The Washington herald., 1912-07-28
Battle to Sape Lives
OF East Side Babies
New York with Its Heartless Commercial Side
Is United on One Subject, and That Is,
Keep Alive the Children.

New York. July T:-The mothers Of
New York's East Side are again In the
clutch of the old terror-the excessive
heat wave. Mothers with infants and
babies facing their desperate second
summer are living in frantic fear. They
realize full well that before the heat
ahates hundreds of little lives will be
snuned out and the question is con-
stantly before them, Whose child will
1t beT'
Despite the great and energetic efforts
OF organized societies and personal phi
lanthropists looking to the relief Of the
East Side children there is no human
power that can prevent hundreds of
them from succumblng to this hot breath
OF summer, which annually garners its
harvest OF young and old
with the mercury doggedly hanging
around 100 degrees and no assurance of
immediate relief the Eas. Side does in
deed present pitiful spectacle While
thousands of children and their mothers
have been taken to the seaside, there
seems to be no diminution IN the throngs
that people the inadequate parks and
breathing spaces of the East Side, of
mothers that sit at open windows fran
tically tanning their naked young. and
of the old who walk restlessly about,
pathetically seeking shady places that
often are already usurped by the younger
and stronger.
Response Always Comes.
But New York has never failed to re-
spond magnificently to the appeal COM
ing from her suffering East Side Every
year the city puts forth increased eff
forts to alleviate the sorrows Of that
teeming section. and while Il Is inevitable
that many babies will die this sum-
mer that might have been saved, II is
equally true that thousands will be saved
that might have died but for the succor-
ing care afforded by the city, by chari !
table organizations. and by private indi- |
viduals. This work has become so well
and and has grown to such |
vast proportions that II is not stating /
more than the truth to say that every |
sick baby on the East Side can receive |
medical attention without cost, and that |
before the summer is over every needy |
child can have a trip to the seashore.
II there is one thing on which the
great city OF New York is united, that
binds the metropolis together as by |
a golden thread, II Is the love Of babies.
In New York. the baby is king. or queen.
as the case may be- To save the lives
OF its babies Is New Yorks greatest mu-
nfcipal enterpr1se-an enterprise amount
ing almost to a civic passion. And since
most of its babies are on the East
Side and conditions there make their
chances Of life more precarious than
elsewhere, Il is therefore on the East
Side that New York concentrates most
CT its work OF conservation of the |
young.
Many Health Stations.
II one has lost his respect for
the great metropolis through believing
hat It is too commercially hardened to
interest itself in the needs OF the poor
The East Side on any of these hot mid
-ious points health stations with East
Side mothers focking to them as to a
larbor of refuge. with sick. crying In
ANTS. seeking aid and comfort from the
skilled female physicians whom the city
has placed there. And from each one
II these stations go out a corps of
nurses, under the doctors directions,
isiting homes, IL those seething tene-
nents can be called homes. where mere
ire sick babies.
The chief boon the city offers TO the
Eas. Side during the summer months.
iside from the health stations, Is the
rec municipal baths. These baths are
throughout the district Eacn
me is supplied with a stan of attend
nts. The baths are Carefully Inspected
md kept in a sanitary condition.
The borough of Manhattan also has
rec baths OF Battery Park, where the