union is to perpetuate the race, give to the state citizens. The permanence of the marriage is supposed to be desirable, because the physical support and welfare of wife and children rests with the husband, unless he become insane, sick or criminal.

Then Charity gives the pauperizing support of a tyrant. Desirable citizens are seldom evolved in “Institutions.”

Occasionally, a mother is endowed with power to maintain her family alone; but the instances are few.

In marriage the state obtains the promise of the contracting parties to love, honor and cherish; to love, honor and obey, through sickness, through health, until death.

However, the state is able to enforce but one portion of the promise, “to cherish,” which, being interpreted, means that the husband must contribute a certain portion of his income to the woman, provided she has not broken the letter of the law in one respect, and has not deserted nor flagrantly quarreled with her husband. If she has been acquiescent, she is still to be “cherished.” This alimony, as such tax is sometimes termed, is required whether the wife is mother or not, or is engaged in educating citizens or not. It may be exacted—the letter of the law—although the intent of the marriage may not have been fulfilled.

Tacitly, the state recognizes the desirability of love in marriage, although it has no jurisdiction over it, and can not enforce the keeping of this promise by husband or wife.

Loving or not loving is not within the control of mortals.

It is admitted now by men and women that the laws of all countries of the world were made by men for men. They do not discriminate against women so seriously and so unjustly as did Moses, but the civil laws give wife and mother no chance for independence.

Until recently, the promise to obey has been enforced; also, the wife’s promise to be true to one man and none other. So we have had the prayer which is international: “Make our women virtuous and our men brave,” the meaning of brave being, able to fight man and beast.

“Virtue” has been interpreted as being a negation, an indifference to all but husband.

Nothing that can transpire in wedlock is considered not virtuous.

“Oh, Liberty! Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”

Woman has found submission easier than to assert and obtain the human right of independence in the control of her own mind and body.

“It is a hard world for girls,” said Martin Luther, five hundred years ago.

It is still a hard world for girls and women.

Nature is said to love the female more than the male, for she serves Her more devotedly, and Nature has taken care that she shall.

PRIMITIVE BONDAGE

Woman pays the first cost on human life.—Schreiner.

HEN a woman feels the first grip of her child’s dependence upon her, she has forever lost her freedom. If the child dies, a grave shackles her soul through life. If the child lives, the welfare of that child keeps perpetually between her and the sun.

Before her babe is born, Nature has absorbed the mother’s strength and charm that Her one purpose may be accomplished. Man finds it easy to neglect woman then. In fact, his honor, pride, fear and loyalty to a principle, one or all, are his safeguard and the mentor that holds him to duty when his wife is absorbed by motherhood.

Nature demands all from the mother. She takes possession and uses her so that the woman has no will for the time. She is Nature’s, body and soul, “Used by an unseen Power for an unknown end.”

Does a woman enter into this prison-house voluntarily?

Never.

Nature blindfolds and lures her into it.

Before civilization developed a hectic super-sentiment in woman, she lived as do the animals. Naturally, motherhood was an incident in her life. Her children early became independent, and she had a comfortable, healthy indifference to their welfare after they were able to get a living.

All the time she was a mother she was economically free. She had had the strength to take care of herself from childhood, and when her child came, she was able to care for both.

The father of her baby made no demands upon her for service as cook, housekeeper, laundress, valet, lover or friend. He took care of himself wholly, and so did she. All they wanted was food and shelter.

But since man’s needs are multiple, the demands upon male and female are great.

NATURE’S METHOD

The more intimately we attach ourselves to Nature, the more she glows with beauty and returns us our affection.—Froebel.

ATURE does not seem to have expected man to get more than a primitive living. She has not changed Her methods at all.

Man has changed. He makes and directs machinery that earns for one man what fifty men can earn; so that one man is fifty times richer than a primitive man.

Nature uses no machinery.

It takes more than twenty years of the mother’s time to develop one citizen. There are no short cuts nor quick methods in woman’s special work.

The mother of a large family has given twenty-five of the best years of her life to the work which none but her can do.

She has given to the state citizens.

This has cost her all her strength, all her time and the ambitions of a quarter of a century.

As our present civilization is, she has given her economic independence, her individual ambitions.

She pays dearly for the privilege of being mother to citizens. She is dependent upon one man for the maintenance of both herself and her children.

HE man, too, is blindfolded by Nature and is led where he knows not.

The desire to give all of his earnings to the development of citizens may never have been his. He may not know nor care about the welfare and perpetuation of the state.

But Nature has not bound him hand and foot to Her plans. When, or if, his affection ceases for this woman who is dependent upon him for food, shelter and clothing, he may use his own judgment about the woman’s and the children’s needs. So long as they escape the attention of the Humane