"Best for Babies" or "Preventable Infanticide"? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920

Abstract

The multinational manufacturers of infant foods and feeding devices are being accused of promoting artificial infant feeding in Third World countries that should shun it. Critics charge that it adds unnecessary strain on meager family budgets and is a direct contributor to high rates of infant mortality and morbidity. A number of governments are attempting to restrict these corporations' activities; the World Health Organization has condemned them; and schemes are afoot to limit their activities in the Third World. Throughout the controversy, the assumption has been that this is a relatively new problem, arising from the expansion of the marketing tentacles of the industrialized world's giant corporations into the nonindustrialized countries. Yet the widespread use of artificial feeding and proprietary infant foods first became a source of controversy in the United States over one hundred years ago, when similar charges were leveled, some against the same corporations, in the years from 1880 to 1920. But this first campaign was, ultimately, a rather abject failure. The trend toward artificial infant feeding continued, with only minor setbacks, until the 1960s, when the rediscovery of the connection between poverty, high infant mortality, and artificial feeding led to a renewed campaign to encourage breast feeding among the poor, the thrust of which has now spilled over into the Third World. This article surveys the first sustained campaign against proprietary infant foods, describing the factors that created a growing market for these products, the companies that sought to satisfy and stimulate that market, and the diverse groups who criticized this method of infant feeding, ranging from pediatricians to clean-milk and public-health reformers and child-welfare workers.