238 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



And, whatever we may or may not do to the mothers, 

 the question of providing for the children must be 

 faced. Are we to join the mothers in a conspiracy 

 against the children, or are we to protect the interests 

 of the child when the mother fails ? 



And what of the working mother, who, even though 

 physically able to nurse her baby, cannot because she 

 must work away from home ? The Austrian peasant 

 woman who left her own baby to take its chances 

 upon a diet of "horrible pap" and went out to act 

 as wet-nurse for the child of a wealthy woman" 

 had no objection to nursing babies, apparently. It 

 is fair to assume that she would rather have nursed 

 her own baby. The women of Finland who suspended 

 horns filled with sour milk over their babies' cradles 

 and let them take their chances, might have nursed 

 their babies but for the fact that they had to work 

 in the fields and woods, or starve.^' So, too, with the 

 factory worker and the charwoman. Are we pre- 

 pared to subsidize breast-feeding, to make mother- 

 hood an occupation under the control of the State? 

 And if not, if we are not prepared to do something 

 like this, to do upon a big scale what Cologne and a 

 few other European cities do on a small scale, what is 

 to be done for the children? Finally, what of the 

 children whose mothers cannot nurse them because 

 of physical reasons? No matter whether the cause 

 of their inability to nurse their yoimg is the accumu- 



