Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/486

482 It is noteworthy that the percentage nursed is slightly higher for the richest class than for class III., which corresponds to our middle class. Indeed poverty prevents a great many women from nursing successfully. It does this in two ways: (1) By depriving them of sufficient and suitable food, rest and general care, which causes their milk to fail in both quality and amount; (2) by forcing them to go out to work and give over their infants to foster mothers and cease entirely to nurse them. No doubt, however, many mothers are directly induced by poverty to nurse, because it seems to be the cheapest way. Indeed authors vary greatly in the importance they attribute to these two factors in preventing women from nursing. Dr. Spaether, for example, found that among the poor women visiting his clinic in Munich the necessity to earn money was the cause of not nursing in 20 per cent, of the married women and 52 per cent of the unmarried, while in 15 per cent, and 60 per cent., respectively, it was the cause of premature weaning. Dr. Keller found that, among 1,300 poor mothers in Vienna in 1908, two hundred and seventy-eight had not nursed at all; and, of these, 94 declared it was because they had to go out to work. Investigation revealed the fact, however, that sixty of them had received maternity insurance for four weeks, and hence were not really prevented by poverty from nursing during this period, at least. Their excuse was that it did not seem worth while to them to nurse an infant for such a short time, after which they must wean it, and have much distress in doing so.

What is the statistical effect of the employment of women in factories upon infant mortality? Dr. G. Newman in his excellent book on "Infant Mortality" shows that the death rate in England is higher in the manufacturing towns than elsewhere, and is highest in those places where the highest percentage of women of child-bearing age are employed in factories. Thus the average infant mortality for 1896 to 1905 among eight "textile towns," where on the average 43 per cent, of married women below the age of 35 were employed, was 182 per thousand; whereas the average rate among eight "non-textile" towns, where only 3.1 per cent, of this class of women were employed, was 150, that is, over one sixth less. The average infant death rate for all England then was 152. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the employment of mothers in factories in nearly all cases robs the infants of their mothers' milk and mothers' care, which results in their being improperly fed and often badly neglected, so that they either die or survive as the degenerate population, of which these mill-towns largely consist. This deplorable state of things, this persistent crime against humanity, is a necessary result of our heartless economic system, which gives these infants' fathers such a small proportion of the wealth they produce, that their mothers are forced to tear themselves away from their