I have long held the opinion that the milk supply of every city should be made a matter of municipal responsibility. Some ten years ago, while residing in England, where the subject was then beginning to be discussed and agitated, I devoted a good deal of time to the propaganda of the movement for the municipalization of the milk supply. In view of the splendid achievement of the gouttes de lait in France, it was natural that we should have attached much importance to the sterilization of the milk, and I remember with what enthusiasm some of us hailed the introduction of the system into St. Helen’s, Lancashire, the first English city to adopt it. I am convinced now that sterilization is unnecessary and a grave mistake. Undoubtedly it is well that dirty or impure milk should be sterilized, but it would be still better to have clean, pure milk which needed no sterilization. The testimony of Dr. Ralph M. Vincent before the British Interdepartmental Committee[[163]] and, more emphatically still, the splendid results of the Rochester experiment under the leadership of Dr. Goler[[164]] show that this can be attained. Every municipality in America could adopt, and should adopt, the plan. “Now that the way has been shown, upon ‘city fathers’ indifferent to the childhood of their cities, upon health officers and departments warped into unbudgeable routine, upon near-sighted charity workers and unknowing givers who care for the suffering, but do not get at causes, will rest the responsibility for the continuance of a part of that fearful tally of dead babies which each summer’s week jots down on a town’s death-roll—your town and ours.” In these direct, unequivocal words Charities sums up the whole question of responsibility.
The purely experimental work of such philanthropic efforts as that of Mr. Straus has been done. The practicability and value of municipal control of the milk supply has been abundantly proven, and there is no longer need of private charitable effort and experiment. There lurks a danger in leaving this important public service to philanthropy, a danger well-nigh as great as in leaving it to private commercial enterprise. The dangers arising from the amateurish meddling of “near-sighted charity workers and unknowing givers” is much greater than is generally recognized. Many of these charitable societies drag out a precarious existence, their usefulness and success depending upon the measure of success attending the efforts of the “begging committees.” Generally speaking, they are less economical, and, what is more important, less effective, than municipal enterprises, besides being based upon a fatally unsound and demoralizing principle. I know of one large city in which a number of public-spirited citizens have for some years interested themselves in the supply of sterilized milk for infants. Notwithstanding that they receive each year in subscriptions a much larger amount of money, in proportion to the milk supplied, than Rochester’s deficit, they charge the parents more than twice as much as the latter city for the milk.
Nor is this all; there are other, weightier objections than this. There are no regular depots for the distribution of the milk, under the direct supervision of the Committee, but it is handled by drug-store keepers and others. No sort of control is exercised over the sale. Any child can go into the store and buy a bottle of milk. This is what happens: small children, sometimes not more than four or five years old, are sent by their parents to buy the milk. These little children are, naturally, ignorant of the importance which the medical advisers of the charity attach to the subject of modifications of the milk to suit the age of the child to whom it is to be given, with the result that babies less than three months old are given milk intended for babies eighteen months old, while the latter are half starved upon the modified milk intended for the former. Another evil, not, I am told, peculiar to this particular charitable society, is the selling of milk irregularly and in single bottles. When the mothers have the money, or when they are not too busy to go for the Pasteurized milk, they buy a single bottle, but at other times they send out to the grocery store for cheaper milk, or else feed the babies upon ordinary table foods. Of course, there should be a system of registration adopted; every child’s name should be enrolled, together with the date of its birth, and no less than a full day’s supply should be sold. That is the custom where the matter has been taken up by the municipal authorities. The result is that the children can be weighed and examined more or less regularly; facilities are offered for the periodical visiting of the homes of the infants and their inspection; mothers can be taught how to care for their little ones; and, instead of leaving it to chance, or depending upon the word of an ignorant mother, or a child, the attendants in charge are able to regulate the supply so that at the proper time each child gets milk of the proper strength and richness. How far the abuses I have named are prevalent in philanthropic experiments of this kind, I do not know, but I am convinced that there should be no room for such well-intentioned but disastrous muddling. The whole milk supply of every city should be the subject of municipal management and control, and special arrangements should be made for dealing with the milk intended for infant consumption. Personally, I should like to see the principles of the Rochester system extended to cover the entire milk supply of the city, and, in some one of our great cities, the further experiment of a municipal farm dairy for the supply of all milk necessary for hospitals and similar institutions upon the most hygienic principles possible. This has been done to some extent in Europe with success.
