As far as one’s eye can reach they come. Coffins and coffins, and still more coffins; almost as many coffins as there were babies? Not quite. The Report repeats the evidence of the Medical Inspector of the Local Government Board for Poor-Law purposes, who some years ago made a careful inquiry and found that one baby out of every three died annually. “A long time ago,” did I hear you murmur, “and things are better now”? Would that it were so, but a more recent inquiry made by the Commissioners shows that “out of every thousand children born in the Poor-Law institutions forty to forty-five die within a week, and out of 8483 infants who were born during 1907, in the workhouses of the 450 Unions inquired into, no fewer than 1050 (or 13 per cent) actually died on the premises before attaining one year.” “The infantile mortality in the population as a whole,” writes the authors of the Minority Report, “exposed to all dangers of inadequate medical attendance and nursing, lack of sufficient food, warmth, and care, and parental ignorance and neglect, is admittedly excessive. The corresponding mortality among the infants in the Poor-Law institutions, where all these dangers may be supposed to be absent, is between two and three times as great.” “It must be the fault of the system, it is often said, that children, like chickens, cannot for long be safely aggregated together.” “It is difficult to say whether it is the system or the administration which is most to blame, but the facts are incontrovertible. In some workhouses 40 per cent of the babies die within the year. In ten others 493 babies were born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent, perished before they had lived through four seasons. In ten other workhouses 333 infants saw the light, and through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per cent of the whole.” This variation would appear to point to faults of administration. On the other hand, the system is contrary to nature; for the natural law limits families to a few children, and usually provides that King Baby should rule as sole monarch for eighteen months or two years. On this the Report says:--