fifi ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



insanitary dwellings. These tenants do not pay a 

 rental representing the full cost of their dwellings, 

 and the remainder of the cost falls upon the rate- 

 payer. Under these circumstances it is reason- 

 able that a strict supervision of these tenements 

 should be exercised. After due warning, drunkenness 

 and other vice or misconduct, dirty or disorderly 

 habits render the tenant liable to expulsion. The 

 results have been greatly improved conduct and 

 a marked fall in the death-rate, especially among 

 the infants. Year by year this reform is being carried 

 out with satisfactory results. Furthermore, wide 

 streets and open playgrounds for the children are 

 being provided. Also a great number of public parks 

 and open grassy spaces with trees and seats where 

 infants and children can enjoy the sun and air. 

 These are expensive, but are important boons for 

 the congested population of a city. 



There are, however, certain other factors which 

 are of great moment in determining the death-rate 

 among infants. The morals, the intelligence, the 

 common-sense of the parents, especially the mother, 

 are of great importance. 



In a group of three or four families occupying 

 adjacent houses, and engaged in the same kind of 

 labour, the widest differences in infant death-rate are 

 found to prevail. In one family all the children 

 survive, while in a second* only half, and in a third all 

 or nearly all die. Drunkenness and other vices, 

 carelessness, ignorance, and idleness are the causes. 

 The removal of these evil moral conditions is a more 

 difficult task than the amelioration of mere physical 

 defect. Religious and moral teaching, education and 

 the practice of temperance are the remedies. All 

 our primary school girls are now being taught hygiene, 

 home management, sewing, the details of the nursery, 

 and the feeding of infants, and they show great 

 interest in these studies, both in theory and by practi- 



