and her children: which is as well earned a payment as the fee of a lawyer. And from the sentimental point of view it does not make a particle of difference whether she is paid out of her husband’s income or out of the coffers of the State. She would still “sell her body,” if there is any selling of body. But there is not. Maternity and sex-pleasure are entirely different matters.
I am deliberately trying to undermine the plea for the endowment of motherhood, because the proposal seems to me to present very grave difficulties which even so penetrating a sociologist as Mr. H. G. Wells has, apparently, not appreciated. Mr. Wells is, of course, in a very different position from the Feminist writers who advocate the complete endowment or maintenance of wives or mothers by the State. Such a scheme would cost about £300,000,000 a year, and need not be discussed. Mr. Wells suggests rather a modest contribution per child born (leaving out, I assume, wealthier mothers); a practicable scheme, with much in its favour. Yet it seems to me that such endowment would mean that we would encourage the weakest in will, the most sensual, the least intelligent and least provident of our people, to breed. Intelligent women would not abandon the practice of restricting births because the State offered them a few shillings per child. The better class—whether of manual or professional workers—would have to pay for the undesirable fertility of the worst class. We are just beginning to realise that quality of children
