REPRODUCTION AND SEX 573 



and unlimited competition with man. Either a direct premium is 

 placed upon childlessness, upon a crushing out of the maternal 

 instinct on which the stability of society essentially depends, or 

 woman has a double work to do in the world, and she can only do 

 it at the cost of the future generation." 



What to do is another matter, but we are mainly concerned just 

 now in trying to see facts clearly from a particular point of view — 

 to wit, biological. Much will depend on the growing organisation of 

 woman-workers; much will depend on the developing social senti- 

 ment and the legislation to which that leads. In mediaeval days a 

 woman with child had certain privileges of game and fish from the 

 lord's preserves, of gathering unhindered from field and orchard. 

 This expressed a rough-and-ready social sentiment. Is it too much 

 to hope that we may regain it and pass beyond it? For instance, 

 is it too much to hope that an Education Department should welcome 

 married women and mothers in the ranks of school-teachers, in- 

 creasing the staff throughout, so that the necessary rests and long 

 holidays should be granted when required, without stint or grudging ? 

 And, again, as Prof. Karl Pearson suggests, just as there are (in 

 Germany at least) societies for insuring women against a possible 

 spinster-poverty, so there is likely to arise a national insurance for 

 motherhood. "The provision of such insurance", he says, "will for 

 the first time allow of efficient regulation of the labour of married 

 women during the child-bearing years — a regulation which will 

 come none too soon to stop the degeneration of physique which is 

 going on in certain classes of the labouring population." And as 

 there is social sentiment that rewards the victims of war with glory 

 and pensions, is it too much to hope for a progressive social senti- 

 ment which will equally reward the victims of maternity? One of 

 the arguments used in defence of unequal political treatment of 

 men and women is that men in the long run may be called upon to 

 do what women cannot be expected to do — namely, fight. But 

 against this stands the fact that men are not expected to bear 

 children ! 



It may be said, however, that the incongruent differentiation to 

 which we have referred is of less importance, seeing that most of 

 the women-workers are unmarried. Of less importance, doubtless, 

 but of great importance still. Not only in affecting the national 

 expense of caring for invalids, but also in prejudicially affecting 

 the prevalent feminine type — the significance of which may be 

 realised without going deeply into social psychology. It must be 

 remembered that although many of these girl-workers and women- 

 workers remain unmarried, it is nevertheless from among their 

 ranks that wives and mothers come. 



It is, of course, obvious that it is not for amusement that girls 

 and women strain themselves over tasks too hard for them. What 



