practical procedure is to make a general inquiry into the net result of our employment of millions of girls and women. Most of us would await such a report with confidence. As long as the wages of women are lower than those of men, we hear very little complaint; nor do we find the work of our schools or the play of our theatres very much interrupted by peculiarly feminine weaknesses. Of late years women have shown that they are equally qualified to be dentists, doctors, chartered accountants, etc. Common-sense would persuade us, if we would find the real limits of woman’s capacity, to open to her all the doors of the world of work and learn it by experience.
One must give more serious attention to the claim that this economic enfranchisement of women will tend to lessen maternity, and will therefore endanger our social interests. This question of the birth-rate is, in fact, very important from many points of view, and it is extremely advisable to have a clear and reasoned grasp of it. Many people are at once alarmed if it is shown that a practice will tend to lessen the birth-rate. They rarely examine with critical attention the reasons which would be alleged by those who maintain that a lowering of the birth-rate is a social menace.
But one needs no lengthy reflection to discover that at the root of all this clamour for maintaining or increasing the birth-rate we have only military requirements. Some, indeed, urge that a nation needs as many soldiers as possible for her industrial
