Riches and Poverty (1910)

by L. G. Chiozza Money

The nation must set its face against the employment of married women in factories or workshops, and gradually extend the period of legal prohibition. There is only one proper sphere of work for the married woman and that is her own home. In the case of factory workers the employer must be made to furnish a maternity fund if he wishes to employ married women. Thus penalized he will probably prefer not to employ them—to the very great advantage of the labour market and the nation. There are several model factories in the United Kingdom where the female workers are dismissed upon marriage. This is found to prevent the girls falling victims to loafers who desire to play three days a week. The Jewish community amongst us, the very aliens who are despised by the race they are supplanting in the East End of London, set us an example which we should do well to imitate. The Jewish children are much healthier and stronger than their Gentile neighbours because they are better mothered. Jewish women find their true avocation at home. The Jew, however poor, does not live on his wife's earnings, and it would be counted shame for a Jewess to work during pregnancy or after childbirth.

But what of the poor woman in her home? We can safely confer upon our medical officers and women inspectors power to report upon and advise the assistance of necessitous cases, before and after childbirth. The mother and child must be fed. Nature must be allowed to fulfil her desire to give the new unit of population a fair start in life. The cost would be surprisingly small. If 300,000 cases were assisted to the extent of £10 each it would entail an expenditure of only £3,000,000 per annum. With £10 per case a great deal could be done.

By assistance to the extent of £10 each I do not necessarily mean a money payment. Often the assistance which is most wanted is personal help. The poor Jewish women of East London have the aid of that excellent institution the Sick Room Helps Society, which is practically a charitable institution, the poor mothers contributing less than one-third of the expenditure. The "Sick Room Helps" provided by this Society are thus described by Miss Bella Löwy:

"They had to take the place of the house-mother when, through confinement or sickness, she was laid low, and when, were it not for their ministrations, the children and husband, and the home (sometimes consisting of one room only) would be absolutely uncared for. The Helps were only sent in where there was no woman or girl old enough and able to do the work. The Sick Room Helps, for the time being, took the place of the housemother, washed the baby, got the children ready and sent them to school, cooked the food, tidied and cleaned up the home, saw that any accumulation of washing was done. In fact, she attended to the hundred and one little things which required to be seen to even in the most modest home, and they could readily understand how much more cleanliness and order became indispensable when the family had to live, eat and sleep in one room only. The advent of the Sick Room Helps also ensured for the mother peace of mind, as well as of body, at a time when she sorely needed both, and if she knew that her husband and children were well-cared for and well looked after she was assisted on the road to health and strength, and was, thereby, enabled to take up afresh the routine of her numerous daily duties. Formerly the poor mothers used to grudge themselves even a few days of enforced idleness, and, by premature activity in getting up and about, they but too often sowed the seeds of illness and sickness, and brought untold troubles on themselves and their families. Notwithstanding that these facts were well-known and were perfectly obvious to every thinking person, the opposition to what was erroneously termed a new form of pauperization had been very great. But an institution which not only benefited the recipients by nursing them when it was imperatively necessary, but, at the same time, gave employment to deserving women, enabling them to support themselves, and, perhaps, their family, could not be accused of encouraging pauperism in any way."

Mrs Alice Model, the honorary secretary, tells me that the Jewish Board of Guardians applies a sum annually for the relief of destitute women in childbed, which is handed to this Society and applicants for relief are referred to it. If a case is found suitable, a nurse is sent in twice daily and milk and other suitable nourishment provided. Excellent results are obtained and many lives saved. Work on such lines might easily be carried on given a sufficient staff of Women Health Inspectors and an expenditure such as I have mentioned to provide nurses and nourishment.

In this connexion a municipal milk service, which will be discussed in these pages hereafter, would be of the first importance, and it would be found a simple matter to supply pregnant women and nursing mothers with an ample quantity of pure milk. Such a supply might be made universal and be specially supplemented in necessitous cases. In any case, the mother has a special claim upon the community and that claim should be recognized. The birth of a child is a special tax upon the family in which it occurs, a tax which is deliberately avoided by many people. Yet the unit not only belongs to its family; it is an integral part of the nation, and entitled to the care of a country which desires strong and healthy citizens.

Such provisions should be accompanied by drastic punishment of parents who neglect their duties. Upon report of the Health Officer, the prosecution and punishment of offenders against the nation's children would swiftly follow. We must make the man who neglects his child, which is also the nation's child, feel that he is the greatest criminal of them all.

It is impossible to leave the subject of the birth of the new generation without reference to the necessity for the segregation of the unfit. It must be made no longer possible for the habitual drunkard, the vagrant, the criminal, the mentally defective, to reproduce their terrible kind. The subject is so rarely brought before the public that few people realize the nature and extent of the danger. Fully two per cent. of our existing elementary school children will never be fit to direct their own lives. The State has but one duty in the matter and that is to protect society from the breeding of the unfit, while protecting the unfit from themselves. The child of the habitual drunkard is often feeble-minded. The child of the feeble-minded is frequently an idiot. Need we wonder, while the State has no control of the feeble-minded, that our lunatic asylums are ever growing too small for their pitiable populations. Our criminal and workhouse records are full of testimony as to the terrible results of the unchecked propagation of the insane by the mentally weak. A few years ago, at Daventry, a couple were charged with neglecting their ten-year-old son. It was stated that the child was in the habit of smoking a pipe and drinking beer, supplied by the father. A doctor stated that the boy was a perfect savage. He was undersized and threatened to be an idiot or a criminal. The boy was sent to the workhouse while the mother and father, described as "mentally weak," were sentenced to one day's imprisonment and are now free to bring forth sui generis. Another recently reported case which I noted was that of a partly paralyzed old man who applied for out-relief to the Oulton Guardians. He has had thirty children and the youngest, a girl, is described as "practically an imbecile." From her, doubtless, and from others of the brood, the terrible strain will proceed. Mr Amos W. Butler, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, gave particulars of the descendants of a feeble-minded woman. She was the mother of two daughters, who were free to marry because, like their parent, they were not actually insane. One of them, Rachel, has married twice, and borne eleven children, three of whom are dead. One of the survivors is a criminal and the others are degenerates. The other daughter, Kate, has four children, all feeble-minded, two of them illegitimate. One of them became the wife of a feeble-minded paralytic and has had five awful children. The direct descendants of the woman first mentioned number twenty-nine, and in ten years twelve of them have spent an aggregate of twenty-two years in asylums and orphans' homes.

These details may be nauseating, but of what use to shirk them? It is only when we realize that such propagation is going on unchecked that we see our duty clear in the matter. We then also see that segregation of the unfit would not increase our burdens, but decrease them.

Segregation recognized as a painful duty, it would no longer be necessary to make any reservation when speaking of the hope that lies in the child. Our 1,200,000 new births per annum would soon regenerate the race. During the next twenty years about 25,000,000 children will be born in the United Kingdom.