The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-15

But how the subject theme may gang,
 Let time and chance determine;
 Perhaps it may turn out sang
 Perhaps turn out a sermon. Burns. @ NE out of every three children U born in the United States dies be-
 fore it reaches adult life. It is es- timated that more than one-half the chil- dren who die are sacrificed at the altar of ignorance.
 In spite of our boasted civilization and enlightenment, the great majority of mothers rear their children according to instinct Even the best educated women, with few exceptions, never read or study the accumulated Knowledge regarding the care and feeding of children, that has been written in books prepared for their use, and until recently the schools and colleges for girls and women never taught anything regarding the duties of mother hood. Men who expect to practice pro- fession or follow trade spend years in colleges, or as apprentices, fitting them- selves for their life's work; yet, women, the homemakers, who are engaged in the noblest calling in life, enter their duties as mothers without any training, more than that which they absorb from seeing their mothers work and drudge at home
 Goethe in his Law of Caste" wisely said "A race can rise no higher than it's mcthers" This idea accounts for the fact that in our land of the free and home of the brave" we have the best and greatest people that have ever lived; be- cause we have the purest the noblest, the best educated and the most highly re spected women in the world No race at any time in the history ever looked up to or revered it's women as do the Amer jeans, and they have made wonderful progress; yet when one considers the fact that more than 150,000 children die in the United States every year from digestive diseases that ought to be prevented, the need for educating girls for the duties of motherhood may be partially realized
 The ignorance regarding the feeding of children is as frightful as it is amazing. Go into the homes of even the best edu- cated people and see babies two and three years old sitting at the tables with their parents. eating heavy meats, cakes. syrup, and all sorts of rich foods, and the mother or father proudly boasts that my laby eats everything" The ceme- teries are filled with babies who "eat everything."
 It is a great deal worse with the poor, whose children drag around the mothers while they prepare the inferior quality of food in the most indigestible ways and the child after it leaves it's mothers breast shares in the family meal. It is often remarked by mothers of the we'll to-do class that they take care of their children, yet they are often sick, and that negro children, who have no attention paid them, and who have to shift for themselves, seem to have no trouble. The fact is that more than half the negro children die before they reach adult life. The children of the poor among the whites also suffer from digestive and ali sorts of diseases more than those of the better and educated classes.
 1 It is remarkable that people expect a | child to eat the same food as naduit. | Many do not seem to take into consider ation the fact that the digestive organs | of a child have not developed any more than their muscles or bones. Children or years old, with a few teeth and 1 who have never been taught to masticate l food are given nuts, pies, meats, or any l thing else that the adult members of | the family eat, and their parents wonder ] why their children are fretful, or why l they do not develop, or why they are not 1 healthy, or why they die.
 | Education is the remedy to prevent the
 ilis and to reduce the disgracefully high death rate among children When par I ents and educators realize that the men, tai training of a child consists in giving l them something more than the three l Rs," plus the classics and sciences for
 those who go to college, and when they learn that personal and family hygiene including the study of everyday things that keep us alive, like the things we cal and how to prepare them, then may we expect to save more of our babies ano then may we expect to rear stronger ano
 healthier children into happier and more
 efficient men and women.
 | Every girl, in every school and college
 in the land should be taught the duties ot motherhood including the care and feed ing of children. Every boy should be
 taught the principles of diet and nutri tion as well as personal and family I hygiene, and he should be made to know that it is as much his duty to do his part in rearing children and in making | home as it is to work and succeed in hi:
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