urvival
of daughters of mothers unable to nurse, and transmitting their
inability to their children. Mrs. Gilman--having ignored menstruation
altogether--makes only one allusion to this vastly important subject,
and we shall see to what extent her sanguine assumption is justified.
According to her, "A healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood should
be able to keep up this function (of nursing) longer than is now
customary--to the child's great gain." There can be no question about
the child's great gain; but what is the evidence for supposing that a
mother earning her own living in free competition with men--which is
what a "healthy, happy, rightly occupied motherhood" means in this
connection--can thus spend her energies twice over, unlike any other
source of energy known?

According to official statistics, maternal lactation is steadily
decreasing in several German cities, notably in Berlin, where only 56.2
per cent. of infants under one month were suckled by their mothers in
1905, as against 65.6 per cent. in 1895, and 74.3 per cent. in 1885. At
nine months of age 22.4 per cent. were suckled in 1905, 34.6 per cent.
in 1895, 49 per cent. in 1885. Other towns show more favourable results;
a general decrease, however, is marked. These facts cannot be ascribed,
according to the author,[21] to a growing disinclination to
breast-feeding, nor to the employment of mothers (in Prussia only 5 per
cent. of the married women are employed in manufacture). The question
whether the decrease in breast-feeding is due to the industrial
employment of women before marriage, or to (inherited) degeneration,
remains to be determined.

According to a recent statement by Professor von Bunge, the conditions
are very similar now in Switzerland, where only about one mother in five
can nurse her children.

Similar evidence could be cited from other sources, and the fact being
admitted must evidently be reckoned with.

That the modern development of infant feeding will serve to replace
natural lactation, must be denied, and this without prejudice to the
magnificent work of the late Professor Budin of Paris and Professor
Morgan Rotch of Harvard. These pioneers and their followers have devised
some admirable second bests--admirable, that is, relatively to some of
the pitiable methods which they have superseded, but relatively to the
mother's breast not admirable at all. At the beginning of the campaign
against infant mortality, the creche a