Book: Woman and Womanhood

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The question remains, how is this to be done, and whence is the money to
be obtained?

Here we join issue with those Socialist writers who advocate the
endowment of motherhood and give it their own meaning; and that is why
in a preceding paragraph the word fundamental has been emphasized, since
in the endowment of motherhood as understood by socialists there are two
principles, one which I call fundamental, and a second--that the
endowment shall be by the State--which now falls to be considered. I do
not see how any one can challenge the following sentences from Mr. H. G.
Wells:

"So the monstrous injustice of the present time which makes a
mother dependent upon the economic accidents of her man, which
plunges the best of wives and the most admirable of children into
abject poverty if he happens to die, which visits his sins of waste
and carelessness upon them far more than upon himself, will
disappear. So too the still more monstrous absurdity of women
discharging their supreme social function, bearing and rearing
children in their spare time, as it were, while they earn their
living by contributing some half mechanical element to some trivial
industrial product, will disappear."[18]

But the remarkable circumstance is that Mr. Wells proposes to remedy
these consequences of, for instance, "sins of waste and carelessness,"
not by dealing with those sins but by the simple method that "a woman
with healthy and successful offspring will draw a wage for each one of
them from the State so long as they go on well. It will be her wage.
Under the State she will control her child's upbringing. How far her
husband will share in the power of direction is a matter of detail upon
which opinion may vary--and does vary widely amongst Socialists." How
far a father is to share in directing his children's upbringing is "a
matter of detail," we are told. The phrase suffices to show that
whatever we are dealing with here is either sheer fantasy or else
thinking of so crude a kind as to be unworthy of the name. Since early
in the history of the fishes paternal responsibility has been a factor
of ascending evolution. It has ever been a more and more responsible
thing to be a father. It is now proposed to reduce fatherhood to the
purely physiological act--as amongst, shall we say, the simpler worms;
and the proposal is only "a matter of detail."

Probably we had better go our own way, and waste no more time upon this
kind of thing. There remains to answer our question, how is motherhood
to be endowed; and the answer I propose is _by fatherhood_. Motherhood
is already so endowed in many a happy case. There are quite a number of
men to be found who take such a remarkable pride and interest in their
own children that their "share in the power of direction" is a real one,
and would never occur to them to be "a matter of detail." They regard
their earnings, these unprogressive fathers, as in large measure a trust
for their wives and children, and expend them accordingly. They are not
guilty of "sins and waste and carelessness"; and some of them are even
inclined to question whether they should pay for the results of such
sins on the part of other men: and since those who believe in the
"fetish of parental responsibility," to quote the favourite Socialist
_cliche_, can show that this is not a fetish but a tutelary deity of
Society, whose power has been increasing since backbones were invented,
they may be well assured that the last word will be with them.

What we require is the application of the principle of insurance; we
must compel a husband and father to do his duty, as many husbands and
fathers do their duty now without compulsion. We must regard him as
responsible in this supremely important sphere, as we do in every other.
Doubtless, this will often mean some interference with his "sins of
waste and carelessness"; and so much the better for everybody. Those who
prefer to be wasteful and careless had best remain in the ranks of
bachelorhood. We have no desire for any representation of their moral
characteristics in future generations, but if they do marry they must
be controlled. Meanwhile our champions of paternal irresponsibility are
having things all their own way. Every year more children are being fed
at the expense of the State, and there is no one to challenge the father
who smokes and drinks away any proportion of his income that he pleases.

* * * * *

Perhaps we may now attempt to sum up the suggestion of this chapter. It
is based upon a belief in the principle of monogamy--without, as some
would assert, a credulous acceptance of all the present conditions of
that institution. The principle underlying it may be right and
impossible of improvement, but our practice may be hampered by any
number of superstitions, traditions, injustices, economic and other
difficulties, which nevertheless do not invalidate our ideal.

Therefore, instead of proposing to abolish monogamy or that great
principle of common parental care of children, the support of motherhood
by fatherhood, which is perfectly expressed in monogamy alone, let us
seek rather, in the interests of the future--which will mean proximately
in the interests of woman, the great organ of the future--to make the
conditions of marriage such that it best serves the highest interests.
We need not cavil at those who look upon marriage as a symbol of the
union between Christ and His Church, but we must look upon it also as a
human institution which exists to serve mankind and must be treated
accordingly. We are quite prepared to accept in its place any other
institution which will serve mankind better, and we adhere to monogamy
only because such an alternative cannot be named.

We are to regard any disproportion in the number of the sexes as
inimical to monogamy. We know that in the past, when there has been a
great excess of women, as owing to chronic militarism, polygamy has been
the natural consequence; and we must recognize that such an excess of
women at the present day is a predisposing cause, if not of polygamy, of
something immeasurably worse. The causes of that excess of women have
therefore been examined in some degree, and our duty of opposing them is
laid down as a fundamental political proposition.

We then discussed and criticized a second argument for polygamy, based
upon the assumption that a man requires more from women than one woman
can afford him. The answer to that argument is that many women exist who
meet all their husbands' needs and satisfy all their instincts, and that
for this end the intensive education of woman's intellect is not a
necessary condition. It may be added that if the race is to rise, the
highest type of women as well as the highest type of men must be its
parents, the mothers being exactly as important as the fathers on the
score of heredity. Any attempt, therefore, to split up womanhood, so
that the lower types shall become the mothers, and the higher the
companions of men, is a directly dysgenic proposal, opposing the great
eugenic principle that the best of both sexes must be the parents of the
future.

When we find, therefore, that marriage under present conditions does
not satisfy many of the highest kinds of women, we must ask whether
their dissatisfaction is warranted, and if, as we do, we find it based
upon the fact that the present conditions are grossly unjust to women,
we must modify those conditions so that, at the very least, the wife and
mother shall not have the worst of them.

