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Show How Birth Was Established Calf's Birthday Was Recorded, Thus the Age of the Human Being Became Known. Dr. Cressy L. Wilbur, chief statistician statisti-cian of the bureau of census in Washington, Wash-ington, tells a story taken from court records which, according to the Woman's Wo-man's Home Companion, fairly typifies the national attitude toward vital statistics. sta-tistics. "Farmer Iladley," he said, "of In-ilana In-ilana on dying left his valuable farm In trust to his unthrifty son, to be-oosne be-oosne the property of his granddaughter granddaugh-ter on her twenty-first birthday. "The girl had been told the date of ier birth and when her twenty-first anniversary, as she supposed, came Around, she claimed her inheritance. But her father refused to surrender the farm, asserting that she was only nineteen. "The dispute was taken into court. The family Bible was appealed to, but the page for births and deaths was blank. The father had rendered no report re-port to the town authorities; the family fam-ily doctor was dead. Finally a neighbor neigh-bor remembered that a certain cow, much prized by the grandfather, had given birth to a calf on- the vry day when the girl was born and he could swear to it. "Perhaps, the court opined, the grandfather had recorded the birth of the calf! The old farm book, carefully careful-ly preserved In the family strong box, sustained the judge's theory; all the circumstances of the calf's birth wero fully recorded. And thus the birthday of the human being was at length established. es-tablished. "Talk about the registration of births in the I'nited States!" exclaims Dr. Wilbur, "why, for not much more than one-half of the total population' is there a fairly accurate registration of deaths, to say nothing of births, of which we have nowhere In the country I reliable or complete Information, and many of the states are so little concerned con-cerned about human life that they make no more account of the deaths of their citizens than of the trees they burn to make clearings." |