86 ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



we should find that the Bureau might claim that 

 thirty-eight and a half million children were included 

 within its purview. 



It is apparent that this is a bureau of investigation 

 and publicity, and although it is directed to investigate 

 "all matters," that direction is to be interpreted with 

 relation to other existing Government bureaus, notably 

 those of the Census, Education, and Public Health, 

 which have to do with certain aspects of the care 

 of children, and with which this Bureau naturally 

 co-operates. 



It is obviously intended that the Children's Bureau 

 shall occupy the field popularly described as that of 

 " child welfare," which must be based upon census 

 enumerations and must touch upon the social, economic 

 and moral aspects of both education and health. It 

 is to be in no sense an administrative or executive 

 body. According to the theory of government in the 

 United States, each individual state stands in loco 

 parentis to the children resident within it, and whether 

 they are normal children with normal family protection, 

 or whether they may be defective, dependent or 

 delinquent, it makes and enforces the laws affecting 

 them. The creation of the Children's Bureau in no 

 wise lessens this responsibility, but it does place at 

 the service of the various states and of any association 

 or individual desiring it such information as can be 

 commanded by the Bureau regarding the many aspects 

 of child welfare. 



The law itself mentions infant mortality as the 

 first subject to be undertaken, and it is certainly 

 reasonable that the Government should consider first 

 of all this subject the wastage of human life at the 

 beginning. If the Census authorities are right in 

 estimating that at least 300,000 babies, or one out of 

 every eight born, died in the United States last year 

 before any one of them had lived a twelvemonth if, 

 of all the funerals in America, one in every five is that 



