Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/198

194 Although only 47 per 1,000 died of the babies breast-fed at least three months, as against 166 per 1,000 of the artificially fed, even this advantage was outweighed by the terrible handicap of poverty, as will be at once recognized when we recall that about three times as many of the poorer mothers nurse their babies as of the well-to-do. The death rate among the illegitimate was about twice that of the legitimate, a difference generally recognized as due to almost universal abandonment of such children by the father, and frequent abandonment or neglect by the helpless girl-mother.

The disease directly causing most deaths was found to be bowel trouble or enteritis (usually caused by improper feeding, especially in summer), closely followed by the respiratory diseases (most fatal in winter), and prematurity or congenital weakness, causing death usually within a few days. About 5 per 1,000 were stillborn.

To sum up, although a certain amount of treatment of symptoms may be necessary or desirable, we should bear steadily in mind that whatever tends to modify social inequalities and to give to labor a fair share in the products of labor will do most to save the lives of three hundred thousand babies, yearly offered up in America an innocent sacrifice to the Moloch of selfish greed. And since the whole social body must suffer with the least of its members, is not the idol as short-sighted as he is hideous?