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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.