Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/27

 foreign matter in the air a suitable respirator should be used, or the offensive particles should be carried off by a current of air produced by a chimney or revolving wheel. Again, mechanical appliances may often take the place of hand-labour, and much may often be accomplished by the application of practical science and chemical knowledge." Thus we see indifference to life resulting from the over-crowding of the labour market, and in the unhealthy conditions among which many kinds of work are carried on we find a widely-spread check to population.

Baby-farming has only too justly been called the "hideous social phenomenon of the nineteenth century." It is the direct result of the pressure of over-large families, and is simply a veiled form of infanticide. Mr. Benson Baker, one of the medical officers of Marylebone, has written a sad notice of baby-farming. He speaks of a notorious case: "One of the stock from that model baby-farm is now under my care. This child, three years old, was employed by the proprietoress as a gaffer, or ganger over the younger babies. His duties were to sit up in the middle of the bed with eight other babies round him, and the moment any one of them awoke to put the bottle to their mouth. He was also to keep them quiet, and generally to superintend them." A vast number of children are slowly murdered annually in this way, and the death-rate is also very high in every place where many infants are kept together, whether it be in workhouse, hospital, or crèche.

Another consequence of large families which must not be overlooked is the physical injury caused to the mothers. Among the poor, cases of prolapsus uteri, or falling of the womb, are only too common; prolapsus uteri results frequently from "getting about" too rapidly after child-birth, it being impossible for the mother of the increasing family to lie by for that period of rest which nature absolutely enjoins. "Women," says Dr. Drysdale, "ought never to get up from confinement for some weeks after the child is born, but these poor women are so utterly unable to do without work that they are compelled to get up in a day or two. The womb being full of blood, falls down and produces infirmity for life." The doctor also says of this disease: "It is extremely common. Indeed, when I was obstetrical assistant at Edinburgh, it was one of the commonest diseases among women—the principal one, in fact." "Prolapsus, or falling of