Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-04-15
STATE AID TO THE STORK.

An exchange very truly remarks
 that it is an exceedingly dull day
 in Chicago when the freak idea con.
 test has not one or more entries. Of
 late the, professors of the University Of Chicago have been unusually sub.
 dued. The hiatus of sensationalism, 1 however, has been filled by t.e hard working club women who seem fully equal to the emergency. A certain
 Mrs. Charles Henrotin, who has ccn- tributed literally to the lurid loqua- 1 city of Chicago women, has rival in a certain Mrs. Frances S'rton, who has had her inn;I gs last.
 Somehow or othe:. he ridiculous phantom of Trace sulcde" seems to haunt Mrs. Norton. In her alarii at her own imaginin@s th1s WolnaL hts evolved a scheme wh oh, whit, mot worked out in de+n. she believes
 1ili solve the aWil problems that confront her and Whi.. she believes co. front Iil Eat.CI It Is .oth.no more nor less than the first aid to the stork on the part of the state. She thinks that I gri,te.1i public should establish a sort of Dlt:s-D Of rsNard I. the women VI haze children that they cannot afford to take care of. It provides that the mother be }o; for it's care until it is If years old. This, she says. lis the only practi- cal way to make the anti-race-suicide theory effective. Tho money which could be saved from the expenses of the courts by giving each child a chance for a home and maternal care would be enough to pay for pension ing motherhood. There would be fewer criminals if children and their parents had better chance
 Mrs. Norton no doubt intends well, but she is carried off her feet by the enthusiasm of her fantastic dream. She reasons that the more children the poor and needy mother brings irto the world the better for the world She would people the earth with the offspring of squalor and neg lect She would set our standard of citizenship at the minimum of moral and educational influence. AS bald proposition she believes the state would profit by encouraging those women who have brutal, neg lectful or incompetent husbands to bear children as paying profes- sion
 This good woman is fundamental ly wrong. The nation needs children vho will grow into useful citizens, but it wants children of comfofta- hle homes: children of loving care and parental ministfation. Every child born into this world has right to a good home and mother and father who can provide comforts and rear it in moral atmosphere of tender nurture. A child that is one of many children in a home where the principal occupation of the moth CT is in receiving visits from the storl. and where it has to be farm cd out to the state in order to get sufficient food and clothing, will De { very poor addition to society
 This question is more moral than political. Instead of encouraging the drogs of humanity to bring forth children into saualor they are not able 10 shake off, the state should do the opposite No familv has moral fiaht to increase itself unless the husband and father is able to provide additional accommodations. The state can aet along without any moro ehild= =ren= of the s1ums who are born only to become outeasts and criminals. Mrs Norton's plan is socially un- wise and menacins, not to say Vlel- GUS. immoral and vulgar