Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 233 



WHAT CAN THE WOMEN OF MISSOURI DO TO REDUCE IN- 

 FANT MORTALITY. 



(Mrs. C. W. Greene, Columbia, Mo.) 



When the average woman reads such a title as the one that an- 

 nounces my paper, she thinks of slums and tenement houses, and feels 

 that it is very unfortunate that babies must be born and die in such 

 places, and then dismisses it from her mind and does not realize that 

 she has any responsibility in the matter or can do anything to prevent 

 the slaughter of infants that is going on all over the United States. 

 There is no way of telling for the whole United States just what the 

 death rate of infants is in proportion to the number of children born, 

 for the reason that no universal record is kept either of the births 

 or of the deaths. When the present census was made, the fact was 

 revealed that in only seventeen states of our Union is there any at- 

 tempt at registration of births and deaths. In many of these states 

 the records were so imperfectly and carelessly kept that they had 

 no scientific value. Why is this? People have for long years recog- 

 nized the value and desirabilty of registering cattle, horses, hogs, 

 chickens and kittens — then why not men? Here is what the Secretary 

 of the State Board of Health of Kansas has to say on the matter : 



"Kansas, poor old Kansas, bleeding Kansas, bleeding money, 

 wheat and corn at every pore. A land of smiling sunshine, of wind- 

 ing streams, where you have but to tickle the soil to make it laugh a 

 harvest. A land dotted with school houses and growing towns and 

 villages, a land of pigs given to adipose, of sleek cattle, of strong 

 horses, of handsome women, of bouncing babies, of homely rugged 

 men, a land where no one dies, except through accident or overeating. 

 Poor bleeding Kansas cannot afford to pay twenty-five cents to register 

 those bouncing babies, and while for years they have duly registered 

 their fine pigs, their cows and horses, at an expense of from fifty 

 cents to ten dollars each, they deny their future citizens, the poten- 

 tial fathers and mothers of this great republic, the right of registra- 

 tration, the establishment of legal birthright for the pitiful sum of 

 twenty-five cents." 



■In spite of its up-to-dateness in other matters, our own country 

 has been slow in realizing that the babies of this generation are to 

 become the material out of which citizens of the next generation are 

 made, and that one of their rights as such is a record of their births. 

 Every great nation, except the United States, keeps such records, 

 even such conservative countries as Chili, Finland and Tasmania are 