VI
It is a delightful and scientifically correct principle which those Utopia builders have embodied in their schemes of world-making who have advocated the restriction of matrimony to those women who have undergone a thorough course of education and training in eugenics and household economy. Most persons will agree that such a system of education for maternal and wifely duties would be a great boon, if practicable. But so long as hearts are swayed by passion, and the subtle currents of human love remain uncontrolled by law, such proposals must remain dreams. Even the modest suggestion of Mrs. Parsons that a “matrimonial white list” be created by establishing continuation schools for training young women in the domestic arts and the principles of child-rearing and giving them certificates or diplomas, as well as certificates of health,[[165]] is so far in advance of anything yet attempted that it sounds almost Utopian. Still, there is nothing fanciful or impossible in the proposal itself.
The preservation of child life must depend largely upon the dissipation of maternal ignorance. Until mothers are enlightened, the infantile death-rate must remain needlessly and unnaturally heavy. And so long as industrial occupations absorb our young girls in the very years which should be spent at home in practical training for the responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, there must continue to be a very large number of marriages productive of poverty, misery, and disease, because of the ignorance and inefficiency of the wives. So the fight against maternal ignorance, the ignorance which breeds disease and poverty, appears as an almost Sisyphean task. So long as such industrial conditions prevail, ignorance will continue to sap the foundations of family life and mock our efforts at reform. In such important matters of domestic economy as knowledge of food values and how to spend the family income to the best advantage, what but failure can be expected when a young woman worker graduates from mill labor to wifehood? Even where such a young woman, or girl growing into womanhood, feels the need of training in these important matters of domestic economy, she is prevented by the fact that the family cooking and buying are necessarily done during the hours she is at work. By the time she returns home after her day’s labor, little or nothing remains to be done except washing the dishes. Even were it otherwise, she would in most cases be too tired to help. After confinement in a shop or factory for ten or twelve hours, at monotonous tasks entirely devoid of interest or attractiveness, it is natural and right that she should seek recreation and pleasure. Further confinement, either in the home or a school, is extremely liable to prove injurious.
PACKING BOTTLES OF “CLEAN MILK” IN ICE BEFORE SENDING THEM TO THE CITY, ROCHESTER, N.Y.
For these reasons, and others obvious to the reader, I am not very sanguine that much can ever be accomplished by evening classes for working girls. The British Interdepartmental Committee suggests that “continuation classes for domestic instruction” should be formed, and attendance at them, twice each week during certain months of the year, made obligatory, only those employed in domestic service being exempted from compulsory attendance. Realizing that it would be an injury to the girls to impose this attendance and study upon them in addition to their already too long hours of employment, the committee very properly suggests that some modification of the hours of work would have to be introduced, so that in fact the hours of instruction would have to be taken out of their ordinary working time.[[166]] With such a provision as this, a system of compulsory instruction in domestic science might very well be adopted. It is probable, however, that the principal effect would be a considerable diminishing of the employment of girls and young women within the ages prescribed for compulsory attendance at the continuation classes.
The suggested curriculum for such classes is interesting. “The courses of instruction at such classes should cover every branch of domestic hygiene, including the preparation of food, the practice of household cleanliness, the tendance and feeding of young children, the proper requirements of a family as to clothing—everything, in short, that would equip a young girl for the duties of a housewife.”[[167]] The further suggestion is made that the members of these continuation classes should visit from time to time the municipal crèches—the establishment of which is strongly recommended—and receive there practical instruction in the management of infants. This is such a comprehensive and courageous proposal that one would like to see it given a fair trial.