IV
There are doubtless many persons, lay and medical, who will think that the foregoing figures exaggerate the evil. But I would remind them that I have only ascribed 30 per cent of the infantile death-rate to “socially preventable causes,” and only 85 per cent of that number to poverty in the broadest sense of that word.[[C]] I have purposely set my estimate much lower than I am convinced it should be. All the facts point irresistibly to the conclusion that even 50 per cent would be a conservative estimate.
In connection with the New York Foundling Asylum on Randall’s Island, it was decided some few years ago to introduce the Straus system of Pasteurizing the milk given to the babies. The year before the system was introduced there were 1181 babies in the asylum, of which number 524, or 44.36 per cent, died. In the year following, during which the system was in operation, the number of children was 1284 and the number of deaths only 255, or 19.80 per cent. In other words, there were 8.03 per cent more children and 48.66 per cent fewer deaths.[[18]]
Even more important is the testimony furnished by the Municipal “Clean Milk” depots of Rochester, New York. Some years ago the Health Officer, Dr. George W. Goler, called the attention of the city authorities to the high infantile mortality occurring over a period of several years during the months of July and August. After thorough investigation it was fairly established that impure milk was one very important reason for this high death-rate among children under five years of age. Accordingly the Pasteurization system was introduced. Depots were opened in the poorest parts of the city and placed in charge of trained nurses. After three years it was decided that instead of Pasteurizing the milk obtained from all sorts of places, with all its contained bacteria and dirt, a central depot on a farm should be established and all energies should be devoted to the insuring of a pure, clean, and wholesome supply by keeping dirt and germs out of the milk and sterilizing all bottles and utensils. Strict control is also exercised in this way over the farmer with whom the contract for supplying the milk is made.
CITY OF ROCHESTER, N.Y. Deaths in Children Under 5 Years of Age 1892 Began Efficient Milk Inspection. 1897 Municipal Milk Stations Established. 1900 Established A Municipal Standard of 100000 Bacteria per c.c.
Some idea of the important effects of this scientific attention by the Board of Health to the staple diet of the vast majority of children may be gathered from the following figures, which do not, however, tell the whole story. In the months of July and August during the eight years, 1889–1896, prior to the establishment of the Municipal Milk Stations, there were 1744 deaths under five years of age from all causes; in the same months during eight following years, 1897–1904, there were only 864 deaths under five years of age from all causes, a decrease of 50.46 per cent, despite a progressive increase of population.[[19]] It can hardly be questioned, I think, that these figures suggest that my estimate is altogether conservative.
The yearly loss of these priceless baby lives does not, however, represent the full measure of the awful cost of the poverty which surrounds the cradle. It is not only that 75,000 or 80,000 die, but that as many more of those who survive are irreparably weakened and injured. Not graves alone but hospitals and prisons are filled with the victims of childhood poverty. They who survive go to school, but are weak, nervous, dull, and backward in their studies. Discouraged, they become morose and defiant, and soon find their way into the “reformatories,” for truancy or other juvenile delinquencies. Later they fill the prisons, for the ranks of the vagrant and the criminal are recruited from the truant and juvenile offender. Or if happily they do not become vicious, they fail in the struggle for existence, the relentless competition of the crowded labor mart, and sink into the abysmal depths of pauperism. Weakened and impaired by the privations of their early years, they cannot resist the attacks of disease, and constant sickness brings them to the lowest level of that condition which the French call la misère.