The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-07-27
DOMAIN OF TEMPERANCE
CONSERVATION OF THE CHILD.

what the memory of childhood will be
in after years to boys and girls whose
earliest recollections are of the war,
and perhaps of keenest personal suf-
fering and misery? But beyond this,
not the least of the tragedies OF this
world conflict have been the loss and
waste of child life. From the stat1stl-
clans of the central powers come re-
ports of decreased birth rate. The
first year of the war brought a heavy
increase in infant deaths in Great
Britain. The country took warning,
adopted proper preventive provisions,
with the result that in the succeeding
year the death rate among children
went below even that of peace times.
A campaign for "Children's Year"
has been planned by the United States
Children's Bureau with the definite
objects of reducing child sickness and
mortality, finding and scientifically
caring for the physical and mental de-
fectives, the delinquents and the neg
lected. Whether this campaign is to
include recognition of alcohol as 2
mains to be seen. AS yet it has re-
ceived little attention in published
reports of Investigations made under
the Children's Bureau. Certain facts
exist, however, and it will be the part
of those who know them to emphasize
this aspect of the child conservation
campaign both as a reason for saving
child life, and an important argument
for putting drink out of our national
life. Sound American children are
going to be an enormously necessary
asset to the nation for the next sew
enty-fve years at least.
Some 100000 babies die in the
United States every year before they
are year old. 1t is said, picturesque
ly, that it is safer to be a soldier in
the European war than baby in some
American cities. From 100000 to
100000 deaths of children under five
years of age are preventable. Out
side of deaths due to infectious dis
eases there is another class of causes
through which drink frequently oper-
ates. More children die, or fail to
develop normally in families cramped
in their living quarters. This is true
whether the investigation is made in
Great Britain or Germany or the
United States. In one investigation of
2,711 baby deaths, 1892 occurred in
one-room apartments; only 43 in apart
ments of four rooms or over. The
money reported as spent for drink in
some New York City families which
the investigators believed was consid-
erably less than the actual sum eX-
pended, if spent instead on rent would
have added, in each class of rent pay
ers, at least one room to the family's
home. Too few or crowded rooms
are unfavorable to child life and retard
development, as the child often fails
to get the proper amount not only of
light and air but also of needed rest
and sleep. rxI%1
Mothers who overwork before the
baby arrives or resume work too soon
afterward, mothers who have to help
support the family, lose more children
on the average. Overworked, perhaps
insufficiently fed, often obliged to
leave the baby to the inefficient care
of an aged person or of another child,
many of these mothers cannot do for
their children either as babies or grow
ing children what is necessary to keep
them well or properly developing.
The homes of small incomes lose
more babies. When the fathers in
come was less than ten dollars week
the Children's Bureau investigators
found the child mortality was almost
twice as great as when the father
earned twenty-five dollars a week.
Smaller income meant a home in a
poorer locality, in smaller, perhaps
less hygienic, house, less nourishing
food for mother and children, harder
worked mother who perhaps had to
work outside to piece out the family
income.
One does not have TO be a statisti-
clan to see that all these are condi-
lions which the use of drink by the
father or mother, or both, can help
create. Theoretically, we should eX-
pect to find more loss or impairment
Of child life in drinking homes. In
fact, practically all statistics on this
point show this to be true. The per-
centages vary; the fact is constant.
Sullivan found twice as many dead
babies proportionately in the records
OF drinking women as in those of their
sober women relatives. Demme found
five times as many chiIdrens deaths
in his ten Incorporate families as in
the ten temperate families. Lait-
linen found a death rate steadily in
creasing from 13 per cent in abstain
ers families up through moderate
drinkers to 80 per cent in heavy drink
ers' families. Goddard, studying the
family history of detectives, found
higher death rate where parents were
alcoholic. Animal experiments show
that the statistics are not mere coinci-
dence, for here, where external condi-
tions can be absolutely controlled, the
alcoholized animal parents also lost
more of their young.
On the social side, too, drink wastes
moral potentialities. The delinquent
child is the problem of Juvenile courts
and children's aid societies. Some
times these children are defective. If
SO, and they grow up in an alcoholic