ems of education; there has been no great people without the
art of producing healthy and vigorous children.

This matter becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states like
England, the United States, and Germany, because in such states a tacit
conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate national ends to individual
ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race. In
England, for instance, this tendency has become peculiarly well marked
with disastrous results. The interest of the employed woman tends to
become one with that of her employer; between them they combine to crush
the interests of the child who represents the race, and to defeat the laws
made in the interests of the race which are those of the community as a
whole. The employed woman wishes to earn as much wages as she can and with
as little interruption as she can; in gratifying that wish she is, at the
same time, acting in the interests of the employer, who carefully avoids
thwarting her.

This impulse on the employed woman's part is by no means always and
entirely the result of poverty, and would not, therefore, be removed by
raising her wages. Long before marriage, when little more than a child,
she has usually gone out to work, and work has become a second nature. She
has mastered her work, she enjoys a certain position and what to her are
high wages; she is among her friends and companions; the noise and bustle
and excitement of the work-room or the factory have become an agreeable
stimulant which she can no longer do without. On the other hand, her home
means nothing to her; she only returns there to sleep, leaving it next
morning at day-break or earlier; she is ignorant even of the simplest
domestic arts; she moves about in her own home like a strange and awkward
child. The mere act of marriage cannot change this state of things;
however willing she may be at marriage to become a domesticated wife, she
is destitute alike of the inclination or the skill for domesticity. Even
in spite of herself she is driven back to the work-shop, to the one place
where she feels really at home.

In Germany women are not allowed to work for four weeks after
confinement, nor during the following two weeks except by medical
certificate. The obligatory insurance against disease which
covers women at confinement assures them an indemnity at this
time equivalent to a large part of their wages. Married and
unmarried mother