Bisbee daily review., 1909-07-11
LACK OF ICtCHEsTs
 CAUSES MORTALITY Chicago Finds Pure Milk Law of Little Avail to Prevent
 Infant Illness

| CHICAGO, July 10.-More babies,
 more heat, higher milk and higher l costs for mere existence of parents
 this year have made the problem of the baby in Chicago, and presumably others cities, more pressing than ever before. Over acres of hot tenements and square miles, of huddled homes the midsummer specter of the Infant | Mortality has loomed up again, bigger i than ever, demanding it's solution or more baby sacrifices than ever.
 Free distribution of ice was begun
 several years ago but it has been
 found that it only knicked the Sword
 Death swings almost mercifully. But
 when the ice box is merely rickety | old pail or box, or the washtub or
 dishpan a ten pound lump of ice doesn't last very long. The Infant Welfare Committee of the United Charities were dismayed. The health departments last bulletin said: With the advent of hot weather comes the serious problem to many poor fami- lies of how to properly preserve the baby's milk. Clean milk requires not ! only cold to preserve it, but very few poor families possess a refrigerator. , The cost of an ordinary ice-box and ! the expense Of icing is really too great ! for many families"
 i The department described how an ' ice-box could be made for small cost, but the settlement workers have tried that and with encouragement from
 club women they have seized upon , the so-called "thermos' bottle which | by means of a vacuum keeps liquids at fixed temperature, pointing out that ! free ice would be a hundred times as
 useful if it couldn't melt so soon as it {, does in tin-pail on the windowsill !! of a Bunker street tenement in a !, homemade ice box. This plan con- l templates municipal appropriation for the Infant Welfare committee for
 the purchase of thermos bottles, to 3e
 loaned at a nominal rental to the res.
 idents of the ccngested districts,
 through the milk dispensing stations.
 Also special efforts to raise funds for private contribution for the purchase of these bottles. Thus the device used
 by the rich for picnic lunches and au
 tomobile refreshments seems likely
 to be impressed into the service of
 the poor. It has been found that
 fresh milk, cooled, can be kept in one
 of Hhem at stationary temperature
 for twelve to thirty-six hours. Instead
 of leaving the milk exposed to the aiI
 of squalid homes and germs it can
 thus be kept dramatically sealed.
 Pure milk when it leaves the dis
 pensing station may be very impure
 milk before it has been in a tenement
 home for an hour." one of Chicago's
 most indefatigable charity workers
 Mrs. Harman Falkenstein, said
 Crowd a whole family into two ol
 three rooms and a couple of b~arders or more and sick and ailing baby
 and then mix the whole up with { heavy dose of Chicago summer weath CT, what happens How long does 2 pounds last in your up-to-date ice box or refrigerator. even under ths best conditions? Not very long, doe
 it? Then how do you expect ice t { keep baby's milk sweet during the ho summer days O. nights in the stiflins tenements? It is no exaggeration tt say that the Ghetto buries a city-ful
 of babies every summer. The none.
 that purchases 800 or 300 collins everJ warm season would buy food for { : great many babies, wouldn't it now? 1? If the ciey can afford to put uI turning poles and lay out playground for children from six to sixteen year of age" said Mrs. Catherine Waugl 7 McCulloch, Justice of the Peace il 2 Evanston: 1t seems to me that the, can afford to Erovide life preserver' for children of more tender years
 Certainly the babies deserve mulici pal aid to the extent of receiving everything necessary to the preservs [ tion of life. if the parents through pov . ferty CT iRnorance are unable to fur 1, nish 1t It is civic duty to purve. preventive of infant mortality"