schoolrooms, and when little 
 heed was given to ventilation, the average longevity among 
 civilized races was, as has already been said, from thirty-three 
 to thirty-four years. Now, when sanitation, and with it ven- 
 tilation, have come to claim and to hold their place among the 
 
A 
 
 26 Air and the School House 
 
 essentials to a vitalizing of life, the average years of civilized 
 races has passed the forty year mark. And what, and how 
 many, magnificent stalwarts are found today in men and 
 women among the generation that is crowding the premature 
 gray heads toward the precipitous edge of life's stage ! 
 
 To have escaped with one's life the dangers lurking in 
 the old schoolhouse does not prove the menace trivial. Be- 
 cause thousands escape the battlefield unscathed, who will 
 be found to affirm that the battlefield is not a place of su- 
 preme danger? To learn the degree of that danger who 
 watches the legions of veterans as in annual encampments 
 they march to martial music in long parades through our 
 city streets, but does not rather go to that place of speech- 
 less and pathetic eloquence, the country's Arlington? 
 
 VII. 
 
 The menace of the minute is not limited to cause alone, 
 but includes also effects. Effects which in the initial and 
 immediate are minute, may, and often do, become great 
 when cumulative. A gun trained one-tenth of a degree off 
 the true line of fire departs so little from that line that only 
 the experienced eye of a gunner may detect the deviation ; 
 but the path of the projectile fired at the target four miles 
 distant will go thirty-five feet wild of the bull's eye through 
 the cumulative effect of that minute error at the gun. 
 
 Likewise in things vital there is the inappreciable ini- 
 tiative, the unavoidable cumulative, the inevitable finality 
 in result. In those who are robustAexcess of vitality may 
 conceal the initiative results of exposure to adverse hygi- 
 enic conditions, and tendencies may be temporarily ob- 
 scured. Tendency is the thing of primary importance. If 
 tendency is to be determined, then sensitiveness and deli- 
 cacy in the subject, and in the conditions which affect it, 
 are essential. The direction of an imperceptible air current 
 is not to be determined by throwing a brick into it, but 
 rather a straw or a fluffy feather. Tendencies are best and 
 properly observed only under conditions of delicacy of ad- 
 
 
Air and the School House 27 
 
 justment, of sensitiveness and susceptibility to the action 
 of causes under inspection. The tendency of effects of im- 
 poverished and vitiated air is, therefore, not to be most 
 surely discovered by exposing robust life to it. Tender- 
 ness most quickly and surely discloses tendencies. The 
 effect of vitiated air on frail vitality is to be noted if the 
 tendency of such environment is to be truly learned. The 
 feeble and puny beginning of life, the baby age, is well 
 suited to that purpose. And the history of its gasping for 
 better breath, and of its dying for want of it, could even 
 the briefest resume of that story be given, would furnish a 
 decisive demonstration of the tendency trend. In one mater- 
 nity hospital the death rate for years when ventilation was 
 insufficient was reduced to one-tenth when ample ventila- 
 tion contributed to better sanitation. 
 
 In the case of adults the tendency trend is less evident, 
 yet significant. In the wards for adults in hospitals where, 
 through shock attending accidents or operations or the 
 weakening effect of disease, vitality is at a low ebb, the 
 marked beneficial effects of good ventilation are also found. 
 In the surgical wards of a well-known hospital the death 
 rate has changed from forty-four per cent, with faulty ven- 
 tilation to thirteen per cent, with free ventilation; and in 
 the general wards from twenty-three without, to six with 
 good ventilation. 
 
 It is by no means necessary to limit the field of inquiry 
 to baby life and hospital invalidism. Adults in average 
 health and active life repeat the evidence with significant 
 emphasis. When the U. S. Pension Bureau was housed 
 in scattered and illy adapted and poorly ventilated build- 
 ings about Washington, the average of several years of 
 record showed an aggregate absence on sick leave amount- 
 ing to between eighteen and nineteen thousand days a year. 
 When, later, a much larger clerical force was housed in a 
 new and well aired building the average of absence for an 
 equal period was but little more than ten thousand days. 
 The records of great prisons, and even of army stables, 
 show that the strongest of men, and of brute life as well, 
 are not immune from the baneful influence of impure air. 
 
