The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-26
srrrrnrrG IxrArcY.

Nothing connected with the hot weather is se full of pathos to the lover of humanity as the reports from the large cities of the deaths among the bsoles and iittie children. In the great city of New York. including Brooklyn. the statistics show nearly six thousand deaths in 1907 of cha- dren under five years of age from dis eases of the stomach and bowels alone The deaths from other causes is not given. but the large death rate above mentioned was due to impure or insuffi- cient food and drink That the heat of the crowded city added to the fatal ities is of course true, but in the main. all of these deaths were due to semi, starvation or to the food. water and milk upon which the little ones were forced to subsist.
 This slaughter of the innooents--for that is the only term for it--is all the ssms going on among the eongested population of the large cities. but nat uraily the fataiity is increased by the intense heat and lack of fresh air snens the snaypidebls penalties of city life, and which cannot be avoided. but are the mothers of the little ones wholly guiitless? When a healthy mother refuses to nurse her own baby but saoves 1t away from the nutriment which Nature intends for it. ana leaves 1t to the care of careless or ignorant nurse to be fed on impure or diseased milk or other food equally dangerous and unit: can such mother look on the pitiful face of her dead babe and feel that she is guiitless of wrongI If so. she is wholly united for the most sacred end bailowed duties that come to human beings--the duty. the prtvi- iege and the responsibility of mother hood, than which nothing mora excited hes como te woman since the Blessed Mother of Christ looked on the face of the Babe of Bethlehem and loved him because he was her own.
 But leaving out this phase of the question entirely, there ts enough to lament that Is unavoidable. There are mothers who cannot supply their little ones with the nutrtnsnt Nature intend ed them to have in their early infan- cy. There are others who are them selves 50 poorly fed that they cannot supply the needs of the babies as their maternal instincts would lead them to do. and still this is not sil. When the little ones have passed the nursing age they must stlli be fed, and the auan. tity and quality of food provided for them has much Co do with health and life. Hardly anything that comes be- fore the vision Of lover ef his kind is more psthetic than is the pitiful face ana figure of badly fed or half-fed child. It seems to look with mute sp- peal In it's large eyes as if 1t would ask of the healthy and welI-fed why they cannot heip 1t, and doubtless it's undeveioped mind tries to understand why 1t should suffer while others have plenty. '.
 And so the grievous sacrifice of in.
 faptiIe humanity goes eesssIessly on and on forever. And so the wealthy and the fortunate, in too many cases. SC on their fewer-strswn paths and neither turn nor lock aside to see if there is not way open through which they can lsssen infant hunger and suf- ferfne and decrease infant mortality. Death and suffering come to all human
 beings. but 1t must be that much of tn c pain, privation and death which comes to the children of the poor might be aiieviated or prevented if proper and practicable methods were adopted and carried out by those who are able to do so. Many of the evils of this life are unavoidable. but we are persuaded that many others could be alIeviated or prevented. There are few things in connection with passing events that appeal more strongly to the very best that is in Us than the relief of suffer ing. and especially of suffering child hood.