ignore it to such an extent that the nation--and other
nations--grows actually alarmed, and men begin to frame laws to coax us
back to the bearing of children. Then, if we have them, we turn the
entire responsibility over to other people. A raw little foreigner of
some sort answers the first questions our boys and girls ask, until
they are old enough to be put under some nice, inexperienced young girl
just out of normal school, who has fifty or sixty of them to manage,
and of whose ideas upon the big questions of life we know absolutely
nothing. We say lightheartedly that 'girls always go through a trying
age,' and that we suppose boys 'have to come in contact with things,'
and we let it go at that! We 'suppose there has always been vice, and
always will be,' but we never stop to think that we ourselves are
setting the poor girls of the other world such an example in the
clothes we wear, and the pleasures we take, that they will sell even
themselves for pretty gowns and theatre suppers. We regret sweat-shops,
even while we patronize the stores that support them, and we bemoan
child-labor, although I suppose the simplest thing in the world would
be to find out where the cotton goes that is worked by babies, and
refuse to buy those brands of cotton, and make our merchants tell us
where they DO get their supply! We have managed our household problem
so badly that we simply can't get help--"

"You CANNOT do your own work, with children," said Mrs. Brown firmly.

"Of course you can't. But why is it that our nice young American girls
won't come into our homes? Why do we have to depend upon the most
ignorant and untrained of our foreign people? Our girls pour into the
factories, although our husbands don't have any trouble in getting
their brothers for office positions. There is always a line of boys
waiting for a possible job at five dollars a week."

"Because they can sleep at home," submitted the doctor.

"You know that, other things being equal, young people would much
rather not sleep at home," said Mrs. Burgoyne, "it's the migrating age.
They love the novelty of being away at night."

"Well, when a boy comes into my office," the doctor reasoned slowly,
"he knows that he has certain unimportant things to do, but he sees me
taking all the real responsibility, he knows that I work harder than he
does."

"Exactly," said Mrs. Burgoyne. "Men do their own work, with help. We
don't do ours. Not only that, but every improv