102 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



majority of women who are already amply fulfilling 

 a far more essential and exacting function, seems an 

 extraordinary perversion of human judgment. On all 

 grounds, physical, moral and mental, it is difficult to 

 conceive a course of action more damaging to the 

 future prospects of the race than to compel women, 

 who between the ages of twenty and forty-five are fully 

 engaged in the duties of the family, to enter the 

 turmoil of industrial and political life. Certainly no 

 sane person would follow the corresponding course 

 when dealing with the animal economy of the country- 

 side and the farmstead. At the same time, it is im- 

 possible to single out the exceptional cases for special 

 treatment and to put premiums involving additional 

 weight in the counsels of the nation on the unmarried 

 and childless woman which would increase the " spin- 

 ster influence " in the country and be to the detriment 

 of those fulfilling their normal functions. 



It is impossible not to see, at any rate in the upper 

 classes of English society, that there is at present a 

 real connection between the decline in the birth-rate 

 and the movement to equalize the political and in- 

 dustrial status of men and women. We can study 

 this influence at work among any group of women 

 who are prominent in political agitation and social and 

 philanthropic enterprise. Many of these women are 

 unmarried, and very few appear to have the necessary 

 minimum family of four children and upwards. 



It would be extremely interesting if the secretaries 

 of the respective Woman's Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage 

 societies would furnish us with authentic figures as to 

 the average number of children born per member of 



