The preservation of child life must depend largely upon the dissipation of maternal ignorance. Until mothers are enlightened, the infantile death-rate must remain needlessly and unnaturally heavy. And so long as industrial occupations absorb our young girls in the very years which should be spent at home in practical training for the responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, there must continue to be a very large number of marriages productive of poverty, misery, and disease, because of the ignorance and inefficiency of the wives. So the fight against maternal ignorance, the ignorance which breeds disease and poverty, appears as an almost Sisyphean task. So long as such industrial conditions prevail, ignorance will continue to sap the foundations of family life and mock our efforts at reform. In such important matters of domestic economy as knowledge of food values and how to spend the family income to the best advantage, what but failure can be expected when a young woman worker graduates from mill labor to wifehood? Even where such a young woman, or girl growing into womanhood, feels the need of training in these important matters of domestic economy, she is prevented by the fact that the family cooking and buying are necessarily done during the hours she is at work. By the time she returns home after her day’s labor, little or nothing remains to be done except washing the dishes. Even were it otherwise, she would in most cases be too tired to help. After confinement in a shop or factory for ten or twelve hours, at monotonous tasks entirely devoid of interest or attractiveness, it is natural and right that she should seek recreation and pleasure. Further confinement, either in the home or a school, is extremely liable to prove injurious. [Illustration: PACKING BOTTLES OF “CLEAN MILK” IN ICE BEFORE SENDING THEM TO THE CITY, ROCHESTER, N.Y. ]