The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1918-05-06
Doing War Work At Home
(By Mrs. Max West. }

Women who are shut out of many
of the more dramatic forms OF war
service because their domestic duties
are exacting and make frequent or
long-continued absence from home
impossible have a special part to
play in Children's Year, the Govern
ment campaign to save 100000 ba-
bies and get a square deal for chill
dren.
The Federal Government, through
the Children's Bureau, U. S. Depart
ment of Labor, is asking particular
ly of mothers a patriotic service
which will demand the united eff
forts of a great many American wo-
men for the year. The work began
on April 9Th, 1918, but it will go on
far beyond the years limits; for its
purpose is to make the children grow
up strong in mind and body, able
to carry on" The third of our
population who are children today
will soon be men and women who
must take their part in the gigantic
tasks of reconstruction after the
war-tasks which civilization and de
mocracy demand shall be well done.
About one-third of the drafted
men examined for the army in this
country are rejected for physical de-
fects, many of which might have been
prevented or cured in infancy and
early childhood if the parents had
understood how it could be done.
And the defects which disqualify a
man for service in the army hamper
him in civil life as well.
Is it not obvious that a nation
which learns that so great a proper
ton of it's young manhood is in some
thing less than normal physical con-
dition and that large part of such
weakness was easily to have been
prevented is blind and stupid if it
permits such conditions to go on
unchecked? So mothers especially
are asked, as a patriotic service, to
help make the citizenship of the flu
ture strong, efficient, unhandicapp-
ed by bodily imperfections. Moth
ers and fathers have not always been
able to get for their children the ad-
vice of doctors and skilled nurses in
guarding their children's health and
in caring for the ailments that seem
little and not worth bothering about.
In this way many slight physical
handicaps have been allowed to de-
velop into serious defect. But the
knowledge which we now have that
such defects can often be prevented
hopeful the, work which mothers
can do in safeguarding the condi-
lions under which the present gen
Grafton of children is growing up.
This is no small task which the
rvy cd
to undertake. More than 10000
900 children under five years of age
in the United States are just passing
through the physically most hazard
Gus years of the whole span of life.
Mothers can do more for them now
than can be done at any other per-
iod to correct durable defects and es-
pecially to start them along the
road to normal and healthy develop
ment by proper food, careful atten-
ton to their hygiene, and by keeping
close watch over them that war con-
ditions shall not interfere with their
welfare And very often what their
mothers can do for them now will de-
termine their future usefulness as
citizens.
In our work for Americas babies
we have England's splendid record
before us; for by resolutely safe
guarding her mothers, infants, and
young children England brought her
infant death rate for the second
year of the war down to 81 deaths
for every 1000 births-a point low
er than has ever been recorded be-
fore in that country, and, inciden-
tally, one which is several points
lower than the average even in time
of peace for the part of the United
States for which figures are avail
able.
What are the dangers that threat
en- children-dangers made more
than ever threatening by the strain
OF war conditions? What can mo-
theirs do to combat them? These
are questions which will be discuss
ed from time to time in this paper.
The garbage pail is one of our
most expensive luxuries," declares
State Food Administrator Baetjer.
But every day is seeing less waste
from the annual garbage crop of
twenty billion pounds. The hogs
and the reduction plants are divid-
ing an immense amount of it since
the beginning of the national cam
paign to show it's immense value in
army supplies.