Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-07-04
The Problem of the Stork
From the New York Times.

1t scarcely needed the high adventures of
Bobby Ash to tell US that a baby is the most
interesting object in nature or civilization.
Found in an ashcan five months ago, Bobby was
broker, cared for by nurse, swaddled in lux
ury, and aired in an automobile. But legal
technicaities interviewed, and Bobby must now
be returned to the New York Nursery and
Child's hospital This romantic story has been
chronicled in the press together with somewhat
less romantic stories about the former crown
prince and the devious adventures OF the peace
treaty.
1t is not without significance that Bobby
was found in an ashcan. Most modern babies
are like the hero of Oscar Wilde's farce, who
was found as an abandoned bundle in railway
of the Franco-Prussian war the population of
France and Germany was about the same ap-
proximately 100000. In 1914 Germany had
almost doubled in population. while France had
remained virtually stationary. In the United
States the birthrate is markedly tending toward
that of France, and also in Great Britain,
though more slowly. In all three countries the
shrinkage is largely among salaried brain work
ers-the folk who are SO often proclaimed as
the mainstay of the nation. Only the 'prole-
tariat" is still prolific.
The intelligent and well-to-do, meantime,
seem more interested than ever in babies.
Founding homes are besieged by married folk
eager to adopt nameless infants, Some years
ago farce was written about woman who
tried to palm off a founding upon her husband
as his own child. Its popularity amazing,
here and in England. Eventually it received
what, for farce amounts to apotheosis: it was
made into a musical comedy. One touch of
baby made the whole world grin. But some
where and somehow. obviously, things are 60
ing wrong. The world of free institutions has
defeated the German army and the German
navy, but the German baby goes marching on.
T. Ioa he1o Alo, L: Ga, -. -
not military but Industrial Against armed
power the world is united in resolue and tri-
umphant will, but against swarming multitude
of hands and brains it will be powerless unless
it meet like with like.
Our shortcoming, doubtless, it attributable
to the stork. In the distribution of his favors
among US the silly bird must be made more
general, and indeed more generous. Of old he
had no prediction for ashcans His favorite
haunts were the houses Of the bourgeoisie, on
whose chimney-tops he nested, a cartwheel be-
ing perched there for his convenience. The
landlords of our apartment houses are not at
present in a very suggestible mood, but really
there should be cartwheel on the roof for
each tenant.
If the landlord is obdurate, he should be
voted down. And he can be, for this is mat
ter in which the newly enfranchised woman is
specially interested. cropping male once con-
hded to a feminist leader certain doubts as to
the natural destiny of woman. Did it not lie
outside and above the arena of politcs-as the
priestess and guardian of the race of its health
and its welfare, physical, mental and moral?
The answer had no dubious sound. "Funda-
mental problems" this leader replied "such as
race suicide. eugenics, celibacy, etc, are beside
the suffrage question. If any one hopes to
solve them through suffrage, he is on the wrong
path No sufragist, however uniformed, would
hold such premises" But victory brings the
calmer mood, the saner and more tolerant out
look
In Los Angeles they have ostrich farms the
live stock of which yield abundant plumes for
women. Is it possible to convert these farms
into universities for the stork, and there teach
him to improve his nesting? "Not feathers but
babies" should be the words on their escut-
cheons The problem is difficult one. Though
the commercial product of the ostrich is vanity,
his nature is amenable to discipline; he stays on
the ground. Your stork, though he deals in
the commodity most essential to human hap
piness and progress, seems somehow to be a
vain and Eighty creature.