CORRESPONDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 142, 15 December 1908, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE.

« IMMIGRATION, BABIES, AND HUMANISED MILK. 10 THE EDITOR. Sir, — I have read with interest your remarks on immigration. I havo also read Dr. Truby King's pamphlet, "Hygeia," notes in The Post, Henry Bodley's letters, and also the column for Ladies, but I can get no enlightenment on the question of getting humanised milk for infants at a satisfactory price. Now, I tako it that if we young married colonials are doing our duty and keeping the cradles full that we are doing a far greater service to the country than importing immigrants at considerable cost, and also more than the full and gallant array of Government dairy inspectors, health inspectors, factory inspectors, etc., etc. Now, the point I want to make is this. Parliament tells us that the birth-rate is going down, and that something ought to be done. Now, this is something. The Government in its wisdom (quite right, too) has established in different parts of the Dominion experimental stations for the benefit of the agricultural community, and in the carrying out of these stations the cow takes an portant place. Now, yon would think, if the Government was sincere, that it would manufacture the milk off of these farms into humanised milk and sell it to benefit the lives of children born in the country ; but what does it do? It competes with the ordinary dairy farmer and sells its milk to a local concern which makes up the milk into pint bottles and sells it for 4d per bottle Now, a baby from birth wants at least 2oz every two hours, and nothing less than two bottles (or 8d per day) will suffice. Could not the Government produce the product direct itself instead of selling through a middleman? It should also put a tax on bachelors, and call it the "milk" tax, if there should be any deficit be- ( tween what it is now getting from the middleman and what it could sell it to the public for. But if there is such a great thing in the declining birth-rate, as the Hon. Dr. Findlay and ths Hon. J. Millar assert, why doesn't it get down to bedrock and do as I suggest — the, Government took off the duty on infants' foods, which certain doctors tell us do the babies more harm than good— and make a good profit off their own milk from Levin. — 1 am, etc., A FATHEE OF THEEF. LITTLE ONES. Wellington, 11th Dec, 1908. j