The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1916-09-09
PROTECT THE MOTHER
BY Giving Her the Ballot, Urges Miss
lula LathrOp.

Atlantic City, N. j., Sept. 9.--Miss
Julia Lathrop, chief of the national chill.
dren's bureau, speaking on "Mothers in
Politics., at last nights session of the
National American Woman Suffrage as
ISOLATION pleaded for suffrage for women
"to protect maternity and infancy-a
question of national policy"
She said:
81 am not to offer an address upon suf-
frage in general nor upon the rights of
mothers which they may claim on the
general basis of citizenship, but only to
speak of one particular aspect of the
rights of mothers which has been
strangely overlooked and to tell you why
/ believe that the votes of woman would
undoubtedly be used to protect mothers.
Whatever primarily concerns
mothers must also concern everybody.
"When men Began to struggle for the
ideal of democracy it was such hard work
that they had no time or strength OF
mind to think of women as individually
interested in the same ideal. Women
were taken for granted as part of the
equipment or impedimanta of mems lives
and their special interests, duties and
hazards were regarded by men with in
difference and by women with fatalism.
"This state of mind has unconseiously
persisted against all the changes of civil
ization and now suddenly and wonder
fully we have become conscious. 1t is
Ike the breaking-up of hard winter.
Now we have warm human soicitude on
the part of men, demand for education
on the part of the women-an education
which is demanded not as an individual
right or privilege, but as a social duty.
Gas the children's bureau has worked |
forward with its series of infant mortal |
ity studies, again and again the indivis |
ible connection between the well-being of |
the mother and child has been shown in
some new aspect.
Most of us have a complacent feeling
that the grave risks of maternity are at
an end, yet a study of mortality rates
for a period OF from 1900 to 1918 reveals
no decrease in the maternal mortality.
Why is this? Since the discoveries of
Pasteur and Lister and DIR. 0. w. Holmes,
it has been recognized that the cases of
are preventabl BILE by sheer scien-
tife cleanliness. All the other varying
causes of maternal mortality are not so
simply treated although in steadily
growing measure it is found that they
can be made to yield to scientific skill.
Other preventable causes of death have
yielded in this l3-year period to the
of our day; the typhoid fever
death rate, the diphtheria rate have been
cut in half, death from tuberculosis
greatly lessened, yet no appreciate di
in maternal mortality, although
the method of preventing infection and
lever has been available longer than the
control of diphtheria. Last year it is
estimated upon the census figures for the
registration area that $4,000 women died u
rom the various complications of child l
bearing, and an American authority has I
3aid lately that 10000 is nearer the true
igure.
If nature relentlessly exacted this I
,ost Of keeping the race alive, we should ,
lot urge votes for women as a remedy;
,ut she does not. Nature wants mothers a
o live, to care for their children, to be 7
lappy with them, and to give happiness.
'Women are told to stay at home and ?
are for the children. Let us make it ;
possible for them to do so. Do the wom- a
n who 60 daily to work in a mill leav- a
ne babies at home to die at a rate three II
old greater than the babies of richer q
Mothers; do they leave their homes out {,
f sheer perverse joy in the emancipated g
fe of the free woman? Let the infant II
nortality reports answer. Let US put n
ourselves to the task of setting up II
tandard of protection for the life of u
lother and child and then dedicate our
elves to securing that protection for se
very mother" i