like so many others of the English working class women, now during the war was "getting on her feet." And some of the improvement in family life was certainly registering in that chart card at the school consultation that recorded Jimmie's progress.
When his father, home from Flanders on furlough, held him on his knee, it was a better baby than he had ever held there before. For one thing it was a heavier baby: children in this district used to average thirteen pounds at one year of age. And now those whose attendance at the consultations is regular average sixteen and seventy-five hundredths pounds. Also Jimmie was a healthier baby. He hadn't rickets, like the first baby, who had suffered from malnutrition. What could you do when there was a pint of milk a day for the family and the baby had "what was left"? He hadn't tuberculous joints, like the second baby. He hadn't died of summer complaint, like the third and the fifth babies. And he hadn't had convulsions, like the seventh baby, who had been born blind and who fortunately had died too. Yes, when one counts them up, there have been a good many, and if some hadn't died, where would Mrs. Smith have put them all? The six that there are, seem quite to fill two rooms and the one bed.
Still in the course of time there was going to be another baby. Governments crying, "Fill the cradles," seem not to see those that are already spilling over. But the development of birth politics has at last arrived at an important epoch—important to
