THE BABY FORTUNE OF FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 273, 11 August 1908, Page 5

THE BABY FORTUNE OF FRANCE

All the natrons of Christendom are waking to the fact that they must, look after 1 their child life if they wish to preserve their national existence, but nowhere else is this so keenly felt as in France, where it is reckoned that over 150,000 babies dio needlessly'each year. The most strenuous efforts aro now being made to check this enormous infant mortality, and some of them aro most ingenious. It is long since England ceased to encourage the indiscriminating reception of infants by Foundling Hospitals, but in Paris' to-day there -is a place where babies are constsmtly received, and no questions asked. In every ward in Paris, says a London paper, the Assistance Publique has a strange and sacred hole in tho wall, a kind of low window without glass which ends in a closed wooden box, into which tho wretched mother puts the baby. Then she pulls what looks liko a bell-rope. Tho box shifts to one side, and'the baby disappears, and an empty box takes • the placo space, and all that is left is another waiting boxspaco the size of a baby. But insido tho building tho baby lias been received by an attendant, and lie is already in tho hands of trained nurses, by whom ho will bo well cared for.

A description is given of a visit to 1 a great Paris sliirt factory where, among tho applicants for work, spccial preference is given to tho mothers of babies. They take their babies with them to tho factory, there aro three sunny nurseries prepared for theso precious infants. A capablo doctor is employed by tho year to spend half his timo in that nursery. Then nurse-maids managed to' do all tho work, including overy baby's daily bath, with the help of tho mothers, who havotho right to slip in four times a day, ten minutes each, in order, and thirty minutes apart from tho visit of the lunch hour aro not deducted from their pay. Tho factory provides sterilised, non-tuber-culous milk ad libitum when thoir mothers, cannot feed them, all their baby clothing, baths, hygienic surroundings, warmth, safety, pure air, tho only, things a baby

needs. This shirt factory is by 110 means iilono among its-kind to go great lengths in the favouring of yoiuijj mothers. Thero aro no statistics. It is all private effort, and it may be looked upon as cnligtliened selfishness. 1 Tho movement seems to bo rapidly extending from a mixturo of motives—in which dread of French depopulation and a growing, senso of civic justice liavo a largo place. French law already permits subsidies to bo granted to communes for distribution to poor families counting more than four children; but when M. Piot gets his Anti-

depopulation Bill through, it will not be five children, but 0110 singlo littlo baby that

ivill _ entitle its mother to draw subsistence For it from the child-needing French State!