70 INFANT WELFARE) WORK 



be paid to get it. They go on paying taxes for expense of police, 

 criminal prosecutions, or caring for permanent dependents, but 

 it is usually difficult for the Health Department to get an appro- 

 priation large enough to provide inspectors to cover the farms 

 and dairies, the milk depots and wagons, the care of cans and 

 bottles. Occasionally a burst of interest and attention is mani- 

 fested if an epidemic of typhoid fever, diphtheria or scarlet fever 

 breaks out which can be traced to the milk supply, but the fact 

 that thousands of babies like the little one we have cited suffer 

 and die because they are obliged to take milk that has from 

 500,000 to 25,000,000 bacteria to the cubic centimeter makes 

 no particular impression on any one. Again, the baby offers the 

 very best index to the question of the milk supply, and the milk 

 supply is not right until it gives the baby a show. 



The final chapter in this history was the baby's funeral and 

 the introduction of the mother to the office of the loan shark. 

 His was a pathetic little life journey, but it is duplicated thou- 

 sands of times in the cities in this country every year. This 

 final chapter in the child's career further impoverished the 

 family and made the struggle for the rest of them so much harder. 



To be sure, this was only one avenue of introduction of poor 

 people to the loan shark, but it is one and suggests anew the 

 need of some regulation. Illinois tried to get such a law last 

 year, but the legislature that year was not specially interested 

 in babies or the victims of loan shark evils and the law failed to 

 pass. 



The Infant Welfare campaign in Chicago last summer was 

 carried on in a larger way than the year before. The machinery 

 worked much better since the large number of interested societies 

 had learned how to co-operate to better advantage. 



The central point of the campaign was the baby register in 

 the United Charities Office, with Dr. Caroline Hedger as director. 

 Here was gathered from every source possible the names of all 

 babies born during the summer and for some months back 

 35,000 babies represented in the big card index that covered a 

 large table. 



A corps of Health Department nurses covered the high death 

 wards. Literature on the summer care of babies in nine different 

 languages, so that each family might profit by it, was distributed, 

 and thus every mother had placed in her hands the simplest and 

 most helpful instructions that experienced medical talent could 

 devise. In homes where the babies were ill and there were 

 5,000 such babies especial care was taken to do the effective 

 thing for the baby. He was either referred back to his own 

 physician (this was always done if there was a family physician) 

 or he was made the object of special care of some responsible 



