Under our present system of industry this has undoubtedly certain risks and burdens; under the organised system of employment for which I plead it will be possible to adjust employment to maternal functions.
And this brings me to the cardinal issue of the whole controversy: the economic position of the married woman or the mother. Let us face this graver position quite candidly. The industrial disorganisation will right itself in the course of time. The middle-class father of our time whose daughter does a certain amount of work, not in order to relieve his pocket, but in order to buy additional luxuries for herself, has assuredly a grievance. She takes part of a man’s work and pay, yet leaves on him the old burden of maintenance. She makes matters worse by accepting a low wage, because she is not self-maintaining. I am assuming that women will become independent economic units, and that the rate of payment will be—equal wage for equal service.
But the position of the married woman, or of the independent woman who undertakes maternal functions, forms a special and difficult problem, which is pressing upon us more heavily every decade. There is spreading rapidly through the civilised world a feeling of rebellion against the economic dependence of wife or husband. No Conservative argumentation, no censure of new ideas, no religious preaching of self-sacrifice for a doubtful reward in heaven, will relieve us of this
