298 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



East Side mothers to establish a social settlement for 

 the wealthy mothers of Central Park West. Maternal 

 ignorance is fairly well distributed among the classes, 

 but the wealthy few can, and do as a rule, engage 

 trained and competent nurses. If we leave this class 

 out of question, their children being provided for, it 

 will be found that education is the great need for the 

 mothers of the rest of the community. 



Everywhere there is ignorance of the most ele- 

 mentary principles of infant care and feeding. Among 

 the poorest of our immigrants, accentuated by poverty 

 and squalor, ignorance shows itself more, but there is 

 an appalling amount of ignorance among mothers 

 higher in the social scale. Many of the underfed 

 children in our schools come from homes where there 

 is no poverty, except poverty of intelligence on the 

 part of the mothers, and some of the worst instances 

 of maternal ignorance I have ever heard of have been 

 among the fairly well-to-do. 



Can anything be done to educate the mothers? 

 To that question I unhesitatingly give an affirmative 

 reply. I think we begin too late when we begin with 

 the mother, that we ought to have begun with the girl 

 long before she became a mother; but it is possible 

 to do a great deal in the way of educating mothers, 

 a work in which public authorities and voluntary 

 agencies can imite. In Australia, for example, as 

 soon as a baby is born the health authorities are 



