40 
PROTECTION OF MATERNITY. 
tions, that any woman must know about, but I say to anybody that 
what they should do to keep themselves in good condition and not 
to think about what was about to happen, for it is better to keep 
them in a perfectly normal condition. We want every woman to 
have the right kind of care, but it seems to me that when we begin to 
suggest this kind of Federal control to the women of the nation, even 
if they accepted it, it would break down their self-respect. The 
minute that you give people something for nothing, that minute 
you begin to hurt these women. In this case the Government is not 
only paternalistic but it is maternalistic as well, and I believe it will 
get into very serious complications. Ignorance, of course, is some 
thing that we have to combat, but you can not make over a woman 
if she has not the intelligence and tfie training and the good sense to 
bring up the children properly. Now, when you get the children to 
the adult age, aren't they going to break down unless you teach them 
how to take care of themselves ? If the mothers do not teach the 
children to get enough sleep and to get enough food, what kind of 
mothers are you going to have anyway ? 
Now, Mr. Chairman, all of this comes back to the home. That is 
where everything begins and that is where everything ends, and it 
is a case of where you have got to educate them liberally. Right 
in our schools we have been doing some good work. We do not 
need any Federal investigators to tell us what to do. I know that 
in a class of 60 little children only 2 of them had coffee and a bun 
for their breakfast, and it was not a case of poverty either. The 
trouble is with the mothers. Instead of trying to find out how we are 
going to feed our children, those women do it in the very easiest way. 
It is a case of getting back to the home, the fundamental thing. 
Now it seems to me that the Federal Government can not educate 
the doctors. If you would only get the leading doctors together 
and ask them what they suggest, you will get something for this 
Sheppard-Towner bill. 
Rural isolation—you do not ask the Federal Government to remedy 
that. Certainly no Federal agent can cross natural barriers, and no 
Federal agent can cover a space of 50 miles in an hour. Nature gives 
a woman nine months warning, and she can take the necessary pre 
cautions and be near by when help is needed. The rural isolation 
can not be remedied. 
In regard to low incomes, we know that when an income is low 
you do not get as good care, but nevertheless in my own town there 
is a young woman in whom I have been interested for years, and she 
has 10 children, and her husband is working on a chauffeur’s salary; 
but notwithstanding that she gets the best of attention.. She gets 
one of the leading obstetricians for $25 every time she has a child." 
Now here is a woman that has some intelligence and shows some 
interest in this sort of thing. Wherever you can get that you get the 
right kind of help. Of course in the rural communities it is difficult 
to get doctors to go there. I realize that a man has paid a large 
amount of money for his education, and he has been to the expense 
of laborious training, and he wants to be where he can get some re 
turn, and he realizes that to go out in a rural community is a very 
difficult thing, but that is one of the things that the medical associ 
ation has to work out—some method of getting them out into the 
rural communities.