Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-01-28
COME INTGTH|R OWN
Foundlings New Receive the
HeritagaofIove.
PUT INTO GOOD HOMES
HAPPY SURROUNDINGS.
How Societies in Almost Every Big
City Take Care of the Lit
tie Waits.
Written for The Evening Star.


The founding has come into its own
these latter days. Its own is lova-and
scarcely greater love hath no baby than
that which is lavishly bestowed on the
helpless, pink mites found in ash cans. on
doorsteps on the roofs of tenement houses
in the boxes of theaters in valises, open
just enough to insure fresh air to the
breathing contents; in railroad stations.
in bundles of newspapers in baskets, in
the thousand and one public places and odd
corners of a dig city
Less than decade ago the American
founding experienced no such thing as
love. Discovered by some passerby at
tracted by a tell-tale wall it was turned
over to policeman and later sent by the
proper authorities to a hospital set aside
for the reception of deserted infants There
it received the care that a nurse looking
after ward full of such ba bies could give
IL, Wh,ch included neither wet nursing nor
londilng and cuddling, both rightful heri
taSeS OF every newborn child And there
was little or no provision for the isolation
or baby when it fell i'll of one of the
many complaints that attack all babies. so
tidt When disease appeared-IneaSleS, chol-
era morbus and the ike-it swept the wards
ana the delicate little inmates died off ike
flies. In Baltimore until recently the
death rate among the citv's foundlngs was
lCo per cent-eXtermination In New York.
up to six years ago, it was 90 and % per
cent, and other cities showed the same alb
normal mortality rate. Every Anne, ican
municipal founding hospital was an ''angel
maker as such institutions are called in
Germany; and the few who were not made
into little angels were barely ever adopted
Once, in New York, three children were
adopted in one year and everybody was
proud of the record
Woman Has Her Way.
This condition held until, here and there
throughout the country, some of those ten
der-hearted women who love all babies in
general, as well certain ones in particu-
lar, became aware of the lamentable facts
and at once set to work to save the foun-
dllngs, If such thing We're possible. when
woman wills, woman may have her way"
even with municipalities and the politicians
who run them. So it has come about that
the municipal founding hospital is now
thing of the past in New York St Louis
Baltimore and elsewhere, the infants are
boarded out under the supervision of re-
sponsfble charitable societies and guilds,
they have the safeguards of love SYSTEM
atlcally as well as spontaneously and album
dantly thrown about them, and today the
death rate is no greater among them than
among the carefully nurtured babies of New
York 9th avenue, Chicagos South Side or.
Bostons Back Bay district.
Boarding OUT is the understanding term
or the only sensible system yet; discovered
of caring for these deserted babies prior 10
their adoption by worthy families. Briefly,
boarding out means that every child is
placed Ill the hands of a woman who can be
It's wet nurse, give it proper care under the
constant supervision of d doctor and
trained nurse, who makes weekly inspec-
tons, and in every apparent way take the
place of the mother who left it, naked, per
haps, or scantily clad, on pile of smoking
ashes in an ash can. 49,
These women are paid about $40 month
thn hirn
the allowance made by the city for the
maintenance of a founding; in New York If
is IS cents a day. They are selected only
after rigid investigation and are allowed TO
keep the babies only so long as they show
themselves capable of playing mother we'll
nlgh perfectly to their charges. AS a re-
suit the babies are in much better hands
than they would have been if they had not
been cast aside; for a parent who could
throw away a child is obviously not fit
person to take care of it.
Substitute Mothers.
Most of these wet nurses, and the best,
are Italians, and there is no dearth of
strongly implanted among Italians that the
mother whose breasts are dried up follow
ing the death of her baby will never be able
to become mother again, and TO the
rather remarkable fact that the infantile
death rate among immigrant Italians is alb
normally high, much higher indeed than
the death rate in the mother country, where
nearly every married woman has brood of
from eight to twelve children to look after.
Affectionate and Supplemented by ma
ture, the italian wet nurse laVishes her
whole love upon the founding placed in
her arms She is not satisfied to dress it in
the layette given to her with the baby; she