68 INFANT WELFARE) WORK 



First The relation of the baby to the housing question. 



Second The general problem of poverty. 



Third To preventable disease. 



Fourth The midwife and birth registration. 



Fifth The milk question. 



Sixth Loan sharks and expensive funerals. 



We could go on, but this I think will illustrate my point. 



First Let us discuss the baby's relation to the unsuitable 

 house. The average number of rooms occupied by all the fam- 

 ilies dealt with by the United Charities last year is about 

 three and one-half. The average number of people to the 

 family about four and three-eighths. This overcrowding is 

 one very serious handicap to the baby entirely regardless of all 

 the consequences that come with the general problem of living 

 in three rooms. It indicates a low income and a very narrow 

 margin, if any margin at all. In the rearing of animals and birds 

 great care is taken to provide suitable quarters for the care of 

 the mother and young. There is taken into careful account right 

 conditions of space, of light, air, warmth and food. Our gov- 

 ernment is spending a great deal of time and a great deal of 

 money in promulgating right information in these lines, even 

 as to the selection and care of the proper kind of seeds that go 

 to raising plants and grain. It sends experts out in special trains. 

 They hold meetings. They invite the farmers and breeders. 

 They distribute literature. They hold personal conversations. 

 The information that is given is scientific and correct, and can 

 be followed with safety. They do not expect right results unless 

 there are not only right conditions and care, but they even make 

 selection of what the stock itself shall be. So the baby, born in 

 the three-room home has not only this handicap resulting from 

 overcrowding, but usually many other handicaps added thereto. 

 There is not only an absence of the scientific aids that are avail- 

 able for rearing animals and plants, but the kind of instruction 

 that the mother gets is largely from patent medicine advertise- 

 ments and quack doctors, inducements to use this or that kind 

 of drug or food advice and recommendations which are usually 

 absolutely wrong and detrimental to the child. This greatest, 

 most important and most delicate task in the world is the one 

 thing for which there is least or no preparation. 



Second Poverty and the baby. The general social movement 

 concerns itself with efforts at amelioration or prevention of pov- 

 erty itself. No member of the family or community is so vitally 

 affected by all of this as the baby. He is affected before he is 

 born and after he is born. The mother is denied a chance to 

 feed and nurture the child according to his needs because of the 

 limitations placed upon her through the exigency of need. The 



