Читать книгу Woman's work in municipalities - Mary Ritter Beard - Страница 18

Table of Contents

In this social battle to arrest and prevent disease, the campaign against infant mortality assumes an ever larger proportion, and as we should naturally expect, women are also in the front ranks here. More or less quietly for a long period women have studied and worked on the problem of infant mortality. In addition to their private efforts to reduce its amount, they have served in official capacities. In 1908, for example, a division of Child Hygiene was created in the New York City Health Department, after careful study of the organization of such an enterprise; and a competent woman physician, Dr. S. Josephine Baker, was placed at the head of it. It is believed to be the pioneer—the first bureau established under municipal control to deal exclusively with children’s health. There had previously been diverse or scattered activities in that direction but under the new plan all these were coördinated.

In Milwaukee, baby-saving on a “hundred per cent. basis” was being worked out by Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phillips when the defeat of the Socialists brought their labors there to an end. Their experiment was made possible largely by the financial and personal support of Mrs. Sarah Boyd.

The combination of private and official activities in behalf of Child Welfare led to the agitation of women for a Federal Children’s Bureau to study infant mortality and nutrition. The scheme was proposed by the National Child Labor Committee and supported by the club women. Julia Lathrop was made Chief of the Bureau.

She was given a very small appropriation however. Furthermore she was handicapped from the outset by her lack of satisfactory records as a basis of work. “What do we know of infant mortality when not a single state or city in the United States has the data for a correct statement?” was her first query.

While pursuing the Bureau’s first study therefore, that of infant mortality, Miss Lathrop emphasized the need of better birth and death registration laws and methods.

It was soon recognized that women’s clubs in the various states were the most hopeful agencies for bringing about better statistical records. “The plan [of the Bureau] is to have the actual investigating done by committees of women—in most instances members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs—who will take small areas in which they have an acquaintance and, selecting the names of a certain number of babies born in the year 1913, will learn by inquiry of the local authorities whether the births have been recorded, sending the reports to this bureau. An investigation dealing with about 5 per cent. of the reported number of births will probably constitute a sufficient test. The women’s clubs are responding well and the work is progressing satisfactorily.”

The recent Kentucky vital statistics law is due in a large measure to the women’s clubs of the state, and the Chicago Woman’s Club was also instrumental in getting a state bill for the registration of births.

The first monograph of the Federal Bureau was that on Birth Registration and this was requested by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Other bulletins issued by the Bureau up to the present time include Infant Mortality Series, No. 1; Baby-saving Campaigns—a statement of efforts made in cities of 50,000 and over to reduce mortality; Prenatal Care—a study made at the request of the Congress of Mothers which is the first of a proposed series on the care of young children in the home; A Handbook of Federal Statistics of Children, giving, in convenient form, data concerning children which had hitherto been scattered through many unwieldy volumes; a review of child labor legislation in the United States and one of mothers’ pensions systems. All of this information is of the greatest assistance to workers in municipal reforms.

While women in official positions are working to educate the public in child saving, women physicians and social workers are constantly emphasizing the value of baby conservation at conferences of one kind and another. An instance of this among the many that might be cited is the participation of women in the meetings of the American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality. Dr. Mary Sherwood of Baltimore, speaking at the last annual meeting, said: “Communities and individuals must be made to realize the fact that the babies of today will be the fathers and mothers of tomorrow. Make the babies well, prevent mortality, and we have strengthened a great weakness. No community is stronger than its weakest point.”

Dr. Sherwood is chairman of the Association’s committee on prenatal care, instruction of mothers and adequate obstetrical care; Harriet L. Lee, superintendent of nurses of the Cleveland Babies’ Hospital and Dispensary, is chairman of the committee on standards of training for infant welfare nursing and problems that confront the city and rural nurses engaged in baby-saving campaigns; and Dr. Helen Putnam, of Providence, is chairman of the committee on continuation schools of home-making and training for mothers’ helpers, and for agents of the board of health, such as visiting nurses, sanitary inspectors, visiting housekeepers, and others. Included in the membership of this Association are over one hundred societies which represent organized baby-saving activities in 53 cities in 27 states. Women are hard workers as well as scientific contributors in this Association.

One of the most effective ways of stimulating the interest of mothers in educating themselves in the care and feeding of young children is through baby contests or shows or “derbies” as they are called in some places. One of the pioneers of this movement was Mrs. Frank De Garmo, of Louisiana, who organized a contest at a state fair there, and later, one in Missouri.

It was Mary L. Watts who so forced the better baby movement upon the attention of Iowa, through a contest for prize babies held at the state fair a few years ago, that farmers and their wives began to ask the question: “If a hog is worth saving, why not a baby?” Baby exhibits with their attendant instructions to mothers, whose pride and interest are aroused by the public admiration of fine infants, are now held from coast to coast.