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MEDICAL SECTION 



in the country who understood this problem better than 

 the 30,000 women organized in the Women's Co-operative 

 Guild. They were mothers who had had training in domestic 

 work and mothers who had run their own houses on a 

 miserably inadequate wage. They had not only the support 

 of the Guild, but they had the support of all those decent 

 workmen who were in touch with the work the Guild was 

 doing and who knew that by far the best person to organize 

 the spending of the maternity benefit was the mother her- 

 self. They admitted with regret that there were exceptions. 

 They regretted that there were women who could not be 

 trusted with money. They knew such women did exist, 

 but this was the point which appealed to them so strongly. 

 The women of the Guild said, " We are beginning a new 

 era of social service, focussing itself around the health 

 department of our towns; as the medical officer of health 

 becomes more imbued with the spirit of preserving the 

 health of the town and in working for the good of the race, 

 so we shall bring agencies to bear upon the mothers through 

 schools for mothers, milk depots, health visitors, better- 

 trained midwives, and an increased number of midwives. 

 The whole ramifications of the health service will come to 

 the support of the mother and help to educate her to a 

 higher standard of motherhood, whereas none of these 

 agencies touch the father in any way whatever. And so we 

 feel that we can face the responsibility of having certain 

 cases of abuse if the benefit becomes the mother's benefit, 

 because we know we have this great auxiliary force which 

 will help us to reach those mothers and strengthen them 

 against their weaknesses. ; ' Therefore she said there was 

 no ground for the opposition to the proposal which the 

 Guild had pressed upon the House of Commons. From 

 the very first they recommended it, and throughout the 

 whole experience in which the Guild's women had taken a 

 very practical part on Insurance Committees and otherwise 

 they had tried to press the proposal forward, and had said 

 that until this was the mother's benefit they would find 

 these grave cases of abuse continually occurring. What 

 were the objections? It was said that they must protect 

 society from fraud, and it was asked how they were to 

 know that the benefit really reached the mother's hands 

 unless it was put into the hands of the husband, but they 

 knew there was not the slightest guarantee in a large num- 

 ber of cases that it would reach the mother's hands when 

 placed in the hands of the husband. Then it was said that 

 if the husband had the money it safeguarded the wife 

 against the drinking cronies who clambered up the stair- 



