REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 195 



SO far as I have observed or been able to ascertain. 

 Anything more incompetent than the management 

 of some of them it would b6 impossible to imagine, 

 and I seriously question the value of the work some 

 of them are doing. 



Elsewhere* I have called attention to the fact that 

 there is no efficient supervision of the distribution in 

 connection with some of these charities. I observed 

 in Yonkers that the modified milk mixture was sold 

 in drug stores to whoever applied for it. There was 

 no registration of the children receiving it, some 

 babies receiving it more or less regularly, others only 

 occasionally. Little children, often not more than 

 seven or eight years old, sent to the drug stores for 

 "modified milk," got whatever the person serving 

 them thought fit to give them. There was nothing to 

 prevent a three-months-old baby getting a mixture 

 intended for a year-old baby, or vice versa, and, of 

 course, no medical supervision of the babies or sys- 

 tem of advising the mothers. Inquiry showed that 

 these conditions were not exceptional ; that they were, 

 on the contrary, pretty general. Even in the work 

 of the Straus depots, as Mr. Straus perfectly realizes, 

 there is lack of efficient supervision of the distribution 

 and of a proper medical system of examining and 

 watching the progress of the infants. And where the 



* In The Bitter Gry 6f the Children, pp. 237-238. 



