Feeding of Children

If it is necessary to be guided by the laws of nature, and to be systematic and accurate in the feeding of plants and the lower animals, such carets surely doubly incumbent on us in the rearing of human beings. Yet what do we find in practice In spite of the fact that suckling is the only perfect method of feeding any young mammal, it has become the exception, and not the rule, for human mothers to so nourish their own offspring. No farmer contends for a moment that he employs artificial feeding in the case of calves, because he thinks it as good as natural rearing. He knows that the calf which runs at its mother's heels has more spirit and vitality and greater resistiveness to disease than any hand-reared calf. There is more involved for both parent and offspring than mere identity in chemical composition of food. Nutrition given by the mother in the natural way is always best, and the wisest breeders will continue to let Nature have her way where they wish to keep their pure-bred stock at the highest pitch of health for the perpetuation and improvement of the best strains. When the farmer resorts to hand-rearing he does it simply because there is page 7 profit in removing butter fat valued at a shilling a pound and replacing it with vegetable starches and fats which cost him about a penny. But this is not the attitude or feeling of the mother who rears her child by means of a bottle. For the most part she is densely ignorant of the duties of maternity, and does not realise the injustice she is doing to herself and her offspring. She has no knowledge of or respect for the laws of Nature, and imagines that advertising charlatans have superseded Providence in the feeding of babies. Even cows' milk, which can be modified so as to serve reasonably well for the rearing of infants, becomes of secondary importance in her eyes to cheap vegetable substances, sold at high prices. The following table is more eloquent than anything I can say on the subject:—

Comparison of Dried Human Milk, Cows' Milk, and a Muchused Patent food for Infants.

	Proteids.	Fat.	Sugar, etc.
Human milk	13.5	29	57.5
Cows' milk	33	30	37
A much-used patent food	12	1	87

If mothers resent the trouble of using a thermometer, and deliberately and knowingly choose that their offspring shall draw in with their milk active living organisms to fight against them and weaken or kill them, the matter is one for the maternal conscience; no law intervenes to prevent the maiming or killing of children. The use of patent foods is even more fatal than the ordinary misuse of cows' milk. The table gives a clue to this. The 87 per cent, in the third column is not even sugar; it is mainly starch—a constituent that should not enter into the food of any young infant. One per cent, of fat as compared with 29 per cent, needs no comment.

I trust that the summary statement I have given of some of the more essential relationships between the requirements of plants and animals may serve to direct attention to the unity and simplicity of the laws of organic Nature and the need for rational education. In appealing to farmers we are appealing to that large section of our population to which we must look mainly for the development of our material resources, and the evolving of a strong, healthy, capable race. Civilisation is tending everywhere to undermine humanity, and, as I have said elsewhere, we have no reason to be proud of the fact that, apart from dairy calves (which we treat rather worse than our own offspring) there is no young creature in the world so ignorantly and cruelly nurtured as the average infant. There is no death rate in Nature arising from maternal neglect and improper feeding that can be compared with human infant mortality. In this colony alone a generally diffused knowledge and recognition of infant requirements and maternal duties would save to the community at least one life per diem, and would correspondingly increase the strength and vitality of the rest of the rising generation. Statistics reveal the appalling fact that with artificial rearing infant mortality may be as high as from five to thirty times the death rate of children nourished by their mothers. Yet careless bottle-feeding is still resorted to by the majority of women. In the face of such facts one could wish seriously that, as Zangwill suggests, infants should be allowed the privilege of selecting their parents; then, as he says, "When children begin to be fastidious about the families they are born into, parents will have to improve or die childless. ... In their anxiety to be worthy of selection by posterity, parents will rise to heights of health and holiness of which our sick generation does not dream. If they do not, woe to them! They will be remorselessly left to die without issue."