ests a diminishing spirit for parentage, its families fall to
four, to three, to two--and in an increasing number of instances there
are no children at all.

With regard to the struggling middle-class and skilled artisan class
parent, even more than to the lower poor, does the Socialist insist
upon the plain need, if only that our State and nation should
continue, of endowment and help. He deems it not simply unreasonable
but ridiculous that in a world of limitless resources, of vast
expenditure, of unparalleled luxury, in which two-million-pound
battleships and multi-millionaires are common objects, the supremely
important business of rearing the bulk of the next generation of the
middling sort of people should be left almost entirely to the unaided,
unguided efforts of impoverished and struggling women and men. It
seems to him almost beyond sanity to suppose that so things must or
can continue.

Sec. 4.

And what I have said of the middle-class parent is true with certain
modifications of all the classes above it, except that in a monarchy
you reach at last one State-subsidized family--in the case of Britain
a very healthy and active group, the Royal family--which is not only
State supported, but also beyond the requirements of any modern
Socialist, State bred. There are enormous handicaps at every other
social level upon efficient parentage, and upon the training of
children for any public and generous end. Parentage is treated as a
private foible, and those who undertake its solemn responsibilities
are put at every sort of disadvantage against those who lead sterile
lives, who give all their strength and resources to vanity and
socially harmful personal indulgence. These latter, with an ampler
leisure and ampler means, determine the forms of pleasure and social
usage, they "set the fashion" and bar pride, distinction or relaxation
to the devoted parent. The typical British aristocrat is not parent
bred, but class bred, a person with a lively sense of social
influences and no social ideas. The one class that is economically
capable of making all that can be made of its children is demoralized
by the very irresponsibility of the wealth that creates this
opportunity. This is still more apparent in the American plutocracy,
where perhaps half the women appear to be artificially sterilized
spenders of money upon frivolous things.

No doubt there is in the richer strata of the community a certain
proportion of fami