BRITAIN AND HER CHILDREN.

Evening Star, Issue 12882, 3 August 1906, Page 12

BRITAIN AND HER CHILDREN.

A book entitled * Infant Mortality, a Social,. Problem/ by, Dr Newman, medical 'officer. of health, for, the of Finspurj: (London), was reviewed by Mr L. G. Chiozza-Money,. M.P., in the' following terms:—- .- h- . -.,.•"... . ~. °

Our birth-rate is-falling. If it were the same .to-day as it was" fifty years ago 60,000 more'births would now bo recorded, every yeSr v ; The death-rate, it is true, has also declined,.the saving of life being'so, great; that there are four deaths pec thousand* le*s than.; half a ; century ago, but the infantile death-rate ; has not declined." Infant*— babies under one year of: off—it Would be moire correct to say are killed oflPX^idly. as •' wa§:' the case'. seventy years ago:. -Qne-fourtli of. the total deaths every X, e ftF T i™ ? f cbildreh under twelve months. The United Kingdom haa an infantile death rate.; 0f,138 pet 1,000,/ which :means. that of eacht; 1.000. children born 138 die before reaching the age of One year. The.nation is ' Suffering a "dead loss every year of:hot" less-than 120,000" children who perish., in infancy. Such'are the; dreadful "'facts which Dr. Newman impresses upon is hi bis opening chapter. . .V

Infants 6tiH_die every year.r much as they did in former times.* Indeed, in many cases, it appears.that they die in greater numbers and more readily than in the past. But' a nation grows out of its children; arid if its children' die in thousands in infancy, ; it means that the sources of a nation's population arc being sapped, and further, that the conditions which kill such a large proportion of infants injure many of those which survive.

' If such conditions continue the physical mo of the nation is jeopardised." It may be added,, since the problem is not confined to these shores, that white men are seriously jeopardising their position in a world m which t&ey are already in a small minority.

Broadly, the problem is one of povertypoverty of wage, poverty of environment, poverty of the means of life. We must recognise that we have established conditions that inevitably lead to a high rate of infant mortality. Dr Newman sees plainly that the eras of the whole matter is motherhood: We have made it impo sible for hundreds of thousands of women to mother their children. The children therefore die, and with them the race dies, : the British-tradition dies,-this-pitiful best in the best world that we know dies. Before-I come to Dr Newman's important chapter on the occupations of women, let me deal with his valuable notes on ante-natal influences. That the conditions of life and dietary.of the mother during pregnancy have a profound -influence on the welfare of the offspringvk clear. It would appear that when a wpman "feeds two "it "is the woman, not the.child, who first, profits by. nourishment. If, therefore, a woman lives on :a low scale: of diet, the child begjns-life at. a low level, with'little strength to resist, the-trials to. which it is subjected to such an enormous number of cases. It is unfortunately as true to-day as it, was when Sir John Simon wrote the words in 1858 that "infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement which their mothers' occupation implies." Nearly fifty years ago it was plainly shown "that in proportion as adult women were taking part in factory labor or in agriculture the mortality of their infants rapidly increased." The thing was pointed out in clear terms,, but few.gave heed. To-day we have some four million women .working .for hire, more, and not less in proportion to population than was the case fifty years ago. Our labor law scarcely recognises that women become mothers, and in so far as.it recognises the physiological fact, ,it is. a dead letter. Dr. Newman sets out the mournful records of infant mortality in the textile, towns, where many married women live the factory life. Burnley and Preston, .have an infant death-rate of 208 per. thousand, .Blackburn of: 183, Nottingham of ISO, Lancaster of 175, Oldham oM7O, Bolton of 166, and Bury of 164. In these places the percentage of .women occupied between the ages of fifteen, to. thirty-five is about 90 per cent. There is the moist intimate connection, as might,be expected, between the occupation of married women and a high infant morr tality., The statistics of non-textile towns bear out thi* conclusion. What other results are to be expected, given the conditions obtaining in these places? The mothers often work until literally the eleventh hour,'. When, the unlucky child is born, it. is put out to be minded" by some unskilful old woman, and to be fed on everv Bort.of food but the right one. So that the price of our textiles js so much hard -cash plus so many infante' lives to each ten thousand-yards, of cloth. It is not the me; e fact of a woman working in-a factory which injures her health or that of her offspring. It is the neglect of homeland of mothering which is involved. But in many trades, the occupation itself is murderous. _ Women act,as beast" of burden in brickmaking, tin-plate works, some of the hardware trades, jam and sauce factories, etc They have frequently to lift weights out of all proportion to their strength. From the-factory., reports-we get such cases as these:-—Girls carry 721b of bricks resr ing on a pad strapped on the hips; wheeling barrows eoutaning 40 bricks, weighing 91b each; employed solely as .clay carriers, each making 128 joinings a day, and. at each joining bearing half a hundredweight; carrying pan bo ling jam weighing about one hundredweight. In the case of Dundee, where mothers who have had a dozen children and lost them all are often met with, what of the children who.survive? Says the factory inspector:. " I have frequently conversed with full-grown men of 20 years and upwards who do not stand more than sft or sft lin in height, and who scale less than 9 stone. These men have not the physical strength for-manual labor, but must accept unskilled laborers' wages all their lives." Dundee, in fact, is full of degenerates; they are the price of industry - carried on under conditions imperfectly controlled, in which men are allowed to use other men for the degradation of the nation at large.