t Mary isn't cleaving unto him simply because she can't
shift for herself? Something exquisitely gratifying in being certain,
_certain_, that it isn't just necessity that keeps her a home woman?

"If I were a man living in wedlock," said Mary, "I should want the
door of the cage always wide open, with my mate fluttering straight by
it every minute to still nestle by me. And I should want her wings to
be strong, and I should want her to know that if she went through the
door she could fly."

"For keeping her," Mary went on, "I should want to trust to my own
wings and not to bars."

* * * * *

"However," said Mary, looking farther into the future, "the process
isn't complete. Freedom is not yet completely acquired. Children! We
want them! We must have them! Yet how often they tie us to unions
which have come to be unholy, vile, full of all uncleanness. Women
will never be completely free till, besides being able to earn their
bread when they are _not_ bearing children, they are relieved of
dependence on the individual character of another human person while
they _are_. Mr. H. G. Wells is clearly right about it. When women
bear children they perform a service to the state. Children are
important to the state. They are its future life. To leave them to the
eccentricities of the economic fate of the father is ridiculous. The
woman who is bringing up children should receive from the state the
equivalent of her service in a regular income. Then, and then only, in
the union of man and woman, will love and money reach their right
relationship--love a necessity, money a welcome romance!"

"It's remote, very remote," concluded Mary. "And we can't dream it out
in detail. But when it comes it won't come out of personal sentiment.
It will come because of being demanded by the economic welfare of the
community. It will come because it is the best way to get serviceable
children for the state. It will come because, after all, it is the
final answer to the postponement of marriage."

II.

Learning for Earning

"Every Jack has his Jill." It is a tender twilight thought, and it
more or less settles Jill.

When the census man was at work in 1900, however, he went about and
counted 2,260,000 American women who were more than twenty-five years
old and who were still unmarried.

It is getting worse (or better) with every passing decade, and out of
it is emerging a new ideal of education for