carry the bags and get up in the
night to see what that noise is. Since society as at present constituted
does not countenance men and women living together for companionship,
then clearly every woman ought to have a husband!

Mr Bernard Shaw has written: 'Give women the vote and in five years
there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.' So there should be, subject
to certain qualifications of age and income; this is one of the many
matters in which we should take a lesson from the Japanese where all
bachelors over a certain age are taxed; in France too, a bill, to this
effect, is being discussed. At the time of writing, women are full of
anticipation of being speedily enfranchised, and there is a good deal of
talk about what use they will make of the vote. I regret to say that
although there have been some utterly idiotic threats to abolish that
boon to wives--the man's club--yet so far, with one exception, nothing
has appeared in print as to the advisability of taxing bachelors. The
exception is a very interesting anonymous novel called _Star of the
Morning_, which strongly advocates such a tax, among several other
thoughtful suggestions for political reform.

It is obviously only just that the man who is doing nothing for the
State in the way of rearing a family should be taxed to relieve the man
who is. We hear so much about the falling birth-rate, and the duty of
every married couple to have a family, yet everything is done to
discourage those who do. The professional man slaving to earn, say,
L1000 a year, and bring up three or four children for the State, is
taxed exactly as much as the bachelor in receipt of the same income who
does nothing at all for the State, and can even avoid the other taxes by
being a lodger, if he choose.

But even if we eventually get reasonable legislation, which would offer
rewards instead of additional burdens to those who do their share in
keeping up the birth-rate; even if a bachelor over twenty-five became as
rare an object in these islands as an old maid in a Mohammedan country,
still there would be this enormous superfluity of spinsters. Why is it?
Why should Great Britain be regarded as a paradise of old maids? Why
should we have more spinsters than other countries? Is it because our
colonies swallow up so many men? Then why can't they swallow up an equal
number of women? I should like this most important matter to be taken up
by the State and an Institution for Encouraging Ma