IV
The foregoing proposals relate only to the conditions surrounding the child at birth, but it is equally the duty of society to safeguard the whole period of childhood. In its own interest, no less than in the interest of the child, the state should protect every child from all that menaces its life and well-being. Before the British Interdepartmental Committee many witnesses, some of them factory surgeons of long experience, testified to the harm resulting from the employment of mothers and the leaving of infants in the care of children or old persons utterly incompetent to care for them. It was proposed that the employment of married women in factories should be forbidden, except in cases where there are children “absolutely dependent on their wages.” In all such cases “the municipality must make provision for the care of the child while the mother is at work.”[[159]] As a minimum, this is a good and practicable proposal, though it falls far short of the ideal. Much more commendable for its humane good sense is the method adopted in some of the Socialist municipalities of France. In the case of widows and others with children absolutely dependent upon their earnings, these municipalities pay the mothers a weekly or monthly pension, thus enabling them to stay at home with their children.[[160]] With characteristic good sense and courage, Mr. Homer Folks has proposed a similar system of pensions to widows and others dependent upon the wages of children, on the principle that the poverty of its parents ought not to be allowed to despoil a child’s life and rob it of opportunities of healthful physical and mental development.[[161]] That is a perfectly sound principle, it seems to me, which applies with equal force to the working mother; for it is surely just as important to insist that poverty shall not be allowed to rob the child of its mother’s care.
A GROUP OF WORKING MOTHERS
Photograph taken in the yard of a Day Nursery, where the babies are left during their mothers’
absence at work.
Wherever possible, then, I believe that the effort of society should be to keep the mother in the home with her children, and where pensions are necessary in order that this result may be attained, they should be given, not as a charity, but as a right. It would be a very good investment for society, much more profitable than many things upon which immense sums are lavished year by year. In the meantime, much good might be accomplished by the establishment of municipal crèches or day nurseries in all our industrial centres, so that babies and young children could be properly cared for during the absence of their mothers at work. Something is already being done in this direction by private philanthropy in many cities, but it is exceedingly little when compared with the magnitude of the need. In saying that these institutions should be provided by the municipality, or by the state, I do not mean that any attempt should be made to prohibit private philanthropic effort in this direction, nor that such effort should be in any way lessened; but that the municipality or the state should accept final responsibility in the matter, and provide them wherever the failure of philanthropy makes such a course necessary. In all our great cities, as well as in many of the smaller manufacturing towns, there should be such a crèche or nursery in the neighborhood of almost every primary school, until it is found possible to enable the mothers to remain with their little ones instead of going to work. With trained nurses in charge of such institutions, it would be easy to control the dietary of the infants and to see that they were not given pickles, candy, or other unwholesome things. Yet such a system, no matter how perfected, can only be regarded as a makeshift, a rather uneconomical substitute for the humane system of keeping the mother with her child.
The heavy death-rate in most foundling hospitals, despite all scientific care and the most elaborate equipment, have been accounted for by the lack of maternal interest and affection. In the splendidly appointed Infants’ Hospital on Randall’s Island New York City, little lonely, mother-sick foundlings pined away at an alarming rate and died like flies until the Joint Committee of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the State Charity Aid Association, investigated the matter. The Joint Committee wisely decided that every one of the bits of human driftwood was entitled to one pair of mother’s arms, and that no institutional ingenuity could ever take the place of the maternal instinct. They instituted a system of placing-out the children with foster mothers, and the results have been highly gratifying.[[162]] That is the human way, answering to the universal child-instinct for a mother’s love and presence. The same objection applies to crèches as to foundling hospitals; the difference is only one of degree. These institutions are far better for the children than the neglect or the ignorant handling of “little mothers” from which they now suffer, but they can never compare in efficiency with the personal attention of the mother. There are few mothers, be they ever so ignorant, who would not attend their own children with greater efficiency than any institution nurses could do. In the ultimate result I am convinced that the pensioning of mothers to care for their children adopted by the French municipalities where the Socialists have obtained control is much more economical and effective.