DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 



199 



Even for unmarried women, the indirect danger is 

 great, especially in setting a false ideal of life before 

 the rising generation. Indications are not wanting 

 that a position of industrial independence, or the 

 wider, if more superficial, interests of active public 

 life, with the demoralizing accompaniment of publicity 

 and notoriety, exert such a fascination on the minds 

 of some women that they become unwilling to accept 

 the necessary and wholesome restrictions and responsi- 

 bilities of normal marriage and motherhood. Woe to 

 the nation whose best women refuse their natural and 

 most glorious burden ! 



In considering the physiology and psychology of 

 the race, it seems clear that the stock of human life, 

 our most valuable national asset, must, as in every 

 sound economic system, be divided into two parts 

 representing capital and income. Men represent the 

 income, to be used and spent freely by each succeeding 

 generation as need arises. Women must be con- 

 sidered as capital, to be spent sparingly in the present, 

 to be husbanded carefully for the future. 



If such thoughts are suggested by the desire for 

 economic or political activity in women of the upper 

 classes, they are strengthened and confirmed by a 

 study of the effects in the industrial sections of the 

 people. 



In towns and other areas where many women are 

 employed in manual labour, such as places where 

 textile industries are carried on, the birth-rate is 

 abnormally low. Northampton, Halifax, Burnley, 

 Blackburn, Derby, Leicester, Bradford, Oldham, 

 Huddersfield, and Bolton — all places in which an 



