rtunities. Your
education is only used to perpetuate industrial slavery and to keep the
children of the working classes ignorant of the blood-sucking system
into whose meshes they will be thrown unless we combine and make our
influence felt now."

"You are neglecting the most obvious duties which should come first,"
says the quiet and motherly voice of the third reformer; "infants die by
the hundred thousand owing to neglect. There will soon be no babies for
you to instruct either in materialism or socialism. The race will die
out whilst you talk. Look at the slums and the careless, ignorant
mothers; we want infant-welfare work, we want a new baby cult, we want
to teach people parental responsibility."

"Nonsense," breaks in the virile voice of the fourth reformer; "what you
want is to take people away from the slums, to bring them back to the
country. Land nationalization is what we need--a free, healthy life, far
removed from the factories that kill soul and body by the grinding
monotony of existence. Man was made for life on the soil, for contact
with sun and wind, flowers and trees. They will give health and life to
your babies."

"Your schemes have only a secondary importance"--the voice of a
prominent suffragist is now heard. "Give women the vote and these
reforms will follow. Men have made all these abominable laws and
customs; women will bring in just and human laws and change all social
life. As for the suggestion that country life will improve the standard
of living, I can only say that it is made in ignorance of the real
conditions. Look at the farm labourer's wife and her home-life. She is
often the most miserable, worn-out creature, who tries in vain to keep
the children and herself properly fed and clothed. Her life is a long
travesty of the laws of health."

"Naturally," comments the temperance reformer, "whilst you allow the
labourer to soak himself in drink and to spend his money at the
public-house. Drink is the root of all our social troubles: it ruins the
body and corrupts the mind, it poisons the unborn children, fills our
prisons and asylums. You may legislate and equalize opportunities as
much as you please; so long as you allow the cursed liberty of drink
there can be no health and no human decency. Prohibition is the most
urgent of all our needs."

An athletic-looking young man, rosy-cheeked and clear-eyed, who had been
listening with a somewhat supercilious smile, now joins in the debate.