Saving the Future E VEN with all the advances of science
the French saying remains true, " Le lait et le coeur d'une maman ne se remplacent jamais " : this coming week is " Baby .Week "— the twelfth that has been held.
Babies are beginning to have what the economists call a " scarcity value," owing to the extraordinary fall in the birth-rate during the recent years. We have long been accustomed to point to the low birth-rate amongst our French neighbours as a remarkable fact. But our own birth-rate is now, and has been for several years, considerably lower than that of France, and it will doubtless fall further still. This means that, when a special danger arises, such as the epidemic of influenza early last year, the population of the country actually declines, as it did then. With so very low a birth-rate we really must keep down the death-rate if we want to maintain our population.
One other fact about a very low birth-rate is worth rioting. It is that the number of young people, as com- pared with old people in the population, tends steadily to decline. In technical language the age-constitution of the nation rises. We become a nation of middle-aged and elderly people—with middle-aged and elderly ways of thinking, or thinking we think. Women live longer than men, owing to their wiser habits and their superior vitality—not mere muscularity—with which Nature endows them for, motherhood. It would perhaps be too much to add that in consequence of these statistical facts we are rapidly turning into a nation of old women =but that indicates the tendency.
Clearly we must save our babies, who will recruit our youth. And we are doing so, in part. In 1902 one in seven babies died in their first year ; now it is one in fourteen. The " deadly third quarter of the year " is deadly no longer. The last horrible triumph of dirt, ialiot and dry summers, was in 1911: there has been no epidemic of summer diarrhoea .since the National Baby Week Council began its work. We see no more long-tube feeding bottles, in which dirt and the germs in dirt were incubated : we see fewer " comforters " (though still far too many) ; and we have fewer flies to spread infection, partly because we have fewer mews in, our cities. In the seasonal curve of baby deaths we have, abolished the " summer peak," but the " winter peak " remains.
: Dirty food used to kill babies in the summer, by disease of the food passages : dirty air and pollution of sunlight still kill babies in the winter, by disease of the air passages. The next thing to abolish is the winter peak of deaths from bronchitis and broncho-pneumonia.. The Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act, 1926, came into force on July 1st, 1927. Although the new Act does not deal as it should have done with the question, it still gives us a chance to reduce the smoke from factory chimneys. If we do, we shall save hosts of lives at all ages, but particularly we shall save many babies during the winter. For this end we must have enough citizens in every, city who will insist that the new Act shall be made to do its utmost to save our babies. Even if one-sixth of our present urban smoke were abated—and our rough guess is that perhaps, this may be achieved—much precious ultra-violet light from the sun would be restored to us, and rickets, the most typical example of what Dr. .Saleeby aptly calls the ".diseases of darkness," would be reduced. The results of the Act last winter were nil.
The first thing is to restore real sunlight to our lives, and to our children's. Having cleared the sky, we shall do well to use the new Vita-glass, so that it may do for our babies what it is already doing for baboons and lizards at the Zoo and for lettuces at Kew. But- we must not imagine that Vita-glass cal transmit ultra-violet light that is not there. We must watch our factory chimneys, in London or Manchester or Glasgow or else- where. Under the old Act of 1875, only " black " smoke could be made the subject of a prosecution ; but the new Act aboliShes that word, and we may control grey smoke as well as black. Let us see whether, next January and February and March, the long-maintained destruction of babies may not be abated by abating the smoke which has destroyed so many of their predecessors.
Meanwhile, we must use the summer sunlight for babies and also for their mothers. It is well always to protect the eyes and the head, and when beginning sun baths to hasten slowly. In hot weather, most of the babies in this country are ridiculously and injuriously over-clothed, deprived of air and sunlight, and devitalized by their own home-made heat, which their clothing does not ,allow them to get rid of. The provision of artificial sunlight in infant welfare clinics will not compensate the babies for such folly.
Appeals are often made to kind readers to aid worthy charities—to give children a day in the country, to support a hospital where rickety limbs may be straightened, and so forth. The National Baby Week Council does not compete with these charities and is not a charity at all. Yet it has a title to appeal to the kind-hearted, even though the Council is purely concerned with education. In this country we give many millions of pounds every year for charity. We might achieve more with our generOus hearts if we were a little harder-headed. Most of our charitable expenditure • is of a kind which must be for ever repeated. A tiny, t fraction of what we spend on palliation - would achieve marvels of prevention. The causes which kill many babies damage a great many more. We pay for that damage later, trying to patch up and prop up the broken little lives in hospitals and special schools and colonies. If we attack the causes of baby deaths we also avert a vast measure of diseased and damaged childhood. This is economy of money, an important consideration, but it is also economy of life, which is a transcendent consideration, and those who feel that in the future of young England lies the hope of the world might do well to send a contribution —small or large—to the Honorary Treasurer, National Baby Week Council, 117 Piccadilly, London, W.1. Nothing resembling a large income is required. The return in life and health is superb.
Previous page
