Page:Women Wanted.djvu/365

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THE RISING VALUE OF A BABY
329

state department was at instant attention "Gentlemen," it was pointed out, "there is one thing more that you must do." Well, they have done it. In this model babies' building at Ivry-sur-Seine there is a steam laundry in which two women are kept constantly employed, so that there shall be no night laundry work for the child whom the mother takes home. There are washed eight hundred diapers a day. You see there is nothing that the Government will not do for a child in France. Nothing is too much trouble.

Even her employers will be equally as pleased as the state if Azalie de Rigeaux shall decide to give another citizen to France. They have told me so. "Why, it is patriotism," the factory owner explained to me, as we stood there among the whirring belts and the revolving wheels of a thousand machines in this Usine de Guerre. "Don't you see," he patiently elucidated, "I'm sure if she will only have the baby every one else should do what they can."

This is what they do for Azalie de Rigeaux. She comes directly under the protection of L'Office Central d'Assistance Maternelle et Infantile, which, as you will read on all the walls of Paris, is organised "to secure to all pregnant women adequate and suitable nourishment, proper housing accommodations, relief from overwork and skilled medical advice, all of the social, legal and medical protection to which she is entitled in a civilised society." A visitor will arrive from the nearest Mairie to inform the prospective mother of all the aids that are available for