es' and inject into
them new principles." While women had no real power to select their
mates in marriage; while their economic helplessness led them almost
universally to marry as a means of support even when no real affection
softened and sanctified the process; while they had no power over laws
or customs, or knowledge of actual life outside the household, and
hence had to take wholly on trust the character and protestations of
the man they married; while women were in this subject condition they
could not contribute to family life either a high standard of choice
of parental quality or a forceful demand for previous purity and right
living in the husband. Hence, women have up to a recent time been more
sinned against than sinning if they passed on defective germ plasm or
doomed their children to suffering lives.

=Responsibility of Women in Marriage.=--Now the case is different. No
woman of usual physical strength or natural ability or average
vocational efficiency is necessarily tempted to make "marriage a
trade." If she has any strength of character she can make her own way
and find many good things in life for herself. She can, therefore,
exact such a standard of character and attainment from any man who
seeks her in marriage as he may well demand of her and can pass by as
incompetent to family demand all who do not measure up to the
requirements.

This may mean (in some circles of society, it is already coming to
mean) what Wallace indicated when he said, "Woman is to be the great
selective agent of the future." This cannot be, however, unless women
hold themselves to the best standards that men in the past have
exacted of their sex and so holding themselves (where the race needs
that they should stand) hold men also where the race needs that men
should find their place. The defrauded children of every generation
call with pathos of unique appeal upon men and women that the "racial
poisons" shall be abolished, and evil inheritance be checked, and that
every potential father and every potential mother shall hold sacred
the torch of life to pass it on the brighter for their handling.

Meanwhile, such agencies as "The Committee on Provision for the
Feeble-minded," with its central office in Philadelphia, and the
"National Committee for Mental Hygiene," with its headquarters in New
York City and its important quarterly publication, together with local
associations of similar type, are at work, as is well stated b