we
find a total of thirteen mothers out of every thousand dying in
childbirth, with an estimate from physicians that with proper care
two-thirds of these women could have been saved. A competent mother,
then, physically speaking, means not only one measurably strong but
one sufficiently cared for to prevent overstrain before the
birth-hour. Again, in New York State alone, we find that eighty-six
babies out of every thousand die before they reach the end of their
first year. This may be from ignorance on the mother's part, or it may
be from her physical weakness unequal to the care of the new baby. It
may be there are already too many children near that baby's age who
also make heavy demands upon time and energy. It may be that
discouragements from unhappy family conditions or worry over economic
disabilities sap the mother's vitality. It may be that taints of blood
doom the child and the mother. Whatever the cause, it is reason for
deep concern that a great state, like New York, for example, has a
rate of infant mortality nearly twice as high as that of New Zealand
and ranking eleventh in the twenty-three states of the registration
area in which the death of babies is set down with care. When we add
to this loss the death of at least 25,000 women each year in
childbirth, most of whom could have been saved under right conditions,
we are still more concerned. Of the 250,000 babies lost last year we
are safe in estimating at least one-half whose lives could have been
spared with even a minimum care. The effort now making all along the
line of social advance to give every child a decent start in life is
obviously necessary and wise.

If the mother is proved wholly incompetent in mind or character we
have acquired a social right to take her child from her and place it
where it can receive better nurture and training. We are beginning to
recognize the corollary duty of social aid to all women of good
character, motherly feeling, and any fair degree of intelligence in
their function of motherhood. There are those hopelessly incompetent
who should never be allowed to have children. There are far more with
power to bear and rear children successfully whom adverse
circumstances submerge to incompetency. These, we are now learning,
must be helped in some way, for society's sake even more than for
their own, if they are willing to undertake parental service to the
race.

The passage of the so-called Sheppard-Towner Bill is one a