The National Leader

Information About
Bills in Congress

Maternity Bill
Passes

Women
Win Fight for Federal Act to Aid
Mothers and Children

The national house of representatives
has passed, by a vote of 279 to 39, the
Sheppard-Towner maternity bill.
It
had previously been passed by the
senate. President Harding signed the
measure and it is now law. Thus the
women have won one of the first important fights
they engaged in after getting the ballot. The bill
was backed by practically all the women's organ-
izations in the country. We have discussed it and
advocated it many times on this page, and large
numbers
of the
Women's
Nonpartisan
clubs
throughout the Northwest endorsed it and worked
for its passage.
The Nonpartisan clubs and the woman's page
can take their share of credit for helping to put
over the bill.
The new law appropriates $10,000 annually to
each state in the Union, and in addition a lump
sum of $1,000,000 to be divided among the states
in proportion to their population. To get its share
of the second appropriation, the $1,000,000, a state
must itself appropriate a sum of money equal to
its share of the $1,000,000. The money is to be
used to educate and assist mothers and prospective
mothers. Each state which complies with the law
will therefore have from about $30,000 to about
$75,000, according to population, to spend in this
work.
The infant death rate in the United States is
astonishingly high—higher than in any other civil-
ized country.
The law is intended to help in saving
babies which now die.

LEGISLATURES MUST ACT SOON
IF STATES ARE TO GET BENEFIT

The law will be administered by the states, un-
der the supervision of the national children's bureau
of the federal department of labor. Local bureaus
and advisory committees are to be established in
counties or smaller local districts throughout the
states taking advantage of the law. The member-
ship of these local committees must be half women.
The local bureaus, under the management of the
local committees, will give free lectures, advice
and courses of study, and such other assistance as
the
appropriation will permit, to prospective
mothers and mothers who have already had their
babies.
This will include lessons in health and
hygiene and the care and feeding of infants.
Nothing in the law will permit the forcing of
advice on mothers or families who do not want it.
No one is forced to attend the lectures or lessons.
No person can enter any home to give advice or
assume charge of any child or mother without the