our infants are born and reared. Thus William Hall, who has had
an intimate knowledge extending over fifty-six years of the slums
of Leeds, and has weighed and measured many thousands of slum
children, besides examining over 120,000 boys and girls as to
their fitness for factory labor, states (_British Medical
Journal_, October 14, 1905) that "fifty years ago the slum mother
was much more sober, cleanly, domestic, and motherly than she is
to-day; she was herself better nourished and she almost always
suckled her children, and after weaning they received more
nutritious bone-making food, and she was able to prepare more
wholesome food at home." The system of compulsory education has
had an unfortunate influence in exerting a strain on the parents
and worsening the conditions of the home. For, excellent as
education is in itself, it is not the primary need of life, and
has been made compulsory before the more essential things of life
have been made equally compulsory. How absolutely unnecessary
this great mortality is may be shown, without evoking the good
example of Australia and New Zealand, by merely comparing small
English towns; thus while in Guildford the infantile death rate
is 65 per thousand, in Burslem it is 205 per thousand.

It is sometimes said that infantile mortality is an economic
question, and that with improvement in wages it would cease. This
is only true to a limited extent and under certain conditions. In
Australia there is no grinding poverty, but the deaths of infants
under one year of age are still between 80 and 90 per thousand,
and one-third of this mortality, according to Hooper (_British
Medical Journal_, 1908, vol. ii, p. 289), being due to the
ignorance of mothers and the dislike to suckling, is easily
preventable. The employment of married women greatly diminishes