The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1916-11-30
Can You Prove Your Birth?
By FREDERIC J. HASKlN

actually prove to the satisfaction of
ary court that yOn are Mary Brown or
Hiram Jones or whatever you may
claim to be? This is what a young
Indiana girl failed to do not long ago,
and thereby lost legacy of $4,000.
Her story reads like a highly colored
nightmare.
She was the daughter of a Swiss
father and an American mother who
settled some time ago in Indiana. When
she was three years old her father was
killed in a mill accident, and her mother
LETT penni.ess was compelled to seek
work as q Iaundress. After many years
of hard work and bleak poverty, word
was received shat the girls uncle had
left his brothers child twelve thousand
dollars, the only condition being that
she prove her identity. Upon Investiga-
ton the girl found that her birth had
not been recorded; that the doctor who
no witnesses nor evidence of any kind
could be produced to prove her claim
other than her mothers word, which
alone was insufficient. The money went
to other relatives.
Now if Indiana had possessed an eff
fectlve birth registration law, this could
never have happened. The girls birth
would have been recorded on the reg
istrar's books and the Swiss govern
ment would have accepted such evil
dence. Unfortunately, however, In
diana is not the only state that is renIss
il matters of this kind. The United
States as a whole has the worst birth
registration records of any civilized
country in the world. Only 50 states
have enacted passable birth registration
laws, and even these do not meet the
census requirements. Great Importance
is attached to the marriage certificate.
and certificates of death are always in
sisted upon, but it Is safe to say that
at least third Of the people of the
United States have not the slightest
idea whether their records of birth have
been preserved or not.
The Importance of systematic regis
tration is illustrated by the fact that
last year nearly two hundred thousand
people applied to the registrars office
in New York for copies OF their birth
records to be used in settling legal dis
putes. Questions of age, citizenship,
Inheritance and genealogy, that are con-
tinually coming up, can be settled only
by the birth certificate. Only few
months ago an American girl, having
reached the age of twenty-one, applied
to her guaradin for the money which by
her grandmother will was to go to
her on her twenty-first birthday. For
reasons of his own the guardian refused
to deliver the money, stating positively
that his ward was only nineteen. If
the Young woman had not possessed
birth certificate which showed that she
was twenty-one. she would have had
< 4Cab ullllSullf COuSSllIS lltI lCSdSNs
For the past two years the United
States Children's Bureau, in coopera-
ton with the Census Bureau, has been
waging an active campaign for better
birth registration. The Children's
Bureau is urging the cooperation of
the various states in the passage of
uniform birth registration laws, and in
this it has been ably seconded by the
National Federation of Women's Clubs,
which have conducted tests in cities all
over the country. In New Orleans this
year the clubwomen investigated five
thousand births that had not been reg
istered; and in Florida and California
house-to-house canvasses were made in
which the number of unrecorded births
was so high that the legislatures were
moved to action and passed laws max
ing birth registration compulsory.
But the most effective method of
securing the registration of every birth
throughout the country is through the
Individual. The matter should not be
left to the physician who is usually a
very busy man and apt to forget it; it
should not be left entirely to the census
taker, who is not infallible, but it
should be taken care of by the parents
of the child, whose interests are at
stake. On the day the child is born
notice of his birth should be sent to the
city registrars office. If it is put off,
the matter may be forgotten.
A few places in this country, how
ever, have exceptionally fine systems
of birth registration in which very few,
if any, births escape the authorities.
In.New York City, for example, every
city inspector carries blank inspection
report, one side of which is birth reg
istration form. When man inspects
the plumbing or water pipes he also in