OUR BABIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 92, 13 December 1912, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.)

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” BRIBING THE PARENTS. "I he bribe of £5 a head now being paid by the Australian Commonwealth, not to the babies themselves for their benefit, but to the parents to do just as they please with, strikes one as being the most extraordinary, illogical and useless waste of public money that has ever been entered on in the name of childhood, but really for the sake of politics. The indignant Australian baby may well say, “Where do I come in?” Where does he come in! The bonus is paid alike to all: the / mother of the most wronged illegitimate infant can got hye pounds worth of, finery for herself, simply because she has imposed life on a little victim whom she may neither keep nor care for, and who enters our world tainted sometimes with cruel and incurable disease—a grave responsibility. for us; not for her. But, apart altogether from such cases, what good will the £5 bonus confer on any child—what fraction of the £IBOO a day, which the Australian cables inform us are now being paid out, will be spent on the baby, or, indeed, on anything tending directly or indirectly to the benefit or elevation of motherhood or babyhood ?

WILL THE BRIBE BRING MORE BABIES? Does anyone seriously think that the bonus is going to tempt even the most thoughtless couple in the world to deliberately incur an annual expenditure several times greater than the single sum of £5, receivable once for all? Is such a sum going to induce parenthood if a child is not desired on natural grounds ? One hundred pounds is a common affiliation award for the half-share responsibility of one parent. WHO HATCHED THE BONUS IDEA With singular unanimity, the newspapers have ascribed the live pound bonus to the exigencies of a political situation, and have freely referred to it as the five-pound bribe; but this conveys only the more immediate motive of the bonus, not the ultimate source of the idea. That lies deeper. ENDOWMENT OF PARENTHOOD.

The desire, genuinely and adequately, to endow parenthood has long been a dream of humaritarian statesmen; but probably Benjamin Broadbent, Mayor of Huddersfield, with his small cash reward inspiration, comes nearer than anyone else to being the originator of the idea which has borne such costly, strange, and grotesque fruit when grafted on to a different stock, under new conditions in Australia. As all the world knows, Mr Broadbent, some seven years ago, issued formal promissory notes to the people of Huddersfield, undertaking to pay a guinea to each mother who had a breast-fed baby alive at the end of 12 months. The result was an astonishing increase of breast-feeding, and a corresponding decrease in infant mortality. But the Mayor deserved and achieved much more than this. He did not limit himself to the mere issue of promissory notes; he earnqstiy studied questions bearing on the wellbeing of mother and child, and lectured and otherwise disseminated helpful information, thus arousing increased interest in the care of children-.

The guinea was offered as a reward and inducement for doing the best ■for the infant after it was born ; not as a bribe to give birth to a baby; and Small as was the sum promised, it actually proved effective. In the first place, the novel idea gained a hearing for sound, wholesome advice, directing attention to the mother’s health, and breast-feeding; and, in the second place, the guinea did prove an actual incentive to the suckling of babies in the case of the very poor population, for whom it was intended. It was quite natural, and, indeed, reasonable, of the indigent mother to say to herself, “Well, the Mayor has convinced me that breastfeeding is best and easiest for myfeelf and my child; and, since he offers if guinea into the bargain, I’m going to deserve and win it.”

One m«y safely say that each guinea spent by Benjamin Broadbent was likely to do more frond than an average hundred pounds of the largesse now being recklessly scattered broadcast by the'Commonwealth politicians; indeed, there is justification for the contention that in some directions the Australian bribe tends to be harmful and demoralising. Can anyone pretend to expect any benefit to the cause of higher motherpood and babyhood from such a scheme P THE NEW ZEALAND SCHEME. Contrast the above with what may be called the New Zealand scheme—-

in other words, the work of the Society for the Health of Women and Children—which liad its inception over seven years ago, and has gradually evolved into a broad public-health organisation, binding together the whole community in one sympathetic, self--I'cliant, co-operative effort for mutual aid and education in the claims and needs of motherhood and babyhood. With us, what is learned by the Blanket Nurses at the Society’s special Baby Hospital is convoyed by them to the local committees and to the mothers, and thus spreads from one household to another, aided by some 200,000 copies of “Our Babies” column appearing weekly throughout the press of the Dominion, and by the Society’s books and pamphlets/ To effect the above without State aid was scarcely to be expected, and the Society appreciates the generous support accorded by the Government, the subsidies now authorised amounting to rather over £2OOO a year. However, this sum suffices for a million of population, and it is not a sixtieth of the £125,000 a year that it would cost to merely pay a five-pound note per baby, without doing anything at all in the way of educating the community or appreciably bettering the lot of mother or child. The baby bonus is costing Australia £600,000 a year!

From first to last the Society has been particularly fortunate in receiving generous help from a number of public-spirited and humane people. The latest expression of this spirit is contained in the following letter, received last week by Dr Truby King, President of the Society, from Mr Joachim, General Manager of the Westport Coal Company A GENEROUS COMPANY. “Dear Dr. King,— “I am glad to hear you are going to lecture on the West Coast on the. Health of Women and Children, and that there will probably be a Pluukel Nurse established at Gr.eymouth. ’ I am, as you know, more especially interested in Westport and, its neighbourhood, and I feel confident that a nurse at Greyraouth will have as

much as ever she can do to manage that and the surrounding places without attempting to come to Westport. “I have done what I can to ameliorate the life of the workmen at our mines; but so far I have not been able to do anything for the workmen’s wives. Now, it seems to me that nothing can lighten the burden of life in the case of a married woman who has to bring up a family and to attend to her household duties so much as to give her the benefit of the Society’s system, to be taught first by yourself and Mrs King, and the teaching to be continued by a Plunket Nurse established in Westport, to take charge of that district, including Waimangaroa, Denniston, Burnett’s Face, Birchfield, Granity, Millerton, arid, if required, Mokihinui. To enable the necessary fund to be raised I api pleased to say that the Westport Coal Co. will subsidise locally by giving £ foi £ up to £IOO per annum for a period of three years, oii condition that the Nurse’s services are to be wholly given to the places named above. To start a local subscription," you can put me down for £lO for the preseni year.”