The question of maternal care for children after they are weaned is more difficult to settle, but notwithstanding certain statistics gathered in Birmingham,[42] in February, 1910, which showed that the infant mortality among working mothers was one hundred and ninety per thousand, while, among those not industrially employed, it was two hundred and seventy per thousand, it seems sure that infant mortality is extremely high in foundling asylums and in factory homes.  In Fall River, where out of every one hundred women, forty-five are at work outside the home, three hundred and five babies, out of every one thousand born, die before they are a year old; while even in New York City, but one hundred and eighty-nine out of a thousand die.  The natural location of Fall River should make it a very healthy city.  One remembers, too, the classic statement that deaths among little children fell off steadily in Paris during the siege of 1870.  Little children seem better off even in time of war, with the mothers at home, than in time of peace with their mothers in the factory.

[42] Pamphlet entitled Report on Industrial Employment of Married Women and Infant Mortality, signed by Dr. JOHN ROBERTSON, the Medical Officer of Health, Birmingham.

A few years ago, we turned to sanitary day nurseries, and to pasteurized milk and other prepared baby foods, as the solution for neglected or unhygienic feeding.  To-day we know that even a dirty and ill-conditioned mother secretes better milk for her baby than can be prepared in any laboratory.  We must wash the mother and feed her the milk, and then let her give it to her baby, instinct with her own life.  It is quite possible that our recent talk of ignorant mother love and of the necessary substitution of sanitary nurseries, canned care and pre-digested affection must all go the same way.  We shall probably get our best results by cleaning up the home, enlightening the mother, and then letting her love her child into the full possession of its human qualities.

Economically, too, at least with factory workers, it is questionable if their wages will support sanitary day-nurseries, with intelligent nurses for small groups of children, and at the same time pay some one to cook and scrub at home.  If the mother must still cook and care for her house, in addition to her factory work, the burden is too great; and if money for nurses must come from the state, or from charity, then we all know the danger of such subsidies to industry, in its effect on wages.

Surely the ideal toward which we must work is for the mother, during the period when she is bearing and rearing children, to be supported by the father of her children.  Let her do the work meantime which will best care for her children, and at the same time conserve and strengthen her powers for the third period of her life.