The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-04-06

1 Or they say that it accompanies a high birth rate or is inseparable from living
 in large towns.
 Now, the registrar generals figures
 show that every one of these ideas l has truth in it. Year after year, Sh | Arthur Newsholme has examined the fig
 ures to see which of these truths is 1 truest, and has persuaded the centra government or the local authorities or pri- vate persons to carry out further eXperi-
 ments on infant life saving and report
 or them. And he has begged for and ob- | tained always more and more figures. 1 When America goes dry the effect 1 on infant life will be very marked, and it be of greatest value to social reform- 1 CTS to notice whether the improvement I is most seen in the cases of rates rela- tively high or relatively low. A Brit l ish inquirer found very marked differ ence in the children of drunkards ac- coiding to whether they were born before 1 or after the parents took to drink, but i if the whole family of drinking parents was Jumped together their physique seemed to be superior to that of children of sober people. This shows the difficul. ty of devising methods of dealing with figures which shall not confuse the ef- fects of heredity with those of environ Tnent. Ns
 Another difficulty of infant mortality statistics is that much more information is available as to the fathers than the mothers of children, yet the mother is much more important factor in a child's life than the father.
 A new addition to the figures which
 enable the statistician to calculate the
 chi1d's chances for life is the age of his
 mother at birth. The census figures of Great Britain get somewhere near this
 by recording the mothers age at mar
 rage and the number of her children.
 So far the results have not furnished
 my very exact clue to the subject, compl:-
 cated as it is by the probability that
 very young mothers are inexperienced
 and much older women may have their
 hands so full with elder children that
 they cannot spare sufficient time for the
 new baby. This is one of the subjects
 which Sir Arthur Newlsholme indicates
 as worthy of discussion but has not fully
 considered.
 To return for moment to the connec-
 ton between low birth rate and low
 infant mortality. The cases of Russia and New Zealand, taken by themselves. make out very strong case for the in terdependence of these figures. But the
 Frehch figures give us pause, and the figh death rate and low birth rate of Paris alone warn one of error. And con- pairing different districts of England and Wales we find that high deathrates are nearly as prevalent in areas of low birth rates as in those that have a high birth figure It is true that the richer residential quarters of the towns have both low, but that seems to be a characteristic of wealth. Extreme poverty frequently has both high. But poor quarters of London-Tot- tenham and Edmonton-have low death rates in spite of many births and pre- vailing poverty. So has rural Ireland.
 Enough has been said to show the importance of such calculations as Sir Arthur Newsholme has been able to make by patient isolating one after another of the factors that make for life or death of the nations children. When one fac tor is isolated and its value provision ally fixed we can proceed to isolate and value another. and in time perhaps we shall find the ideal surroundings for child born in town and obliged to live in a town. That is the crying need of the day for America as for England. We cannot all go back to live in the healthy country, and where we live our children must live. Which of the rural are really important to them, and how many of them can be repro duced in towns? How much effort in lhe way OL DdUy CililiCS dHu tuliu- welfare will be needed to counteract the town atmosphere? Where is the point at which the mothers additional earnings are less valuable to the child in procuring food than her care in personal ministra- tion to him? All these are urgent ques- tions; all are on their way to solution. The two English-speaking nations should help each other to solve them, for unti: they are settled we are both gambling ui th oy1f fIIf11re ir tho dark