Household Administration, Its Place in the Higher Education of Women

by Unknown

X. CAUSES WHICH MENACE HEALTHFUL INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

Perhaps one of the greatest inconsistencies of an inconsistent nation lies in the fact that the extraordinary ignorance of the elementary needs of a tender infant is not confined to one section of society; it is found in Belgravia as well as in Bermondsey. Thus, though the chief sources of the tuberculosis which is responsible for the presence of 45 per cent. of the children in the London Invalid Schools are confined to the homes of the poorer classes,[109] inquiries into the incidence of rickets among children in Glasgow show a higher percentage of cases in the families of mechanics than of labourers[110]—a clear illustration that ignorance and not poverty is here the predisposing cause. Impure air and stuffy, ill-ventilated rooms are concerned in the susceptibility to both diseases, as is also malnutrition with its associated diminution of the innate powers of self-protection. But, in the one case, inability to provide suitable food is the general cause; while in the other, 248 inexcusable ignorance of the right forms in which food should be supplied to young children is a certain source of the evil.

The thought is pathetic, for the causes are wholly preventable. Pitiful also, because less excusable, is the grievous injury to health associated with a mouth full of rotten teeth, permitted as it is among families possessed of sufficient means to meet the cost of cure, who prefer to spend their money upon dress and amusement, or among the members of which necessary endurance of a trifling shock has not been cultivated. Were the foulness of the discharge from a carious tooth to be externally visible, the æsthetic instinct among the refined would clamour for prompt treatment; but, unfortunately for health, the results of the disease are concealed, and consequently condoned.

Again: light, sunshine and quiet are now known to be essential to physical development and to the possession of a sound nervous system; the statement amounts to a platitude, for is not every wealthy invalid despatched to complete convalescence by the sea or in the country, and is not the custom of a general annual holiday due largely to the conscious benefits derived from an open-air life far from the bustle of towns? Yet physical morality is so poorly developed that the atmosphere of suburban as well as urban districts is permanently obscured by the preventable and wasteful results of imperfect combustion, though the detriment is incalculable to those whose lives see 249 no change of air. The ceaseless rumble of noisy traffic, allowed to disturb the rest of thousands, or more probably of millions, of our population, is another factor responsible for the prevalence of unstable nerves and of ill-balanced brains. It assumes great gravity when it is realised that among these sleepers are numbered the children whose hours of rest are already most seriously curtailed.

Another sin against childhood bears long enduring fruits. I refer to the terrible results upon the lives of those infants who survive efforts to prevent their birth. The fact ought to be, if it is not, common knowledge; yet the sale of the infamous drugs, necessary to the crime, by pennyworths, in every drug-store, is tacitly sanctioned by the community.

Professor Sadler’s[111] determination to direct attention to the requirements of our adolescents has aroused such response, that excuse is now impossible for ignoring the detrimental effects upon young people of unskilled, exhausting “blind alley” work, or of removing prematurely the restraint of moral discipline and systematised training.[112] Statistics show not only the economic disasters which result from the unsatisfactory methods of past years; they bring home also the steady increase in the percentage of the proportion of nervous instability as well as of anæmia, which 250 interfere with the form of brain growth so rapid in adolescence (namely, increase in complexity of association, and in power to inhibit, to reason, and to concentrate). Another result of these investigations is to draw attention to the increase in organic heart disease, which has been shown to occur in more than thirty per cent. of the London errand boys who are engaged in prolonged work on Saturdays, as well as in out-of-school hours during the week.[113]

Should not parents inform themselves diligently on these matters? for there are warnings and to spare from physician and educationalist upon this reckless wreckage of the nation’s most valuable asset. It was pointed out ten years ago that the imposition of adult duties upon the child, or even upon the young adolescent, is the most effective machinery for the manufacture of the unemployed and the unemployable. Only now, however, are bye-laws being sanctioned which impose at all adequate restrictions upon child labour. For a longer period the steady migration of the rural population from country to towns has been bemoaned, as coupled with the risk lest the deterioration of the individual decline into the degeneration of the race. Nevertheless, in spite of the sustained efforts of the Rural Housing Association and of private individuals, the housing problem still lies at the root of some at least of this exodus. Miserable and inconvenient as are 251 hundreds of our cottages, their number is still insufficient in many places to meet the demand; so perforce the young people of marriageable age must go, or the elementary code of decency must be violated.

The curse of alcohol,[114] too, lies heavy on our land; it shortens life, incapacitates for work, impoverishes and degrades; visits in innumerable forms the sins of the parents upon their innocent yet grievously afflicted children; promotes crime and perverts judgment. Each year brings more statistical and biological evidence of its enduring and deteriorating effects upon humanity. It seems strange, therefore, that the law to insist upon the provision of an adequate water supply for every dwelling remains entirely insufficient to meet the most urgent needs of many town streets as well as country villages. Cleanliness is consequently impossible, and the public-house must be perforce frequented, for it provides a beverage more palatable and perhaps as wholesome as the cottager’s nearest supply.