482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



It is noteworthy that the percentage nursed is slightly higher for 

 the richest class than for class III., which corresponds to our middle 

 class. Indeed poverty prevents a great many women from nursing 

 successfully. It does this in two ways: (1) By depriving them of suf- 

 ficient and suitable food, rest and general care, which causes their milk 

 to fail in both quality and amount; (2) by forcing them to go out to 

 work and give over their infants to foster mothers and cease entirely 

 to nurse them. No doubt, however, many mothers are directly induced 

 by poverty to nurse, because it seems to be the cheapest way. Indeed 

 authors vary greatly in the importance they attribute to these two fac- 

 tors in preventing women from nursing. Dr. Spaether, for example, 

 found that among the poor women visiting his clinic in Munich the 

 necessity to earn money was the cause of not nursing in 20 per cent, of 

 the married women and 52 per cent of the unmarried, while in 15 per 

 cent, and 60 per cent., respectively, it was the cause of premature wean- 

 ing. Dr. Keller found that, among 1,300 poor mothers in A^ienna in 

 1908, two hundred and seventy-eight had not nursed at all; and, of 

 these, 94 declared it was because they had to go out to work. Investi- 

 gation revealed the fact, however, that sixty of them had received 

 maternity insurance for four weeks, and hence were not really pre- 

 vented by poverty from nursing during this period, at least. Their 

 excuse was that it did not seem worth while to them to nurse an infant 

 for such a short time, after which they must wean it, and have much 

 distress in doing so. 



What is the statistical effect of the employment of women in factories 

 upon infant mortality? Dr. G-. Newman in his excellent book on 

 "Infant Mortality" shows that the death rate in England is higher 

 in the manufacturing towns than elsewhere, and is highest in those 

 places where the highest percentage of women of child-bearing age are 

 employed in factories. Thus the average infant mortality for 1896 to 

 1905 among eight "textile towns," where on the average 43 per cent, of 

 married women below the age of 35 were employed, was 182 per thou- 

 sand ; whereas the average rate among eight " non-textile " towns, where 

 only 3.1 per cent, of this class of women were employed, was 150, that 

 is, over one sixth less. The average infant death rate for all England 

 then was 152. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the employment 

 of mothers in factories in nearly all cases robs the infants of their 

 mothers' milk and mothers' care, which results in their being improp- 

 erly fed and often badly neglected, so that they either die or survive as 

 the degenerate population, of which these mill-towns largely consist. 

 This deplorable state of things, this persistent crime against humanity, 

 is a necessary result of our heartless economic system, which gives these 

 infants' fathers such a small proportion of the wealth they produce, 

 that their mothers are forced to tear themselves away from their babes- 



