Better babies and their care

BETTER BABIES AND THEIR CARE
BY ANNA STEESE RICHARDSON NATIONAL CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE, CONGRESS OF MOTHERS AND PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATIONS
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1914, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages SECOND PRINTING
TO THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND BABIES THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND MOTHERS THE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND HELPERS WHO HAVE TAKEN PART IN BETTER BABIES CONTESTS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A MOTHER WHO KNOWS WHAT BETTER BABIES, BETTER MOTHERS, BETTER HELPERS MEAN TO THIS AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
It was in January, 1913, that the Woman’s Home Companion sent Anna Steese Richardson to Denver, Colorado, to report a Baby Health Contest held in connection with the National Western Live Stock Exposition. There she found babies being examined for physical and mental development, and scored for points by standards of weights and measurements very much as live stock is scored at agricultural fairs.
Mrs. Richardson’s journalistic instinct told her that here was a big constructive work, at its very beginning, and that its spectacular possibilities would make attractive “copy” for a magazine. But before she left Denver for New York she had begun to think of something much bigger and more important than what the babies could do for the magazine, and that was what the magazine could do for the cause of better babies.
As a result of this trip, the Woman’s Home Companion adopted as its own special charge the work now known all over the world as the Better Babies campaign. This has quickly become a widespread movement for education in parenthood. Pride of parenthood brings fathers and mothers to the Better Babies Contests. Parental love holds them there to watch their babies examined by physicians and to learn how the condition of their children can be improved by intelligent care and feeding and sanitary environment.
The results are so far-reaching that one hesitates to put them into words, for fear they may seem overstated. After a little more than one year of hard work, the Better Babies Bureau of the Woman’s Home Companion , under the directorship of Anna Steese Richardson, has become a tremendous machine for aiding in the reduction of infant mortality, and for raising physical, mental, and moral standards among children.