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58
Supplementary Report.
In the first place, let me repeat that, in the opinion of some
persons, a Municipality is not justified in under-selling, or even
entering into the slightest unfair competition with, private
traders at the expense of the rates. In the case of the proposed
Milk Depot, however, there can be no question of unfair competition,
or even of competition at all, with the trade. The
trade has never attempted to supply this much needed want, at
least for the poorer classes. Indeed, for reasons that are not
difficult to surmise, the trade has practically stood aloof from
this branch of the milk business, so that, unless its members
adopt a "dog in the manger" attitude, it cannot oppose
consistently.
In Lambeth Borough, we are fortunately placed in having the
matter of the establishment of a Milk Depot taken up by three
large hospitals for the use of the thousands and thousands of
infants and young children that come under the hands of
physicians and surgeons in the Out-patients Departments. The
difficuly hitherto has been that the necessary advice as to the
feeding of infants with suitable food has been given to mothers,
but the physicians and surgeons giving such advice have been
unable to point to any place where such suitable food could be
obtained at a cost within the means of the parents, or other
persons concerned. . The consequence has been that the preparation
of this suitable food has been left in the hands of the
parents and others at their own homes, and rather than take the
necessary trouble, other foods, totally unfit for the wants of
infants, have been substituted with the results already stated in
my former report.
Taking the total number of deaths under one year of age, it
may be stated that two-thirds are due entirely to the fact that
infants are fed with unsuitable food, the other third being due to
other causes, e.g., overcrowding, insanitary conditions, female
labour, constitutional weakness, etc. Even assumming that only
half of the total number of deaths of infants is due to irregular
and unsuitable feeding, there are still about 600 deaths annually
that are preventable, and preventable in the way I have foreshadowed
in my former report, viz., by the establishment of a
Milk Depot. and the education of mothers in the way of feeding
infants. The Milk Depot will have a powerful educative
influence, and the cases can be systematically followed up by a
Female Sanitary Inspector. It is the poorer children that require
the Council's assistance, and it is not proposed to cater for the
rich, but merely assist those who cannot, or will not, for various