WILBUR C. PHILLIPS 85 



that those who produce this precious commodity upon which the 

 lives of our babies and young- children to such a large degree 

 depend should at least not exploit the poor. The Mills hotels 

 and the model tenements indicate that a new spirit is entering 

 into business the spirit of service replacing the desire for divi- 

 dends, no matter at what cost. Who knows where it may lead? 

 Lastly, the word "relief" brings us to a survey of the whole 

 field. After all has been said and done, infant mortality is a 

 question of poverty ; for with money can be purchased pure milk, 

 medical service, nursing assistance, light, air, sunlight, sanitary 

 surroundings, all that conduce to normal and healthy babyhood. 

 That large numbers of infants die annually from causes which 

 are absolutely preventable and of which the cost can be figured 

 in dollars and cents is horrible. As social workers we must pro- 

 test and we must stand committed to a program which will secure 

 for all persons alike the right to live and be happy without the 

 hypocrisy of alms given, or the degradation of alms received. 



DISCUSSION 



Dr. L. T. Royster, Norfolk: It has been said that character is a 

 combined product of heredity and environment, and that education is 

 a modification of environment. Dr. Jacobi remarked in his address 

 that the infant's health is the combined product of heredity and en- 

 vironment. From no less a source than Professor Ira Remsen we 

 learn that no person is truly educated who is not educated with his 

 hands. Women must be taught to modify their own infant's milk and 

 thereby feel an additional responsibility in the rearing of their own 

 children. I cannot commend that too highly. I carry it put in my 

 own practice and wherever I can teach the mother to modify the in- 

 fant's milk I get better success. They can be taught it and should 

 be taught it. I am not discouraging milk depots; I do not wish to 

 draw invidious comparisons. 



A word along the line of carrying the educational propaganda into 

 the school system. I come before you as a representative of pri- 

 mary school education in our city. We have not carried this line of 

 work into the schools as we should. The system of education has 

 changed markedly in the last five years. Only i per cent, of the chil- 

 dren attending public school ever reach the university. Are we to 

 train this I per cent, of the children alone? Education today is to 

 prepare men and women for the battle of life, and if this is true, 

 what is more important than to prepare the coming mother of a 

 generation hence and, only too frequently, the little mothers of today 

 to take care of those already there and those to come. We cannot 

 do better than to carry this educational effort into the schoolroom, 

 teaching the children to prepare there for the life before them and 

 to prevent the cortege of white hearses reaching from New York 

 to Chicago, as alluded to previously. 



Dr. Baker: I just want to speak very briefly about the Little 

 Mothers' League in New York City. It is a movement that has not 

 been carried on, I think, in any other city in this country, and it has 

 been more or less of an experiment with us, but its results have been 

 so excellent and so far-reaching that I want to call it to your atten- 

 tion. Two years ago we started to deliver lectures to girls in the 



