g."

Now, I do not wish to be unfair. The questions involved are, I know,
immense and many-sided. There can be no easy dismissal of this valuable
Report in condemnation. Mrs. Sidney Webb's minority Report[28:1] in
particular is valuable; and in many ways the findings of the Committee
are excellent. Everyone must agree with the wise recommendations as to
the reduction of the hours of work and better conditions of labor. They
are in advance of anything hitherto proposed. The popular formula of
"equal pay for equal work" or more correctly "equal value," is accepted.
If women are to do men's work, obviously they ought to be paid men's
wages. Other very commendable recommendations concern pensions for
widowed, deserted or necessitous mothers (I should add unmarried
mothers). State payment is advised for the entire cost of the
lying-in-period as the only way to ensure births under satisfactory
conditions to the child and the mother. All this is just and good. If
the state desires women to remain in industrial occupations, it is some
gain that help should be given them, when for a few weeks they go from
the factory to do their own work and bear children. Yet, after all, is
there not something ridiculous, yes, and also disgraceful, in such a
compromise. We leave a woman "to stand by a machine pressing all her
life" (a work of monotony, so nerve-exhausting and soul-deadening that
no man will do it), and then we pay her a small sum to enable her to
bear an enfeebled child. Afterwards we send her back to the factory and
open State creches and nursery-schools to rid her of the
responsibilities and joys of bringing up her child. Such miserable
makeshifts for fitting motherhood could be acceptable only in an
industrially ruled society, where the simple belief would seem to be
that _a woman can do everything that men won't do--and their own work as
well_.

IV

Let us be honest. Do we care for the cherishing of children? Do we want
to preserve the health and help mothers? Are we really concerned with
the prevention of our high infantile death-rate, with all the futile
suffering without any sense of purpose or compensation that it must
entail to children and to mothers? Let us pray to care more
passionately, to see a vision of motherhood such as will force us to
act differently; a vision which, as when the mists clear away among the
mountains, will show a wide world lit by the sun. It would not then be
difficult for us to know wha