28 Air and the School House 
 
 Could the daily dead be numbered whose lives have 
 prematurely lapsed through the cumulative effects of a 
 want of that air which in its vast abundance and in its sus- 
 tained purity is free to all, and an inalienable right of man, 
 the record would be appalling. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The dead are beyond human reach and helping. The liv- 
 ing are the keepers of their brothers, the living. The present 
 study relates to the obligation of the public to the children in 
 the school-houses in the matter of pure air. How much air 
 should be provided for them? If health and vigor were meas- 
 nreable by the quantity of air supplied, there would then be no 
 restricting limit upon our obligation as to the abundance 
 of that supply. The facts, however, are otherwise. Too 
 much air is even more dangerous than too little. Too lit- 
 tle means vitiation and stagnation ; too much means 
 draughts. Vitiation dulls, stupefies, enervates, depresses 
 vitality, exposes the body to a multitude of waiting and 
 menacing dangers. It cumulatively weakens and pros- 
 trates, and gradually kills as by a slow fever. Draught, on 
 the other hand, pierces to the very bone and marrow, as 
 with a quick sword thrust. Its results are acute, pro- 
 nounced, startling, often painful, too often deadly. Too 
 strong a draught will put out, rather than intensify, a fire. 
 It will also make the vital flame flicker to its extinction. 
 
 Moreover, draught effect aside, the vitalizing effect of 
 air is not proportional to the quantity furnished. With 
 each increment of air, the increment of physical benefit de- 
 rivable therefrom is reduced, until, at length, the gain ob- 
 tainable from further increase is not commensurate with 
 the cost of furnishing it. There is a primary limit within 
 which the question is one of life and of death ; what quantity 
 of air is absolutely needed to sustain life? There is a sec- 
 ondary limit, between which and the first lies the question 
 of the degree of vitalization to be furnished life. Beyond 
 these two there is yet another, what quantity of air will a 
 
 k 
 
Air and the School Hotise 29 
 
 breather bear without clanger from draughts, atmospheric 
 or economic? The first is the question of simply maintain- 
 ing the fires ; saving them from extinction. The second is 
 one of obtaining from those fires productive work of the 
 highest and most continuous order. The last is one of max- 
 imum limit of draught without extinction of fire, or without 
 overbalancing loss. 
 
 The question of present interest is the second. What 
 are the profitable minimum and maximum limits of air 
 supply? This is the commercial phase of the question of 
 air in relation to the school room, the profit and loss aspect 
 of ventilation. The question is practically one that any 
 manufacturer might ask with reference to his boiler fires. 
 Does it pay to give them draught ? Is it proposed to main- 
 tain fires for the mere purpose of keeping them in an exist- 
 ence, like banked fires? or, rather, for the purpose of mak- 
 ing them effective to the highest practicable degree in pro- 
 ductive work? So the humanitarian asks with reference to 
 school houses, "Shall we ventilate to merely keep our chil- 
 dren from death or sickness? or, rather, to fill them to the 
 full with vital energy?" Surely the question of vital econ- 
 omy is not, what least will keep the vital flame from ex- 
 tinction ; but, rather, what best will bring and hold that flame 
 to its fullest glow without flickering, or without exinguishing 
 it in draughts. 
 
 ^ — -"This culminating question of the present discussion 
 may be briefly answered by a reference to a concrete case 
 — a High School. Certain students, recognized at home and 
 abroad as authorities in matters of vital economy, have found 
 that the effect of the vitiated air of unventilated schoolrooms 
 is to reduce the work of teachers and scholars to at least 
 seventy-five per cent, of that easily and regularly done in 
 well ventilated rooms. The truth of that assertion has been 
 demonstrated under the author's observation, and has been 
 testified to by teachers of his acquaintance. That declara- 
 tion bears out the already observed evidence of the candle 
 flame, which for each four parts in ten thousand increase in 
 atmospheric carbonic acid drops one per cent, in brilliancy. 
 
30 Air and the School House 
 
 In the case in hand, let the degree of desired ventilation be 
 represented by a rise of carbonic acid gas within the school 
 room of three parts in ten thousand over that existing in 
 out of door air, and let the worst supposedly tolerable ventila- 
 tion be represented by a similar rise of twenty-one parts in ten 
 thousand. What would be the real cost of that poor venti- 
 lation? What the real gain of that good ventilation? 
 
 For the sake of definiteness, let it be assumed that the 
 school building accommodates six hundred scholars, and that 
 the per capita cost for the school is eighty-five dollars per an- 
 num, or a total of fifty-one thousand dollars per year. Let 
 it be further assumed that the poorer air reduces the value 
 of the work of the school room no more than fifteen per 
 cent. — instead of the more probable twenty-five per cent. — 
 through the dullness, slowness, and other faultiness of 
 work on the part of the scholars and of teachers. That 
 means an immediate yearly loss of fifteen per cent, on fifty- 
 one thousand dollars, or seven thousand six hundred and 
 fifty dollars. 
 
