formidable
of the social bases. An administrator of landed estate who should
sell the property belonging to his master, make money out of it for
his own enjoyment, and leave the rightful owner in the direst poverty,
is a criminal difficult to imagine. For who would buy a property
without the signature of the owner? Society is so constituted that
certain crimes would not only be punished if committed, but are almost
impossible to commit. Yet in the case of young infants, this crime is
committed every day, and is not regarded as a crime, but as a luxury.
What can be a more sacred right than that of the baby to his mother's
milk? He might say of this in the words of the Emperor Napoleon: "God
has given it to me." There can be no doubt whatever as to the
legitimacy of his claim; his sole capital, milk, came into the world
with and for him. All his wealth is there: strength to live, to grow,
to acquire vigor are contained in that nourishment. If the defrauded
infant should become weak and rickety, what would become of him,
condemned by poverty to a hard calling? What a claim for damages, what
a question of accident during work with permanent injury resulting
therefrom might be raised if some day the infant could present himself
after the manner of a man before the tribunal of social justice!

In civilized countries rich mothers have been induced to suckle their
children because hygienists have proved that this is beneficial to the
baby's health, but not because it has been recognized that the "civil
right" of the adult extends to the infant. These mothers consider
countries where the wet nurse is still an institution as less _highly
developed_, but on the same plane of civilization as their own.

It may be asked: what if the mother is ill and _unable_ to suckle her
child? In such a case the child of the sick woman is the unfortunate
one. Why should another have to suffer for his misfortune? However
poverty-stricken individuals may be, we do not allow them to take from
others the wealth that is so urgently needed by them. If in these days
an Emperor could be cured of terrible sufferings by immersion in a
bath of human blood, he could not bleed healthy men for the purpose as
a barbarian Emperor would have done. These are the things that make up
our civilization. This it is which differentiates us from pirates and
cannibals. The rights of the adult are recognized.

But not the rights of the infant. [1] What an implication of