DECLINE IN THE BIRTH-RATE 201 



waste, v/e should in this respect adopt the recom- 

 mendation of the Report of the Minority of the Poor 

 Law Commission and give adequate support, when the 

 conditions of the family and home are good, on the 

 agreement that the mother gives her whole time to her 

 children. The knowledge that such action would be 

 taken in worthy cases would remove one motive which 

 tends to favour restriction of family among the best 

 and most provident of the labouring class. The direct 

 effect of the action would be an ultimate gain to the 

 community, for, as economists have come to realize, 

 '* the most valuable of the year's crops, as it is the 

 most costly, is not the wheat harvest or the lambing, 

 but the year's quota of adolescent young men and 

 women enlisted in the productive service of the 

 community ; . . . the due production and best 

 possible care of this particular product is of far 

 greater consequence to the nation than any other of its 

 occupations." 



For the welfare of the race, then, it is important to 

 watch jealously the employment of women, and to 

 foster those industries where men of skill and com- 

 petence are employed at wages sufficient to maintain 

 a family in comfort and respectability. 



But care and knowledge are required in framing 

 regulations with the object in view. The good of the 

 child, no less than of the mother, requires a consider- 

 able period of absence from work before and after each 

 birth. Yet the economic motive is so strong in the 

 industrial classes that the enforcement of even the 

 short absence now required is probably one of the 

 potent causes of the restriction of the birth-rate. 



