TABLE 30.-Distribution of Live Births and of Deaths DURING First Year, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE, ACCORDING TO ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FATHER AND NATIVITY OF Mother, FOR LEGITIMATE LIVE-BORN BABIES.

ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FATHER ACCORDING TO NATIVITY OF WIFE.

1 See note on page 45.

2 Total live births less than 50; base therefore considered too small to use in computing an infant mortality rate.

In considering the babies of native and of foreign mothers separately in the foregoing table, similar variations in mortality rates according to earnings of father are found, although the foreign infant death rate is higher in each group. The foreign are less numerous both actually and relatively in the higher wage groups.

The foreigners of a given wage group almost always live in a poorer neighborhood than the natives earning the same amount. The foreigners go where they find their own countrymen, most of whom are poor, and hence even those who earn a fair wage find themselves,

until they become Americanized, surrounded by poor conditions and an ignorant class of people.

It is of interest to note what per cent of the native and what per cent of the foreign are in the several earnings groups. The next table shows this for all married mothers and not simply for those of liveborn babies as in the foregoing table.

TABLE 31.-NUMBER AND PER CENT OF MOTHERS BY NATIVITY, ACCORDING TO THE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF HUSBAND.

The 1,491 married mothers included in the foregoing table bore 1,517 babies in 1911, the excess being due to plural births. The 33 unmarried mothers and their 34 babies (one mother had twins), although included in some of the general tables, are not included in those relative to the earnings of the husband.

GAINFUL WORK OF MOTHER.

In localities where large numbers of women are engaged in industrial work, comparisons are frequently made of the death rates among their babies with those of the babies of mothers not so engaged. In Johnstown, however, industrial occupations are not open to women, and but 3.1 per cent of the mothers visited went outside their homes to earn money. All mothers who gained money by keeping lodgers or in any other way are, for convenience, designated "wage-earning" mothers, even though their earnings were not in the form of a definite wage at stated periods.

Although not industrially engaged, nearly one-fifth of the mothers did resort to some means of supplementing the earnings of their husbands. Usually they kept lodgers. This was done by the foreign mothers principally, exactly one-third of whom had lodgers, as compared with less than 1 per cent of the native women. Usually work done outside the home consisted either of char work or of assisting husbands in their stores. Generally these stores were in the same building with the home.

When a mother of a young baby does not give her full time to her duties within the home but resorts to means of earning money, it

generally indicates poverty. This is true to a greater degree in Johnstown than in places which have many inducements for women to work. In Johnstown, with its excess of males, especially in the foreign population, the woman's services are particularly needed to make the home.

In the group where the husband earns $10 a week or less-that is, under $521 a year-many of the women are wage earners. In each group showing better earnings for the husband the number and percentage of wage-earning wives decline. Such a tabulation as the following almost automatically fixes the minimum wage on which a man, wife, and a child or two can live with any degree of comfort in Johnstown at about $780 a year. When the husband's wage is less than $780 a year, it is shown that the wives, in considerable number, must be wage earners. As shown in the next table, in nearly half of the families where the husband earns $10 a week or less (less than $521 a year), the wife resorted to some means of earning money; when he earned as much as $900 a year, only 8.9 per cent of the wives worked, and in the small group where the man earns as much as $1,200 a year, only 1 in 50.

TABLE 32.-NUMBER AND PER CENT OF HUSBANDS WITH WAGE-EARNING WIVES, BY NATIVITY OF WIFE AND ANNUAL EARNINGS OF HUSBAND.

It is impossible to judge from statistics alone whether or not the work done by an individual woman, either her own housework or work for money, is so excessive as to affect her during pregnancy or while nursing to the extent of reacting on the health of the baby; but the fact is that the infant mortality rate is higher among the babies of wage-earning mothers than among others, being 188 as compared with a rate of 117.6 among the babies of nonwageearning mothers. Wage-earning mothers and low-wage fathers

are in practically the same groups, and it is difficult to secure an exact measurement of the comparative weight of the two factors in the production of a high infant mortality rate.

TABLE 33.-DISTRIBUTION OF LIVE BIRTHS AND OF DEATHS DURING FIRST YEAR, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE FOR BABIES OF WAGE-EARNING AND NONWAGEEARNING MOTHERS, ACCORDING TO ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FATHER.

Of the 1,551 births included in this investigation 34, or 2.2 per cent, occurred out of wedlock. Nine of the 32 illegitimate babies who were born alive died during their first year. It is recognized that these figures are a very small base from which to draw conclusions concerning the effect of illegitimacy on the infant mortality rate. It is of interest, nevertheless, to note that the findings for this small group are similar to those of countries which compute an infant mortality rate for legitimate and illegitimate children separately, that is, a rate for illegitimates more than twice as high as for children. born in wedlock.

TABLE 34.-DISTRIBUTION OF BIRTHS AND OF DEATHS DURING FIRST YEAR, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE, ACCORDING TO LEGITIMACY.

Thirty-two, or 3.7 per cent, of the 860 native mothers, as compared with 2, or 0.3 per cent, of the 691 foreign mothers visited, had illegitimate children in 1911.

61112°-15 -4

REPRODUCTIVE HISTORIES.

In addition to the data relating exclusively to babies born in 1911, a statement was secured from each mother as to the number and duration of each of her pregnancies and the result thereof; that is, the number of children she had borne, alive or dead, the number of miscarriages she had had, and the age at death of each live-born child who had died. Although this information was secured for all mothers, tabulations are presented of the data furnished by married mothers only. Comparatively few single mothers reported more than one child, and information from them on this point is not believed to be as reliable as that from married mothers.

The 1,491 married mothers of babies born in 1911 had had an aggregate of 5,554 pregnancies, resulting in 5,617 births, the excess of 63 births over pregnancies being due to plural births. Eight hundred and four of these children died under 1 year of age, making an infant mortality rate of 149.9 for all their babies, as compared with the rate of 134 for those born in 1911. The stillbirths of these women numbered 194, or 4.5 per cent of the total number of births; miscarriages reported numbered 191, but these were not added to the total reportable 1 pregnancies.

Details as to the infant mortality rates for all babies born to native and foreign mothers included in this study, not only in the year 1911 but at any other time, are presented in the next table, which classifies the babies according to the total number of reportable pregnancies that their mothers had had, to and including the pregnancy resulting in the 1911 birth.

TABLE 35.-DISTRIBUTION OF MOTHERS, OF LIVE BIRTHS, AND OF DEATHS DURING FIRST YEAR, AND INFANT MORTALITY RATE FOR BABIES OF NATIVE ANd Foreign MARRIED MOTHERS, ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF REPORTABLE PREGNANCIES.

The statistics, based upon the results of all her reportable pregnancies, show a generally higher infant mortality rate where the mother has had many pregnancies, but there is not always an increase from

1 "Reportable" pregnancies are those terminating either in the birth of a live child or of a dead child when the period of gestation exceeds 28 weeks; that is, when its registration or report is required by law.