ANTE-NATAL HYGIENE : DISCUSSION 383 



not exercise. That was labour; it was work. That woman 

 also wanted feeding. She was undergoing an extra strain, 

 particularly during the period that she was carrying a child, 

 and certainly if she was working to earn her daily bread 

 she required feeding to compensate for the extra loss. He 

 only (trusted that as the result of that Congress the people 

 of England, the people of the United States, the people of 

 the Overseas Dominions the men as well as the women- 

 would study a little more carefully and would become better 

 educated in all that appertained to the baby. As men and 

 women they knew more about the dogs and horses and 

 more about the breeding of cattle than they did about the 

 raising and feeding and caring for children. It was a 

 calamity and a shame to English-speaking people that such 

 was the case. They had to raise children if they wanted 

 to have nations and the sooner they came out and talked 

 one to another the better. He only trusted that as the 

 result of the meeting that morning there would be a great 

 uplifting in this matter and that they would each go back 

 to their homes feeling that they had brothers and sisters 

 helping them in that great movement. 



Dr. VAN INGEN, in reply, said it was a little difficult to 

 answer positively the question asked as to the number of 

 women working away from home in the districts which 

 he had referred to in New York. From the statistics which 

 they had and which he was sorry to say were incomplete 

 he would say that about 30 to 35 per cent, of (the mothers 

 were working away from their homes. Unfortunately the 

 figures they had compiled themselves were rather com- 

 plicated and he could not have the 1,800 cases tabulated 

 in time to bring the result with him, but from the work 

 which had been done by others he would say the percentage 

 he had mentioned was probably correct. It was true that 

 maternal nursing was very prevalent in these districts, but 

 he was sure it was not so high as 93 per cent. From a 

 good deal of work which he had done in the dispensaries 

 for children in past years he felt pretty certain that maternal 

 nursing was not so high as that amongst these poor women. 

 Of course, the Italians almost always nursed their babies 

 and he admitted that maternal nursing was almost universal 

 in the Italian districts. The mother would nurse at night 

 and hand-feed in the day time. They started three years 

 ago and carried on a very extensive campaign in regard 

 to infant welfare stations, and as the result of that the City 

 of New York, after a year's fight, appropriated 30,000, 

 and they had now fifty-five of these stations in the Greater 

 City of New York run entirely by the city. Their purpose 



