It is true that the cases reported from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, do not
represent completely "Americanized" families. This lack does not prevent
them, however, by their unceasing fertility from producing the Americans
of to-morrow. Of the more immediate conditions surrounding child-birth,
we are presented with this evidence, given by one woman concerning the
birth of her last child:

On five o'clock on Wednesday evening she went to her sister's house to
return a washboard, after finishing a day's washing. The baby was born
while she was there. Her sister was too young to aid her in any way.
She was not accustomed to a midwife, she confessed. She cut the cord
herself, washed the new-born baby at her sister's house, walked home,
cooked supper for her boarders, and went to bed by eight o'clock. The
next day she got up and ironed. This tired her out, she said, so she
stayed in bed for two whole days. She milked cows the day after the
birth of the baby and sold the milk as well. Later in the week, when
she became tired, she hired someone to do that portion of her work. This
woman, we are further informed, kept cows, chickens, and lodgers, and
earned additional money by doing laundry and charwork. At times her
husband deserted her. His earnings amounted to $1.70 a day, while a
fifteen-year-old son earned $1.10 in a coal mine.

One searches in vain for some picture of sacred motherhood, as depicted
in popular plays and motion pictures, something more normal and
encouraging. Then one comes to the bitter realization that these, in
very truth, are the "normal" cases, not the exceptions. The exceptions
are apt to indicate, instead, the close relationship of this
irresponsible and chance parenthood to the great social problems of
feeble-mindedness, crime and syphilis.