PRESIDENT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS 31 



splendid work which its devoted labours have achieved in 

 the past, I shall see my family more than halved. I am here 

 to stimulate you, as President of the Local Government 

 Board, looking after this large family. I want you to 

 realize that from 50 to 60 per cent, of our total pauperism 

 is due to illness, sickness, accident, or ill-health, and I say 

 that if your movement had been started 100 years ago this 

 state of things would not exist at this moment to the 

 extent that it does. Some will say, " But, Mr. Burns, have 

 we been justified by what has been attempted? " Well, as 

 it is my business, I have looked at the facts since the time you 

 began your work in this Hall. In the seven years since 

 this Conference first met the general death-rate has 

 diminished 13 per cent., the tuberculosis death-rate 18 per 

 cent., and infant mortality over 30 per cent. It is a great 

 achievement that while, when you launched this Conference, 

 the infant mortality in England and Wales was 145 per 

 thousand, to-day it is 95 per thousand only. 



But, better still, take the total saving of life in these 

 seven years. In this period no less than 545,000 human 

 lives have been saved from death, as compared with the 

 previous seven years; and of this number nearly 200,000 

 have been saved owing to the diminished infantile mortality. 

 We are now saving over 50,000 lives per annum on our 

 infant mortality rate, or nearly the amount of the total emi- 

 gration from the Mother Country to Australia. So you see 

 that we are reversing the saying; the Old World has been 

 brought in to adjust the balance of the New, and with those 

 snatched from death out of the Old World we are now 

 peopling the waste places of our Dominions. These are a 

 few of the actual achievements of seven years; and how has 

 this been done ? It has been done mainly because my 

 Department has pioneered the way. Men like Dr. News- 

 holme, whose valuable report on infant mortality is before 

 you this week, Sir George Newman, and all the other 

 doctors who have identified themselves with this movement, 

 have brought pressure to bear on the State, on Ministers, 

 on Cabinets, and on Municipalities. And how has it been 

 done? Well, you first asked me to bring about the notifica- 

 tion of births. Sir Thomas, we have realized from that 

 more than I ever expected in so short a time. Four hun- 

 dred districts have adopted the Notification of Births Act; 

 twenty-one millions of population are under it, or 56 per 

 cent, of the population of England and Wales. We have 

 also introduced another very important notification, that of 

 ophthalmia of the newly born. The effect of that on the 

 numbers of blind in the future will be very remarkable. Up 



