300,000 Babies Die Each Year.
Danbury News-Times. 300,000 Babies Die Each Year., Keeler-Bailey Family, 1828-1928, accessed September 14, 2026, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka-s/s/familydrama/item/1346
- Title
- 300,000 Babies Die Each Year.
- 300,000 Babies Die Each Year. Connecticut Loses 108 out of Each 1,000---Baby Week Plans to Remedy This.
- Date
- February 21, 1916
- Creator
- Danbury News-Times
- Bibliographic Citation
- Local Baby Week Committee (Danbury, CT). “300,000 Babies Die Each Year: Connecticut Loses 108 out of Each 1,000—Baby Week Plans to Remedy This.” In: Danbury News-Times (Feb. 21, 1916).
- Description
- Newspaper article discussing infant mortality, as part of the 1916 Baby Week campaign.
- Text
-
300,000 Babies Die Each Year.
Connecticut Loses 108 out of Each 1,000---Baby Week Plans to Remedy This. 1916 Feb 21.
Enthusiasm marks the advance of the nation-wide Baby Week campaign. Texas has its own Baby Week slogan--``Baby Health is Texas Weath'' and Mississippi has started a competition for a slogan for that state. North Dakota reports plans for a state-wide essay contest in the public schools.
The local committee calls attention to the fact that the Baby Week campaign is a community campaign and says, ``It is of infinite interest to all to remedy the great lost of infant life. Men of all callings as well as women can feel it tugging at their hearts, heads and consciences if they pause but a second to contemplate what 300,000 deaths of babies each year in the United States means. All the officials of the various cities engaged in the work of preventing the deaths of the little strangers who come to gladden homes, cheer hearts and comfort parents are co-operating and working with enthusiasm to bring about satisfactory results in lowering infant mortality.''
A very successful Baby Week campaign is expected in Danbury between March 4 and 11, and the promoters of the campaign say they hope it will not end there, but that its influence will be far reaching and its results be manifest on the town records.
Just prior to his death Dr. Joseph H. Townsend, the secretary of the state board of health, became earnestly interested in the forth-coming campaign and under date of December 27, 1915, he wrote as follows to a member of the local committee:
The nation-wide Baby Week to be held in March is a large work. I would like to do anything I can to help along this movement and will give the matter publicity in our monthly bulletin.
The annual number of deaths under one year of age per thousand registered births, for the past fine years are as follows: 1910, 127; 1811, 115; 1912, 118; 1913, 111; 1914, 106. There are two ways of improving our statistics in this matter. One by better registration of births, especially among the foreign born, which do not get registered.
The other is by an actual reduction in infant mortality by an education campaign, such as is done by the various Visiting Nurse associations. By both of these measures the Federation of Women's clubs can be of great importance.
This letter written by a man and physician highly esteemed in public and private life sounds a valuable point in its reference to the registry question. This is a matter too often neglected but nevertheless most important.
The December 1915 monthly bulletin of the state board of health issued before Dr. Townsend's death contained this paragraph:
Better Babies
All over the country at the present time there is a movement for the study of infant mortality with a view to decreasing the death rate by bettering living conditions. The slogan everywhere is Better Babies. The first week in March, March 4th to 11th, 1916 is to be a nation-wide baby week, when communities large and small are expected to do special campaigning for better babies. Good work done to improve living conditions in any community is for the well-being of all and should be eagerly welcomed. In the Better Babies' campaign is there not something to be said and done more fundamental than for the babies themselves? Should we not start with a campaign for better parents and regulating that production, so that each child may have what is its first right, that of being well born? So long as the degenerates, feeble-minded, epileptics and inebriates produce of their kind just so long there will be a renewed supply of human beings to travel the paths that lead to the reformatories, the school for imbeciles, the jails, the epileptic colony, the farm for inebriates and the ever-crowded insane asylums. These physical and mental defects are not so much the result of environment, as of birth and inheritance. Better Babies, yes! by all means, but begin right. Our great economic problems may be helped in the solving when we segregate and prevent reproduction by the unfit and when youth realizes the sacred obligation that is its own when a new life is brought into the world for which it is directly responsible. Better ideals, better morals, better parents and as a natural result better babies.''
It will be seen from Dr. Townsend's letter that infant mortality in Connecticut is higher than it is in New York city, for there it was 94 in 1914 after a Baby Week campaign and its follow-up work, while that of Connecticut is 108. This successful campaign was organized by Mayor Mitchel, the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Health, the Federation of Churches, Association of Catholic Charities, Board of Jewish Ministers and Federation of Women's clubs, and other organizations all helped to bring about a worthy result.
We all know the old adage ``A sound mind in a sound body'' and it note too hold to host fast now. No sacrifice should be too great, no effort too wearisome that means stronger and finer children for it means better men and women. No better it may be than our own dear mothers, fathers, grandparents in many ways, but eminently fitted to meet the changed conditions of life and circumstances that must needs come with this ever-moving, progressing world of ours.
Not fewer children but children who in later life will be better able to cope with new needs as they arise, children stronger in intellect and body, character and religious appreciation, be they of whatever creed they way.
Prof. C. E. Winslow's lecture on Child Welfare March 7 promises to be of great value. He is an instructor at Yale university and is a man of wide repute and high authority.
March 11 at St. James' Parish House there will be three instructive and interesting addresses given before an audience which should fill all space. These addresses will be made by Mrs. Matilda Collins,\index{Collins!Matilda} the school nurse; Miss Mary Brennan, the visiting nurse, and Dr. Annie Keeler, who organised the Danbury Hospital Graduate Nurses association.
Albany, Baltimore. Boston, Cleveland. Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco and Washington are among the eager exponents of Baby Week. New York had a successful campaign in 1914 and will hold another this year. There are now 1, 725 communities considering plans for the project.
``It is hoped, '' said one of the members of the local press committee recently, ``that the close of 1916 will see large balance on the opposite side of the ledger from that manifest in the last five years and that Danbury's babies will prove exponents of the best life has to offer in the building of good men and good women. We could almost bow our heads and repeat with reverence the saying some have treated in jest--`may our men be virtuous and our women brave'.''
300,000 Babies Die Each Year.
Local Baby Week Committee (Danbury, CT). “300,000 Babies Die Each Year: Connecticut Loses 108 out of Each 1,000—Baby Week Plans to Remedy This.” In: Danbury News-Times (Feb. 21, 1916).
Danbury News-Times. 300,000 Babies Die Each Year., Keeler-Bailey Family, 1828-1928, accessed September 14, 2026, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka-s/s/familydrama/item/1346