follow the modern nurse, an expert in infantile hygiene, who keeps the baby "like a flower."

And what of the other child?... For every infant who has a double supply of human milk at his disposal, there is another child who has none. The wealth in question is not an industrial product. It is apportioned by Nature with careful precision. For each new life, the ration of milk. Milk cannot be produced by any means other than the production of life. Cow-keepers know this well; their good cows are hygienically reared, and calves are sent to the butcher. Yet what distress is felt whenever the young of some animal is parted from its mother! Is it not so in the case of puppies and kittens? When a pet dog has given birth to a litter so numerous that she cannot suckle them all, and it is necessary to destroy some of the puppies, what sincere grief is felt by the mistress of the house, whose own baby is being suckled by a magnificent wet nurse! Well—the thing which excites her compassion above all is the eager, whimpering mother, who does not understand whether she has or has not the strength to suckle all the shapeless puppies she has borne, but who cannot lose one of them without despair. The wet nurse is quite another affair; she came of her own accord to offer her milk for sale. What the other—her own child—was to do, no one cared.

Only a clearly defined right, a law, could have protected him, for society is based on rights. These, it is true, are the rights of property, which are absolute; steal a loaf, even if you are starving, and you are a thief. You will be punished by the law and outlawed by society. The rights of property constitute one of the most formidable of the social bases. An administrator of landed estate who should sell the property belonging to his master, make money out of it for his own enjoyment, and leave the rightful owner in the direst poverty, is a criminal difficult to imagine. For who would buy a property without the signature of the owner? Society is so constituted that certain crimes would not only be punished if committed, but are almost impossible to commit. Yet in the case of young infants, this crime is committed every day, and is not regarded as a crime, but as a luxury. What can be a more sacred right than that of the baby to his mother's milk? He might say of this in the words of the Emperor Napoleon: "God has given it to me." There can be no doubt whatever as to the legitimacy of his claim; his sole capital, milk, came into the world with and for him. All his wealth is there: strength to live, to grow, to acquire vigor are contained in that nourishment. If the defrauded infant should become weak and rickety, what would become of him, condemned by poverty to a hard calling? What a claim for damages, what a question of accident during work with permanent injury resulting therefrom might be raised if some day the infant could present himself after the manner of a man before the tribunal of social justice!

In civilized countries rich mothers have been induced to suckle their children because hygienists have proved that this is beneficial to the baby's health, but not because it has been recognized that the "civil right" of the adult extends to the infant. These mothers consider countries where the wet nurse is still an institution as less highly developed, but on the same plane of civilization as their own.