That with all these favorable conditions our infantile mortality should
so nearly approximate that of England, that of every thousand deaths
307.8 should be of children under five years of age—according to the
crude figures of the census, more if a correct registration upon the
same basis as the English figures could be had—is a matter of grave
national concern. If we make an arbitrary allowance of 20 per cent, to
account for the slight improvement shown by the death-rates and for
other differences, and regard 30 per cent of the infantile death-rate as
being due to socially preventable causes, instead of 50 per cent, as in
the case of England, we have an appalling total of more than 95,000
unnecessary deaths in a single year.
And of these “socially preventable” causes there can be no doubt that
the various phases of poverty represent fully 85 per cent, giving an
annual sacrifice to poverty of practically 80,000 baby lives. If some
modern Herod had caused the death of every male child under twelve
months of age in the state of New York in the year 1900, not a single
child escaping, the number thus brutally slaughtered would have been
practically identical with this sacrifice. Poverty is the Herod of
modern civilization, and Justice the warning angel calling upon society
to “arise and take the young child” out of the reach of the monster’s
wrath.