The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-06-05
INFANT SLAUGHTER.


 For nineteen centuries the name of people on account of the slaughter of the Innocents." as people are wont to speak of his barbarous method of getting rid, as he hoped, of the infant Jesus. When The sent forth and slew all the chil- dren that were in Bethlehem. and all the coasts thereof. from two years old and under." he was doubtless sure in his own mind that the Savior was put out of the way.
 Such a deed was typical of this tyrants nature and character, for a man who put to death his own wife and children might be expected to have no mercy for others who were supposed to stand in his way. But the act of Herod was hardly more atrocious, when all the circumstances are considered, than is the slaughter of the innocents' all the time going on in some of the large cities of the United States of which Chicago is a noted example, as shown by the following from The Inter Ocean:
 The importance of a pure milk supply receives new emphasis from Chicago con- ditions. With the advent of the summer the Chicago Health Department reports week before last. isa the 'i next. This is is charged to milk of poor quality; due city families often have no ice, and that the milk may be from thirty-six to sixty hours old when given to the child. Under such circumstances there must be a rise in the infant mortality. With the trolley lines now running into. every part of the neighboring g ,s, S country the abuse of long There is no reason why cold and pure milk should not be delivered at the door step within hin a,, few hours after the milk attention to the subject there would be little danger from adulterated or soured milk.
 The Inter-Ocean is doubtless correct in its intimation that there is no excuse for such conditions. but they will continue until the law interposes to protect the helpless little ones from what is really more barbarous than murder, for the ba- bies suffer from the effects of this slow poison and die lingering deaths. It is useless to argue that such things ought not to be. for they will continue just as long as dealers who have neither hearts nor consciences can dispose of their stock of spoilt milk without hindrance.
 It is quite true that all the blame should not rest on the milk dealers. Nurses are proverbially careless and many parents scarcely less so. When babies get no sustenance except from the nursing bottle, and when that may not be cleaned and purified more than once or twice a week, disease is a natural re- suit. It has been proven beyond possi- bility of doubt that rubber nipples and nursing tubes, when not scrupulously kept clean, are literal incubators of dis ease germs. and nothing can be expected than that these germs should go into a child's stomach and there do their deadly work A fostering smallpox patient is not more dangerous than is neglected nursing bottle.
 Admitting all this, however. does not in any degree lessen the culpability of those who bring diseased or foul milk to the cities to be sold for food for babes. Milk thirty-six to sixty hours old, in our cli- mate, is necessarily dangerous for young children and there is no excuse for any city government which allows babies to be poisoned by such means. There ought to be such supervision of the milk supply as would at least obviate this one form of danger. If the milk is pure when de- livered at the homes, the dealers will be innocent of any complicity in child mur- der, and the parents and guardians will be responsible for any further diseases of that nature. The increase in deaths shown in the extract quoted Is a horrible example of criminal carelessnes.