, without care for the future,
drifting, snatching at pleasure, taking the easiest course--this is the
girl who bears a child illegitimately and this is the girl incapable of
becoming a good mother.

This characterless irresponsibility of the average unmarried mother is
known to every social worker. The difficulty is dwelt upon in the
reports of rescue homes and police-workers. I have read many separate
articles which refer to it. "Temperamental instability," as it is
fittingly called, inevitably makes capable motherhood impossible. True,
these unmarried mothers may, and frequently do, "pour out a wealth of
pent-up affection on the child," but often she will do this for
half-an-hour and neglect it for days afterwards. Those who talk here of
the "mother's right to her child" are being misled by sentiment. Women
of the prostitute type, whose love and tears are on the surface, must
not be judged too tenderly as capable of great improvement. The child
may "steady the mother for a time,"[169:1] but the mother will probably
by her carelessness, bad example, helplessness and inefficiency unsteady
the child for life.

And it is this that matters. Yes, matters to you, my readers, and to me
and to us all. The child illegitimately born is to become a future
citizen; and it is not good for society to permit its mother to endanger
its future. We--the other members of Society--must object to such a
possibility, we cannot allow it to be tolerated on any grounds of
sentiment. We object from humane care for the child, but also from
patriotism and enlightened self-interest; for the consequences of the
mother's unguided mistakes in training must fall on someone, and in this
country they fall chiefly on the rate-payers.

I shall not wait to give you the many and overwhelming facts and figures
that I could bring forward in support of these statements. To-day all
the pitiful statistics of illegitimate births are widely known; at least
they are known intellectually, though I doubt their being known
emotionally, which is quite another matter and whips our indifference
into action. Only the workers in the darkest places of our great cities
know how large illegitimacy looms as a factor in the social
disintegration that leads to the prison, to the mad-house, to the
hospitals, to the casual wards, and to the streets. Only the eye of the
scientist can vision in the relation of the unhonored child to its
mother the seed of that evil which one day