lth, Birmingham.

A few years ago, we turned to sanitary day nurseries, and to
pasteurized milk and other prepared baby foods, as the solution for
neglected or unhygienic feeding. To-day we know that even a dirty and
ill-conditioned mother secretes better milk for her baby than can be
prepared in any laboratory. We must wash the mother and feed her the
milk, and then let her give it to her baby, instinct with her own life.
It is quite possible that our recent talk of ignorant mother love and of
the necessary substitution of sanitary nurseries, canned care and
pre-digested affection must all go the same way. We shall probably get
our best results by cleaning up the home, enlightening the mother, and
then letting her love her child into the full possession of its human
qualities.

Economically, too, at least with factory workers, it is questionable if
their wages will support sanitary day-nurseries, with intelligent nurses
for small groups of children, and at the same time pay some one to cook
and scrub at home. If the mother must still cook and care for her house,
in addition to her factory work, the burden is too great; and if money
for nurses must come from the state, or from charity, then we all know
the danger of such subsidies to industry, in its effect on wages.

Surely the ideal toward which we must work is for the mother, during the
period when she is bearing and rearing children, to be supported by the
father of her children. Let her do the work meantime which will best
care for her children, and at the same time conserve and strengthen her
powers for the third period of her life.

This period, from fifty to seventy-five years, is now more shamefully
wasted than any other of our national resources. If one attends a State
federation of women's clubs one will find nearly every delegate of this
age. They are women of mature understanding and of ripe judgment, still
possessing abundant health and strength, and where relieved by economic
conditions from the necessity of manual work, they have to live such
irregular and uncertain relations to life as can be maintained by
mothers-in-law, grandmothers, club secretaries, and presidents of town
improvement societies. Remove all restrictions on woman's activity, and
these strong matrons would vitalize our schools, give us decent
municipal housekeeping, supervise the conditions under which girls and
women work in shops and factories, and do much to clean up our politics.