In cities where physicians are not compelled to notify the health board of danger centers,--that is, of patients sick from measles, smallpox, or diphtheria,--and in smaller communities where notices are sent only to state boards of health, parents will find it difficult to take a keen interest in vital statistics. But if teachers would start at the beginning of the year to record in such a table the days of absence from school because of transmissible disease, both they and their pupils would discover a new interest in efficient health administration. After a national board of health is organized we may reasonably expect that either state boards of education or state boards of health will regularly supply teachers with reports that will lead them to compare the vitality photographs of their own schools and communities with the vitality photographs of other schools and other communities working under similar conditions. Then children old enough to study physiology and hygiene will be made to see the happiness-giving possibilities of vitality tests and vital statistics. [Illustration: VITAL STATISTICS CAN MAKE DISEASE CENTERS AS OBVIOUS AND AS OFFENSIVE AS THE SMOKE NUISANCE] Instead of discussing the theory of vital statistics, or the extent to which statistics are now satisfactory, it would be better for us at this point to make clear the significance of the movement for a national fact center for matters pertaining to personal, industrial, and community vitality. Five economic reasons are assigned for establishing a national department of health: 1. To enable society to increase the percentage of exceptional men of each degree, many of whom are now lost through preventable accidents, and also to increase the total population. 2. To lessen the burden of unproductive years by increasing the average age at death. 3. To decrease the burden of death on the productive years by increasing the age at death. 4. To lessen the cost of sickness. It is estimated that if illness in the United States could be reduced one third, nearly $500,000,000 would be saved annually. 5. To decrease the amounts spent on criminality that can be traced to overcrowded, unwholesome, and unhygienic environment. In addition to the economic gain, the establishment of a national department of health would gradually but surely diminish much of the misery and suffering that cannot be measured by statistics. Sickness is a radiating center of anxiety; and often death in the prime of life closes the gates of happiness on more than one life. Let us not forget that the "bitter cry of the children" still goes up to heaven, and that civilization must hear, until at last it heeds, the imprecations of forever wasted years of millions of lives.