The most heartrending feature of it all—­in these homes of the mothers who work at night—­is the expression in the faces of the children; children of chance, dressed in rags, undernourished, underclothed, all predisposed to the ravages of chronic and epidemic disease.

The reports on infant mortality published under the direction of the Children’s Bureau substantiate for the United States of America the findings of the Galton Laboratory for Great Britain, showing that an abnormally high rate of fertility is usually associated with poverty, filth, disease, feeblemindedness and a high infant mortality rate.  It is a commonplace truism that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a high infant-mortality rate.  No longer is it necessary to dissociate cause and effect, to try to determine whether the high birth rate is the cause of the high infant mortality rate.  It is sufficient to know that they are organically correlated along with other anti-social factors detrimental to individual, national and racial welfare.  The figures presented by Hibbs (2) likewise reveal a much higher infant mortality rate for the later born children of large families.

The statistics which show that the greatest number of children are born to parents whose earnings are the lowest,(3) that the direst poverty is associated with uncontrolled fecundity emphasize the character of the parenthood we are depending upon to create the race of the future.

A distinguished American opponent of Birth Control some years ago spoke of the “racial” value of this high infant mortality rate among the “unfit.”  He forgot, however, that the survival-rate of the children born of these overworked and fatigued mothers may nevertheless be large enough, aided and abetted by philanthropies and charities, to form the greater part of the population of to-morrow.  As Dr. Karl Pearson has stated:  “Degenerate stocks under present social conditions are not short-lived; they live to have more than the normal size of family.”

Reports of charitable organizations; the famous “one hundred neediest cases” presented every year by the New York Times to arouse the sentimental generosity of its readers; statistics of public and private hospitals, charities and corrections; analyses of pauperism in town and country—­all tell the same tale of uncontrolled and irresponsible fecundity.  The facts, the figures, the appalling truth are there for all to read.  It is only in the remedy proposed, the effective solution, that investigators and students of the problem disagree.

Confronted with the “startling and disgraceful” conditions of affairs indicated by the fact that a quarter of a million babies die every year in the United States before they are one year old, and that no less than 23,000 women die in childbirth, a large number of experts and enthusiasts have placed their hopes in maternity-benefit measures.