 The cost of warming air to so ventilate all the rooms 
 of the building that the carbonic acid increase should be 
 but three in ten thousand, instead of twenty-one, and to 
 maintain such ventilation for six hours per day, would aver- 
 age, in coal burned, two-thirds of a ton per day, or three 
 and one-third tons per week ; a total of some one hundred 
 tons per year, at a cost of perhaps seven hundred and fifty 
 dollars. To the cost of fuel for ventilation must be added 
 that of interest on the cost of the ventilating plant, and the 
 cost of repairs and deterioration of that plant, which should 
 not exceed one thousand dollars per year; and a further 
 cost of service required in connection with the ventilating 
 plant, over that involved in a mere heating plant, of possibly 
 three hundred dollars a year ; making a total cost for good 
 ventilation of two thousand and fifty dollars per year, 
 against a loss of seven thousand six hundred and forty due 
 to bad ventilation. That seven thousand six hundred dol- 
 lars loss to the public purse is equivalent to ninety school 
 years, or seventeen thousand school days, immediately lost to 
 the city's children. These losses are to be found in the dull- 
 
V 
 
 Air and the School House 31 
 
 ness, laxness, restlessness, the inattention, the labored and 
 blundering work ; the impaired power of imparting on the 
 part of the teacher and of recipiency on the part of the 
 scholar; the complaining and insubordinate spirit; the in- 
 creased occasion for and necessity of discipline ; the illness 
 and absences of both teachers and scholars which are the 
 well recognized school-room consequences of faulty school- 
 house hygiene, of a want of a proper appreciation and ap- 
 propriation of one of the two energy sources upon which 
 physical vitality depends, pure air. 
 
 The losses attributable to the vitiated air of school 
 houses are by no means limited to those of the rooms them- 
 selves. Inside the school rooms the penalties are many and 
 severe, outside they are more and heavier; life's vitality in the 
 aggregate impaired; the beginning of profitable life work 
 delayed; the laboriousness of that work increased when 
 begun, and the period of its extent shortened; the liability of 
 contracting disease increased through reduced vitality; the 
 expenses incident to sickness made greater; the liability in- 
 curred to the greater severity of sickness when it comes; and 
 the handicap invited which burdens and shortens and lends a 
 minor key to all life's after work. 
 
 On one side of this question of economy is energizing 
 air in all its vast plenty and perfect purity, and the cheap- 
 ness of warming it for winter use, practically one cent for 
 each forty thousand cubic feet; and on the other side is the 
 fullest store of vital energy procurable from nature's 
 sources. In times past, present and to come that question 
 has been, is and will be periodically threshed out under the 
 flail of the humane hygienist because of the numbers of men, 
 blind to benefits sacrificed, who have urged, do now and 
 ( will continue to urge the "saving" of that one cent. 
 
 The supply of air to be furnished to healthy high school 
 
 breathers in order to ensure a reasonable, though not gen- 
 erous, wholesomeness of atmospheric environment is 
 twenty-four hundred cubic feet an hour per capita; or, for 
 a high school daily session, fourteen thousand four hundred 
 cubic feet per capita. The per capita cost in fuel for warm- 
 ing that quantity of air in average winter weather would be 
 
32 Air and the School House 
 
 approximately one-third of a- cent -a day. The weekly cost 
 in fuel of ventilation may therefore be placed at something 
 less than two cents per capita. -A school year of fresh 
 school-air costs no more than- three days'- meals for the 
 scholar in our average homes. What other so large,, so 
 lasting benefit could be purchased at so small a price? What 
 other investment yields so rich returns? What parent with 
 a spark of solicitous care for his offspring can possibly be- 
 grudge the cost ? What taxpayer, caring and paying in this 
 respect no more for his home and the common weal than 
 for his tobacco pouch, can protest against that money in- 
 vestment in pure air without exhibiting symptoms sug- 
 gestive of inhumanity, if not of insanity? 
 
 What then shall be said of committees, to whom are 
 committed so much of the vital as well as the intellectual 
 interests of our children and their future, when they treat 
 ventilation as a luxury for the few rather than as the right 
 of all who have a right to live? What shall be said of jani- 
 tors more interested in currying the favor of the committee 
 by their records for reducing coal consumption than in in- 
 creasing the vital energy, the immediate working capacity, 
 and the future productive working power of the hundreds 
 and the thousands whose well-being is, in so large degree, 
 in their keeping? What shall be said of the policy applied 
 to this typical high school, which would save twenty hun- 
 dred dollars in running expenses, and thereby lose seventy- 
 six hundred in product? 
 
 There is no public knee too large for accommodating 
 such offenders, nor any public arm too strong for adminis- 
 tering to them the discipline they merit. If what has been 
 said is true, if the source of energy out of which issues life 
 and which makes possible all vital energy is lodged for human 
 taking and using in the foods supplied out of the earth, and in 
 the free air which comes out of heaven, then for him who 
 ignorantly, carelessly, or wilfully stands between man and his 
 birthright, the doors most fit to open for his entrance, keeping 
 and teaching are those of the reforming penitentiary, behind 
 which he should be held until he shall awaken to the knowl- 
 edge, the sanity and the works meet for repentance. 
 
 /