to work, housing, food and recreation as shall ensure
the maximum of vitality to the workers. This is the true method of
conception control.

There comes a point in the development of nervous energy which is
productive of sterility. It is true that principles based on so many
varying factors will necessarily appear to fail in individual cases.
Environment with its influence on the nervous energy of the individual
will be modified by the inherited tendency of that individual towards
fertility or the reverse. We find, therefore, isolated cases of large
families among the well-to-do and small families among those whose
vitality is below the normal, but if the general principle is true we
should expect to find a larger number of _sterile_ marriages among the
well-to-do than among those whose lives are more full of hardship, and
this undoubtedly is the case.

This aspect of the problem is deserving of careful study. The desire
for children in so many homes where every advantage could be given,
may be gratified when more knowledge of how wisely to modify the
environment of the rich is within our grasp.

It may be that the more simple life among those who have much will
give to them the prize of children which they covet more than things
which wealth can buy.

But let us return for a moment to the false expectation that children
will come to all unless prevented.

The results of this assumption are really serious. They involve the
training of large numbers of people in unnatural practices, which in
many cases are unnecessary, even if they were desirable. They rob many
families of the children who would have been the delight of their
parents through middle and later life.

Moreover, it is obvious that advice which may be quite necessary in
cases of ill-health or special conditions, may be fundamentally wrong
to give broadcast to all individuals, for apart from the fact that
when given to all it is largely unnecessary, there are other serious
objections, as follows:--

1. A public opinion at the present time is being gradually produced
which takes it for granted that as a matter of good form young people
should not have children for a few years after marriage, and it is
becoming a common practice to start married life with sordid and
unnatural preparations for a natural act; yet many of these young
people, men and women alike, are most anxious to have children, and
only seek to know how to prevent them because they bel