WHEN THE MOTHERS FAIL 25 



of living." The change is not so much one of form 

 as of quantity and quality. Yet the immigrant 

 woman does not generally cease to be able to nurse 

 her offspring. If she could nurse her babies before 

 cbming to this country, she is usually equally well 

 able to nurse those born after coming here. Where 

 the struggle for a living is keen, or the child born in 

 this country is one of a large family, her milk may be 

 so poor that the children become rachitic," but in 

 general she is as well able to nurse her offspring as 

 before. The fact that she gets better, or at least 

 different, food does not produce the disability to 

 nurse her children which we find in her daughter, 

 who gets substantially the same diet. Again, while 

 there is a great difference between the standards of 

 diet of the well-to-do class and the poor, both classes 

 suffer from the disability to discharge the maternal 

 function of nursing. 



Surprisingly little is known concerning the relation 

 of food to lactation. We do not know by what 

 physiological processes the constituents of food are 

 transformed into milk constituents, either among 

 human beings or the lower animals. Experiments 

 conducted by Professor Jordan, at the New York 

 State Experiment Station, showed the surprising 

 result that the quality of a cow's milk was not in- 

 fluenced by the quality of the cow's food. When 

 cows were fed upon poor food, deficient in fat con- 



