516 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



of children, or the advancement of the race, than that pro- 

 posed by Mr. Grant Allen. 



Objections to all the preceding Proposals. 



Before proceeding further with the main question it is 

 necessary to point out that, besides the special objections 

 to each of the proposals here noticed, there is a general 

 and fundamental objection. They all attempt to deal at 

 once, and by direct legislative enactment, with the most 

 important and most vital of all human relations, regardless 

 of the fact that our present phase of social development 

 is not only extremely imperfect, but vicious and rotten at 

 the core. How can it be possible to determine and settle 

 the relations of women to men which shall be best alike 

 for individuals and for the race, in a society in which a 

 very large proportion of women are obliged to work long 

 hours daily for the barest subsistence, while another large 

 proportion are forced into more or less uncongenial 

 marriages as the only means of securing some amount of 

 personal independence or physical well-being ? Let any 

 one consider, on the one hand, the lives of the wealthy as 

 portrayed in the society newspapers, and even in the 

 advertisements of such papers as The Field and The Queen, 

 with their endless round of pleasure and luxury, their 

 almost inconceivable wastefulness and extravagance, 

 indicated by the cost of female dress and such facts as the 

 expenditure of a thousand pounds on the flowers for a 

 single entertainment ; and, on the other hand, the terrible 

 condition of millions of workers — men, women, and 

 children — as detailed in the Beport of the Lords' Com- 

 mission on Sweating, on absolutely incontestable evidence, 

 and the still more awful condition of those who seek 

 work of any kind in vain, and, seeing their children slowly 

 dying of starvation, are driven in utter helplessness and 

 despair to murder and suicide. Can any thoughtful 

 person admit for a moment that, in a society so con- 

 stituted that these overwhelming contrasts of luxury and 

 privation are looked upon as necessities, and are 

 treated by the Legislature as matters with which it has 



