Infant mortality is also a social disease—“poverty and ignorance, the twin roots from which this evil springs.” There is a large measure of preventable ignorance, and in the efforts for the reduction of infant mortality the intelligent reaction of the tenement-house mother has been remarkably evidenced. In the last analysis babies of the poor are kept alive through the intelligence of the mothers. Pasteurized or modified milk in immaculate containers is of limited value if exposed to pollution in the home, or if it is fed improperly and at irregular periods. [Illustration] The need of giving the mother training seemed so evident that, in the course of lessons given on the East Side antedating our nursing service, I had demonstrated with a primitive sterilizer a simple method of insuring “safe” milk for babies. The settlement established a milk station in 1903, when one of its directors began sending milk of high grade from his private dairy. Following our principle of building up the homes wherever possible, the modification of the milk has always been taught there. The nurses report that it is very rare to find a woman who cannot learn the lesson when made to understand its importance to her children. [Illustration] Children under two years who show the greatest need are given the preference in admission to our clinic. Excellent physicians practicing in the neighborhood have contributed their services as consultants, and conferences are held regularly. In 1914 the number of infants cared for was 518 and the mortality 1.8 per cent. The previous year, with 400 infants, the mortality was one-half of one per cent. The Health Commissioner of Rochester, N. Y., a pioneer in his specialty, founded municipal milk stations for that city in 1897. He states that the reduction of infant mortality that followed the establishment of the stations was due, not so much to the milk, but to the education that went out with the milk through the nurse and in the press. In 1911 New York City authorized the municipalization of fifteen milk stations, and so satisfactory was the result that the next year the appropriation permitted more than the trebling of this number. A nurse is attached to each station to follow into the homes and there lay the foundation, through education, for hygienic living. A marked reduction in infant mortality has been brought about and, moreover, a realization, on the part of the city, of the immeasurable social and economic value of keeping the babies alive. The Federal Children’s Bureau in its first report on the study of infant mortality in the United States showed that, in the city selected for investigation, the infant death rate, in those sections where conditions were worst, was more than five times that in the choice residential sections.