The State has first to realise that if it wants citizens, and healthy citizens, it must make it possible for men and women to have families while living a full life themselves and giving a full life to their children. At the present moment this is not possible from top to bottom of the working class, unless the economic position of the working-class family be improved. The first requisite is, then, the improvement of the economic position of the family.
But it is impossible to treat here the broad question of how this can be attained; it is only possible to deal with the points in which the State can to-day take immediate steps to improve the economic position of the working-class family as regards maternity, and bring specialised knowledge, adequate rest, nourishment and care, medical supervision and treatment, within reach. And though the story told in these letters, in the statistics of infant mortality, in the figures of a declining birth-rate, be dark, a really bright sign for the future is that the women so vitally concerned have themselves become aware of the evil and are eagerly demanding that the State shall adopt those measures which will most surely mitigate or remove it. The Women’s Co-operative Guild have brought out a scheme which would greatly enlarge the scope of State action, precisely in those ways in which it has already proved itself most beneficial. This scheme, which has already to a large extent received the blessing of the Government Department most nearly concerned—the Local Government Board—is given in detail on p. [196]. Meanwhile, up and down the country the Guild and other women’s organisations are pressing Public Health Committees to adopt the measures recommended. The presence of women on Town and County Councils is another hopeful sign, and it is greatly to be desired that the numbers of working-women councillors will increase. Dr. Newsholme says: “Women could help forward the care of maternity and infants by getting themselves voted on to Local Authorities, and by bringing pertinacious pressure to bear on members of Local Authorities.”
It should be noted that the essence of the Guild scheme is that municipal, not philanthropic, action is wanted. It is not charity, but the united action of the community of citizens which will remove a widespread social evil. The community is performing a duty, not bestowing a charity, in providing itself with the bare necessities for tolerable existence. That is why the end at which the Guild aims is that the mothers of the country shall find themselves as free to use a Municipal Maternity Centre as they are to use a Council School or a Public Library.
The following words of the Chairman of the Bradford Health Committee, spoken at the opening of the Municipal Maternity Home on March 15, 1915, show that the needs expressed in these letters are beginning to be met by the methods desired by the writers: “We stand on the threshold of an age which is to herald the recognition of the mother and her child, to give public health work that human touch it has hitherto lacked, and to modify those glaring inequalities in social life and conditions which are destructive alike of infancy and the ideals of Christian citizenship.”
LETTERS FROM WORKING-WOMEN.
1. Twenty Years of Child-Bearing.
I shall be very pleased if this letter will be any help to you. Personally I am quite in sympathy with the new Maternity Scheme. I do feel I cannot express my feelings enough by letter to say what a great help it would have been to me, for no one but a mother knows the struggle and hardships we working women have to go through. I do hope I shall never see the young women of to-day have to go through what I did. I am a mother of eleven children—six girls and five boys. I was only nineteen years old when my first baby was born. My husband was one of the best and a good father. His earnings was £1 a week; every penny was given to me, and after paying house rent, firing, and light, and clubs, that left me 11s. to keep the house going on; and as my little ones began to come, they wanted providing for and saving up to pay a nurse, and instead of getting nourishment for myself which we need at those times, I was obliged to go without. So I had no strength to stand against it, and instead of being able to rest in bed afterwards, I was glad to get up and get about again before I was able, because I could not afford to pay a woman to look after me. I kept on like that till the sixth little one was expected, and then I had all the other little ones to see after. The oldest one was only ten years old, so you see they all wanted a mother’s care. About two months before my confinement the two youngest fell ill with measles, so I was obliged to nurse them, and the strain on my nerves brought on brain-fever. All that the doctor could do for me was to place ice-bags on my head. Oh, the misery I endured! My poor old mother did what she could for me, and she was seventy years old, and I could not afford to pay a woman to see after my home and little ones; but the Lord spared me to get over my trouble, but I was ill for weeks and was obliged to work before I was able. Then in another eighteen months I was expecting another. After that confinement, being so weak, I took a chill, and was laid up for six months, and neighbours came in and done what they could for me. Then there was my home and little ones and husband to look after, as he was obliged to work. It was the worry that kept me from getting better; if I could have had someone to look after me I should not have been so ill. After this I had a miscarriage and another babe in one year and four months. I got on fairly well with the next one, and then the next one, which was the eighth, I had two down with measles, one two years old with his collar-bone out, and a little girl thirteen with her arm broke. That was at the same time as I was expecting my eighth little one, and my dear husband worried out of life, as you see with all this trouble I was only having the £1 a week and everything to get out of it. What a blessing it would have been if this Maternity Scheme was in go then! It would have saved me a lot of illness and worry, for my life was a complete misery. For twenty years I was nursing or expecting babies. No doubt there are others fixed the same way as I have been. This is only a short account of how I suffered; I could fill sheets of paper with what I have gone through at confinements and before, and there are others, no doubt, have felt the pinch as well as myself. If there is anything else you would like to know and I could tell you, I should be glad, for the benefit of my sisters.
Wages 17s. to 25s.; eleven children, two miscarriages.