The heavy death-rate in most foundling hospitals, despite all scientific care and the most elaborate equipment, have been accounted for by the lack of maternal interest and affection. In the splendidly appointed Infants’ Hospital on Randall’s Island New York City, little lonely, mother-sick foundlings pined away at an alarming rate and died like flies until the Joint Committee of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the State Charity Aid Association, investigated the matter. The Joint Committee wisely decided that every one of the bits of human driftwood was entitled to one pair of mother’s arms, and that no institutional ingenuity could ever take the place of the maternal instinct. They instituted a system of placing-out the children with foster mothers, and the results have been highly gratifying.[162] That is the human way, answering to the universal child-instinct for a mother’s love and presence. The same objection applies to _crèches_ as to foundling hospitals; the difference is only one of degree. These institutions are far better for the children than the neglect or the ignorant handling of “little mothers” from which they now suffer, but they can never compare in efficiency with the personal attention of the mother. There are few mothers, be they ever so ignorant, who would not attend their own children with greater efficiency than any institution nurses could do. In the ultimate result I am convinced that the pensioning of mothers to care for their children adopted by the French municipalities where the Socialists have obtained control is much more economical and effective. V The importance of impure milk as a contributing cause of infant mortality is now pretty generally recognized. The splendid work of Mr. Nathan Straus has done much more, perhaps, than anything else, to emphasize this fact. In view of some rather caustic criticisms of charity in the preceding pages, it may be well if I embrace this opportunity to explain my position somewhat more fully. No one, I think, recognizes more fully than I do the important experimental work which has been done by philanthropic enterprise. Such work, of which that of Mr. Straus is a conspicuous example, has blazed the path for much municipal and state enterprise. It would be impossible to overestimate the value of the work done by social settlements and such bodies. For the charity which denies justice and seeks to fill its place, I have no sympathy, but for the charity which adopts as its motto the fine phrase adopted by the ablest journal of philanthropy in America,[H]—“Charity to-day may be Justice to-morrow,”—I have nothing but praise. [Illustration: A “CLEAN MILK” DISTRIBUTING CENTRE IN A BAKER’S SHOP, ROCHESTER, N.Y. ]