VIII
As a contributory cause of excessive mortality and sickness among young children, the employment of mothers away from their homes is even more important. There is no longer any serious dispute upon that point, though twenty-five years ago it was the subject of a good deal of vigorous controversy on both sides of the Atlantic.[[28]] Professor Jevons thoroughly established his claim that the employment of mothers and the ensuing neglect of their infants is a serious cause of infantile mortality and disease. So important did he consider the question to be that he strenuously advocated the enactment of legislation forbidding the employment of mothers until their youngest children were at least three years old.[[29]] When one who is familiar with the facts considers all that the employment of mothers involves, it is difficult to imagine how its evil effects upon the children could ever have been questioned. In too many cases the toil continues through the most critical periods of pregnancy; the infants are weaned early in order that the mother may return to her employment, and placed in charge of some other person—often a mere child, inexperienced and ignorant. These “little mothers” have been much praised and idealized until we have become prone to forget that their very existence is a great social menace and crime. It is true that many of them show a wonderful amount of courage and precocity in dealing with the babies intrusted to their care. But in praising these qualities we must not forget that they are still children, necessarily unfitted for the responsibilities thus placed upon them. Moreover, they themselves are the victims of a great social crime when their childhood is taken away and the cares of life which belong to grown men and women are thrust upon them.
BABIES OF A NEW YORK DAY NURSERY
The mothers of all these babies work away from their homes.
In a personal letter to the writer, Mr. Roscoe Doble, Clerk to the Health Board of Lawrence, Massachusetts, says: “Relative to the high infantile mortality, I can only say that ignorance in the preparation of food, illy ventilated tenements, and, in many cases, unavoidable neglect occasioned by the mothers being obliged to work away from the homes, often leaving their babies in the care of other children, seem to be the prime factors in the high mortality among children.” Similar testimony has been given by physicians and nurses wherever I have made inquiries, indicating a general consensus of opinion among experts upon the subject. A striking instance of the ignorance of these little girls to whom infants are intrusted was observed in Hamilton Fish Park when one of them gave a baby, apparently not more than four or five months old, soda water, banana, ice cream, and chewed cracker—all inside of twenty minutes.
In several factory towns I made careful investigations of the home conditions of a number of families where the mothers were employed away from their homes, noting particularly the rates of infantile mortality among them. The following typical schedule relates to five cases noted in the course of a single day in one of the small towns of New York:—
Schedule
| Name | Age | Average Weekly Earnings | Husband’s Work, Wages, etc. | Total number of Children Born | No. of Children having Died | No. of Children now Alive | Nationality of the Parents | Age of Youngest Child | How Children are cared for while Mother Works | General Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mrs. M. | 43 | $7.00 | Mill laborer. Wages $9.00 week but is often sick. Drinks heavily. | 5 | 5 | Mother, Irish; Father, Scotch. | All five died under 18 months of age; three of them under 6 months. All the children were cared for by other children while mother worked. Three died of convulsions, two of diarrhœa. | |||
| Mrs. K. | 38 | $6.50 | Laborer. Often unemployed. Average wage the year round not more than $7.00 a week. | 7 | 5 | 2 | Mother, Irish American; Father, Swede. | 10 months. | By girl, aged 9 years. | All five that died were under 12 months of age. Two of them died of convulsions, one of acute gastritis, two of measles. The baby is a puny little thing. |
| Mrs. C. | 34 | $7.00 | Deserted wife. | 6 | 4 | 2 | Mother, German; Father, Austrian. | 18 months. | By oldest girl, aged 9 years. | One child was scalded to death while mother was at work; one died of convulsions and two of bronchitis. |
| Mrs. S. | 29 | $6.00 | Sick two years and unable to work. Was a laborer formerly. | 6 | 3 | 3 | Mother English; Father, American. | 2 years. | By father and girl of 7 years. | The first two children and the last born are alive; the third, fourth, and fifth are dead, each of them dying within the first year. Mother says they were poor, puny babies. Causes Of death: Debility, 2; convulsions, 1. |
| Mrs. H. | 41 | $6.00 | Dead 6 months. Was a laborer, often sick and unemployed. Widow does not think he earned $6.00 a week the year round. | 8 | 5 | 3 | Mother, American; Father (deceased), French-Canadian. | 20 months. | By oldest girl, 11 years old. | The first two and the eighth born are alive; the five intervening are dead. Four of these died within the first year. Causes of death: Debility, 2; intestinal dyspepsia, 2; bronchitis, 1. |
It will be observed that out of a total of 32 children born only 10 were alive at the time of the inquiry, and that of the number dead no less than 18 were under one year of age, the cause of death in most cases being associated with neglect and defective diet. Of the ten children surviving, six were decidedly weak, and the mothers said that they were “generally sick” and that somehow it seemed as if they “took” every sort of disease, a well-known condition of the undernourished child.
In the same town the case of a poor Hungarian mother was brought to my attention by one perfectly familiar with all the details, a witness of unassailable veracity. This poor Hungarian child-wife and mother was barely fifteen when her baby was born, but she had been working fully three years in the mill. When the child was born the father disappeared. “He was afraid he could never pay the cost,” the wife said in his defence. On the ninth day after her confinement she returned to her work, leaving the baby in charge of a girl nine years old.
A GROUP OF CHILDREN WHOSE MOTHERS ARE EMPLOYED AWAY FROM THEIR HOMES
Upon the day the baby was two weeks old, word came to the mother while at work that it had been taken suddenly ill and imploring her to return to it at once. Terrified, she sought the foreman of her department and begged to be allowed to go home. “Ma chil seek! Ma chil die!” she cried. But the foreman needed her and scowled; they were “rushed” in the winding-room. And so he refused to grant her the permission she sought—refused with foul objurgations. Heartbroken, she went to another, superior, foreman and in broken English begged to be allowed to go to her sick babe. “Ma chil seek! Ma chil die!” she cried incessantly. This foreman also refused at first to let her go. Perhaps it was because he thought of his own daughter that he relented at last and gave her permission to go home—permission to give a mother’s care to the child born of her travail! Eye-witnesses say that she sank down upon her knees and, with hysterical gratitude, kissed the foreman’s rough, dirty hands. “You good man! You good man!” she shrieked, then fled from the mill with frenzied haste.
But when she reached her little tenement home in “Hunk’s town” the baby was already dead, and there was only a lifeless form for her to clasp in her arms. The life of an infant child is too frail a thing, and too uncertain, to permit us to say that a mother’s care would have sufficed to save that babe. But the doctor said neglect was the cause of death, and the poor mother has moaned daily these many months, “If I no work, ma chil die not. I work an’ kill ma chil!”
Thirty-five years ago Paris was besieged by Germany’s vast army. For months the war raged with terrible cost to invader and invaded; industry was paralyzed and factories were closed down, with the result that there was the most frightful poverty due to unemployment. But, because the mothers were forced to stay at home, and were thus enabled to give their children their personal care and attention instead of trusting them to the “little mothers,” the mortality of infants decreased by 40 per cent. No other explanation of that striking fact, so far as I am aware, has ever been attempted.[[30]] Very similar was the effect upon the infantile death-rate during the great cotton famine in Lancashire as a result of the prolonged unemployment of so many hundreds of mothers. Notwithstanding the immense increase in poverty, the fact that the mothers could personally care for their infants more than compensated for it and lowered the rate of mortality in a most striking manner.[[31]] These examples of a profound social fact are sufficient for our present purpose, though, were it necessary, they might be indefinitely multiplied.