Los Angeles herald., 1909-09-29
IT NDER the title I'm the Trail of the
/ Little White Hearse," Josephine


Little White Hearse," Josephine
~ Conger- -Kaneko contributes the
following to the Progressive Woman:
When a woman bears a child she
contributes the most important of all
factors to society. Hers is social act.
The child may have absorbed her
blood, it may bear her impress upon
its features, it may inherit it's fathers
name, which is hers also. But it is the
child of society, and no more belongs to
her in the full sense of the term, than
the mist in a cloud belOngs-is the
property of-the cloud. The mist diff
fuses itself upon the earth to be drunk
up by the foliage and the ground, and
is again drawn by the sun into cloud,
to again diffuse itself, and so forever.
So the child Is absorbed by society,
6tffuses itself through social organ
isms, contributes to and draws from its
surroundings, and is never the prop
erty of any individual or set OF IN
dividuals. 1t cannot be a fixed quantity
any more than the dew and the mist
But the mother who goes to the brink
of the grave to contribute this most
important social element receives moth
ing as a mother from society in return
She has not even the guarantee that
society will not destroy her contribu-
Etion before it is fully made.
| A good many mothers who live on
farms KNOW LIldI our SLGclL 10 AAAtNiASAS .
down at Washington have had COM
mittee at work studying, classifying
and tabulating the diseases and frati-
ties of hogs and that when one or their
husbands hogs becomes ill or physical
ly deranged the farmer has merely TO
write to the hog department at the ma
tional capital and he will receive all tue
information he wants about the case
of his brute, information compiled by
specialists, and they will forward MIN
medicine for it's cure. ,,..,-
But the mothers-when their little
babies grow puny and i'll, there is noun
ing at the national capital to help them
out and too often there is everything
at the national capitol in the way Oh
bad laws to discourage and defeat theh
in their care for their young.
"Six million babies dead in America
every ten years for the past half centu-
ry; thirty million American homes des-
ISOLATE: thirty million American moth
ers suffering the pangs of chlldolrth
only to be deprived of their babies be-
fore they have spoken their first word
or taken their first step. Today TINS IS
still the appalling toll which is de-
nanded of American motherhood.
Think of it! One baby in five marked
for sacrifice before it is born!"
And the great majority of these
deaths preventable, say the physicians
and the nurses who know ABOUT them.
In Chicago the little white hearse was
called out 719 times during August of
1908. A map lies before me with black
dots showing where most of these ba-
bies died. And 1 read-"talling the
back trail of these pathetic little fune-
rails we are led straight to the beaten
paths of the three-room homes where
live widowed and deserted women and
others whose incomes will not permit
higher rent. Here insanitary plumbing
and lack of conveniences do their dead
ly work. 1t is the destination of the
| poorest milk sold in the city. 1t is
where streets are cleaned least often
or not at all; where stalest bread and
Oldest meat are sold. To it in the dusk
of evening little children with shawls
/ over their heads and market baskets
| on their arms return with their prizes
from the city dumps and garbage bar
| rels of the market streets"
| Seven hundred and nineteen mothers
bringing their contributions to society,
and society destroying them before
| they are out of their mothers arms.
And not only this. Other hundreds of
babies managed to live with constitu-
| tions blasted, Later they will be found