Maternity and Child Welfare : a Plea for the Little
Ones. With Illustrations from the Bradford Scheme. By E. J. Smith. (P. S. King and Son. ls. net.)—Mr. Smith, the Chairman of the Health Committee of the Bradford Corporation, is evidently sincerely anxious to remedy the evils of ignorance and poverty, and so help to raise up a vigorous generation, strong for the work of Empire. In this we can all agree; but when, remarking as he does on the dangers of bureaucracy and on the supreme importance of individual character, he advocates measures which will increase the power of the former and, in our opinion, inevitably weaken the latter, we commend his good intentions, but differ from his conclusions. In this little book he tells us of the well-organized and efficient work of the Bradford scheme of relief, and shows us pictures of the fine buildings in which the babies who have come half starved into existence are fed and nursed into more vigorous life, If this help, excellent, even indispensable, as it is in present circumstances, were provided, as are the voluntary hospitals, out of the savings of the charitable, we could have nothing but admiration for the people who direct it; but when we consider that the payment for all these things comes out of the rates and taxes, and so lessens the already insufficient wages of the very poor, we cannot help feeling that the wretched, suffering women are paying the municipality for the consulta- tions, the milk, the food, and the kindness, which they think they get for nothing, as really, though not as obviously, as they do the shopkeeper who sells them furniture on the hire- purchase plan, a system which Mr. Smith here characterizes as " damnable."
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