The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1910-09-30
LIFE FACTS
NEEDED IN
Our Country But Vital
Statistics Are Neglected
In Many States
RECORDS OF PEO|GREEO HOGS
Kept With Great Care But
When it Comes to
Children
The Records Are Not Kept
AS They Should be.
Many Children Are
Sacrificed Whose Lives Might he Saw
Iaws-Nngociic Customs.

Better record is kept in this coun-
try of pedigreed hog than of
child
\ record Is made Of hogs birth,
OF the events of its life and of it's
death. Yet in over half of the Unit
ed States human being can he born
ana can die without official record be
ing made of the event.
The United States Is nearly the
only civilized country which does not
collect vital statistics. The Census Bu
roau has striven for years to educate
the states To enforce the recording
of these most important statistics As
result record Is now kept of the
morality Of death statistics for about
10 q per cent Of the total population.
This year for the first time the birth
rate statistics for some OF the states,
will be published by the government.
The territory in which the morality
figures are recorded is almost wholly
i'm the northern part of the country SO
that IL is admitted by the Census ex-
pert that they are not a sound basis
upon which to estimate the nations
death rate particularly as the high
death rate of the negro population Of
the south is eliminated The birth rate
figures will not cover q large enough
portion of the total area of the coun-
try to allow any national estimate
This discrepancy in national stock
taking Is all the more striking be-
cause there is no other country in the
world where more effort is made to
record material resources. Every
l..aI Of ..I
ton of cotton is accounted for and
closely estimated long before it is har
vested. The yearly estimates of the
Agricultural Department and of the
Census Bureau on grains and farm
products are now brought within five
percent Of the actual figures
But not has stock ever been taken
of the annual national crop of babies.
An effort was made to secure an esti-
mate from Census Director Durand
1T Is somewhere around two and
half millions" he said, but so far
as that goes, anybody's guess is as
good as mine on those figures"
Ii Is impossible to tell without those
figures whether the so-called original
American stock is holding it's own
against foreign invasion. The dire
prophesies of the anti-race suicide ad
vocates are more hazards and will be
until they are based upon accurate
vital statctics.
The figures representing the death
rate in that zone i'm which mortality
statistics are accurately recorded GER
talnly point out a crying need for the
collection of this data throughout the
country.
1t is shown in these statistics that
the deaths of children under FIVE years
constitute q per cent of all the deaths
I'm the area,
This Is over half the total popula-
ton of the country, More than one
fourth of the American born popula-
ton never reach the age of five years.
Whose children are these that are
dying? Where is the harvest of death
greatest among them? Why are they
diving? This Information, say scien-
lists, would go long way toward
pointing out the necessary preventa-
ton methods for checking this wanton
infant waste
An eminent student of the public
health, DR., Irving Fisher claims
that at the present rate of infant
AZ percent of these that die
within their first year and 67 percent
of those that die between the ages
of and might be saved through n
knowledge of conditions
and a rigid enforcement of known
sanitary laws.
Every year the Census Bureau, the
National Medical association and