18% INFANT MORTALITY'S URGENT CALL FOR ACTION 



is that a similar tabulation of deaths from these causes in certain 

 large manufacturing- cities for a long series of years which I 

 prepared some years ago showed an almost unbroken increase 

 from year to year in each of those cities. As to this phase of 

 the subject, the statistician's work properly ends when he has 

 tabulated, and presented in effective form, the actual figures; 

 the discussion of the reasons for the fact, and the significance 

 of it, does not come within his province, and that branch of the 

 subject of infant mortality belongs to, and should be left with, 

 you gentlemen of the medical profession. 



In the preparation and presentation of this paper, I have tried 

 to keep clearly in mind the purpose expressed in its title, or, in 

 other words, to demonstrate by indisputable statistics an infant 

 mortality rate of at least 13 deaths under age 1 for every 100 

 living births, the world around, and the existence of appalling 

 causative conditions of such a nature as urgently to call for 

 carefully planned, and steadfastly executed, remedial work not 

 only on the part of this Association, but of all thinking men and 

 women in this country. The same conditions which cause the 

 death of 13 out of every 100 babies born throughout the civilized 

 world, on the broadest of averages, leave more or less per- 

 manent stamps on perhaps two or three times as many mor 

 babies who somehow manage to crawl over the infant dead line, 

 many of whom will be the fathers and mothers of the next 

 generation. The problem of infant mortality, therefore, is far 

 more than one as to means of decreasing the number of infant 

 deaths. Its scope is world-wide, and on its partial solution at 

 least depends the welfare of posterity. The call for action on 

 such a problem may fairly be termed urgent. 



