there exists a conspiracy of silence. Is the cause to which I have alluded ever mentioned, except in technical publications, in connection with the infant death-rate?
Those of us who have discovered that there are risks attaching to the profession of marriage other than the natural ones of childbirth, have very often made the discovery by accident—which ought not to be. I made the discovery in that way myself while I was still very young—by the idle opening of a book which, because it was a book, was a thing to be opened and looked into. I was puzzled at first, and then the thing stared me in the face—a simple matter of bald statement and statistics. I remember the thought which flashed into my mind—we are told we have got to be married, but we are never told that! It was my first conscious revolt against the compulsory nature of the trade of marriage.
