Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/104

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The Woman Socialist

widow recognised as the rightful guardian of her own children. Only for the last thirty or forty years have a woman’s earnings been recognised as her own property. As recently as 1882 did the property of a married woman become her own. And much remains to be done to secure fair treatment for women by the law.

Teaching of very young children will probably become a feminine monopoly in a Socialist State, not by reason of any legislation, but because it will be recognised that women are the persons best fitted to train little children. The Socialist mothers will take charge of the very early years. After, say, six or seven years have passed, the children will go into the elementary schools, where they will be fed, taught to work and play, drill and dance, sing and sleep, and live their happy lives under the kind eyes of sympathetic women, the State's kindly teachers, who will co-operate with the parents in trying to develop in the little ones all the perfections of character of which they may be capable.

When Socialism arrives it will be possible for the taunt to cease that no woman has written a book or painted a picture or