Excerpt from Annual Report on the Vital Statistics of Massachusetts: Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths for the Year Ending December 31, 1920

These returns are checked with those already on file, and copies of births occurring elsewhere, the parents having moved during the year, are forthwith sent to the place of birth.

This annual canvass has proved an important factor in checking up those delinquent in the reporting of births.

Since the establishment of the office of State Registrar of Vital Statistics, by act of the 1918 Legislature, a systematic campaign has been carried on to obtain prompt and absolute compliance with the birth registration laws.

Complete and authentic birth records are of the utmost impor tance in all questions relating to heredity, property rights, identity, etc. N 0 child labor law is of value unless it rests on a system of birth registration, by which the child and the parent can be required to produce positive proof of the age of the child. Laws cannot be enforced where the question of age depends on the statement of interested parties rather than on official records.

The registration of births is intended to serve three purposes: (1) to identify the child and to establish its age and parentage, (2) to enable the community to guard the newly born baby against blindness and those diseases which carry off so many infants in the first year of life and leave so many crippled, maimed, and deformed, and (3) to furnish statistical data.

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