uld be needed social help for fathers and mothers far more
definite and inclusive than merely the aid to expectant mothers. If it
is true that it takes from three and one-half to four children from
each married pair to keep up the population considered necessary for
national well-being, and if there is an increasing number of men and
women deterred from furnishing even two of that quota by the expense
involved, then it is high time that we consider at least how the
family burden may be more equally distributed.

=The French Plan of Family Extra-wage.=--One plan of meeting this
unequal social burden of parenthood and the social danger involved in
too few children born, France has devised by the family extra-wage.[8]
This is simply a provision by which married workers with children are
preferred before married workers without children, and much preferred
before bachelors, in the matter of wages. French work-people with
families, irrespective of their station, rate of pay, premium or
bonus, receive:

1. An indemnity of 200 francs at the birth of a child.

2. A suckling indemnity, which is given to the wife, of 100 francs a
month during the first year.

3. An indemnity of 3 francs a day for each child under fourteen years
of age, which becomes a part of the family income. The Paris district
alone for the first four months of 1920 shows 39,266 families in
receipt of these allowances, with 62,176 children benefited, at an
expense of 4,115,014 francs. The money comes largely from a pooling of
funds by combines of manufacturers in many industries, so that
although business pays the extra charge it is distributed equally
among all engaged in the same industry. The trade unions have not been
wholly pleased with this discrimination in favor of fathers and
mothers. They work for the strict equalization of wages. The national
need for more children of strength and health, however, and the effect
of low wages upon mothers and upon infant life have led to this social
measure.

Surely, this is a way not wholly unreasonable by which a society can
help pay for the children it demands.

=The Endowment of Mothers.=--In England, a different plan has been
developed, although not yet applied. _A Proposal for the National
Endowment of Motherhood_, advocated by K.D. Courtney, H.N. Brailsford,
Eleanor F. Rathbone, A. Maude Royden, Mary Stocks, Elinor Burns, and
Emilie Burns, has been published. In this plan the ideal is "that
within each