ioo HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



have the advantage of additional comfort and luxury 

 or freedom, which will probably have the ill effect of 

 disinclining her yet further from the more arduous, 

 more exacting duties of marriage and child-bearing. 

 Moreover, there is little doubt that the present genera- 

 tion often benefits directly, and not only from the 

 financial point of view of the taxpayer, by the sub- 

 stitution of women for men in the various branches 

 of the public services. The standard of efficiency and 

 probity often undergoes a marked improvement, owing 

 to the employment of women of a superior type of 

 mind and character. But apart from the fact that 

 some man is displaced, and is less likely to be able to 

 support a wife and family, thus throwing some other 

 woman out of her normal employment, we are 

 securing our improvement in environment in the 

 present at the cost of destroying for future generations 

 the very heritable aptitudes which make these picked 

 women efficient and responsible public servants. Once 

 again, we are sacrificing the present to the future ; we 

 are exalting the individual and injuring the race. 



It is to the married women whose natural home duties 

 have unavoidably failed them that society may rightly 

 look for such services to the community as are best 

 rendered by women. Much of the pioneer work in 

 social experiments, much of the necessary supervision of 

 the women and children who, from one cause or another, 

 have become burdens on the general public, should fall 

 to the share of people who need not look for remunera- 

 tive employment and are living in conditions enabling 

 them to deal with such problems, with knowledge and 

 sympathy. The childless married woman and the un- 