Finally, whatever we may fail to achieve because, for instance, of some
fundamental facts of human nature against which it is vain to legislate,
at least we have economic conditions under our control, and control them
we must, so that, whoever shall be in a position of economic insecurity,
at least it shall not be the mothers of the future. Our first concern
must be to safeguard them, whosoever else is inconvenienced. In deciding
how this is effected we are to be guided by that great fact of
increasing paternal responsibility which is demonstrated by the history
of animal evolution since the appearance of the earliest vertebrates,
and of which marriage, in all its forms, is at bottom the human and
social expression. We are to recognize that if sub-human fathers are in
any degree held by nature responsible with their mates for the care of
their offspring, much more should this be true of man, "made with such
large discourse, looking before and after," who is to be held
responsible for all his acts, and most of all for those most charged
with consequence. The man who brings children into the world is
responsible to their mother and through her to society at large, which
must see to it that that responsibility is not evaded. At present in
England the working man spends on the average not less than one-sixth
of his entire income on alcoholic drinks, whilst society yearly pays for
the feeding of more of his children. But it is not good enough that the
father shall swallow the interests of the future in this fashion. As the
State in Germany takes a percentage of his earnings in order to protect
him against the risks of the future, so we must see to it that the
necessary proportion of his earnings is devoted towards discharging the
responsibilities which he has incurred.

A notable consequence must follow from many such reforms as this chapter
suggests. The marriage rate must fall, and the birth-rate, already
falling, must fall much further; and so assuredly in any case they will;
nor need anyone be alarmed at such a prospect. Even from the point of
view of quantity, the future supply of "food for powder," and so forth,
the question is not how many babies are born, as people persist in
thinking, but how many babies survive. For seven years past I have been
preaching, in season and out of season, that our Bishops and popular
vaticinators in general are utterly wrong in bewailing the falling
birth-rate, whilst the unnecessary slaughter of babies and children
stares them in the face. How dare they ask for more babies to be
similarly slain! It may be permitted to quote a passage written several
years ago. "My own opinion regarding the birth-rate is that so long as
we continue to slay, during the first year of life alone, one in six or
seven of all children born (the unspeakably beneficent law of the
non-transmission of acquired characters permitting these children to be
born amazingly fit and well, city life notwithstanding), the fall in the
birth-rate should be a matter of humanitarian satisfaction. Let us learn
how to take care of the fine babies that are born, and when we have
shown that we can succeed in this, as we have hitherto most horribly
failed, we may begin to suggest that perhaps, if the number were
increased, we might reasonably expect to take care of that number also.
Babies are the national wealth, and in reality the only national wealth;
and just as a sensible father will satisfy himself that his son can take
care of his pocket-money, before he listens to a demand for its
augmentation, so, as a people, we are surely responsible to the Higher
Powers, or our own ideals, for the production of proof that we can take
care of the young helpless lives which are daily entrusted to us, before
we cry for more. It would be easy to quote episcopal denouncements
regarding the birth-rate, but I am at a loss for references to similarly
influential opinions about the slaughter of the babies that are born--a
matter which surely should take precedence. May I, in all deference,
commend for consideration a parable which always comes to my mind when I
read clerical comments on the birth-rate, without reference to the
infant-mortality? It was figured by the Supreme Lover of Children that a
wicked servant, entrusted with a portion of his master's wealth to turn
to good account, went and hid it in the earth. He was not rewarded by
the charge of more such wealth. We, as a people, are entrusted with
living wealth, and, whilst we demand more, we go and bury much of it in
the earth--whence, alas! it cannot be recovered. Not an increase of
opportunity, thus wasted, was the reward of the unprofitable servant,
but to be cast into outer darkness. Is there no moral here?"

Very distinguished recent authority may be quoted in favour of this
principle. At the Annual Public Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, held
in Paris in December, 1909, Professor Bouchard discussed the question of
the population of France, and came to the conclusion that the birth-rate
"depended upon social conditions which it was difficult if not
altogether impossible to modify, and in these circumstances the
alternative remedy was to reduce the number of deaths."

It must surely be plain that those reforms in the conditions of marriage
which have been advocated in this chapter will meet this need, and are
not necessarily to be feared even by those who, in this matter, devote
their solicitude entirely to the question of numbers, quality apart. For
the eugenist who is primarily concerned with quality these reforms are
surely unchallengeable.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE CONDITIONS OF DIVORCE


A brief chapter must be devoted to the question of the conditions of
divorce, which are really part of the conditions of marriage. Here, as
in every other case, we must apply the universal and unchallengeable
eugenic criterion: the conditions of divorce, like the conditions of
marriage itself, must be such as best serve the future of the race. This
will mean that, in the first place, in entering upon marriage--which of
necessity means so much more to a woman than it does to a man--the woman
must have the assurance that when the conditions of the contract are
broken she will be liberated. The law must bear equally upon the two
sexes. This condition of safety, once established, may determine toward
marriage a certain number of women at present deterred by what they know
of the manner in which our unjust laws now work.

Secondly, Divorce Law Reform in the right interests of women and the
future must involve the complete protection of both from, for instance,
the drunken husband. The male inebriate is on all grounds unfitted to be
a father, and the laws of divorce must ensure that if he be married, his
wife and therefore the future shall be protected from him. Those of us
who believe in the movement for Women Suffrage will be grievously
disappointed if, when that movement at last succeeds, such fundamental
and urgent reforms as these are not promptly effected.

A Royal Commission is now sitting in England upon this subject of
Divorce Law Reform, and I wish to repeat here with all the emphasis
possible what has been already said in indirect contribution to the
evidence laid before that Commission. It is that the first principle of
judgment in all such matters is the Eugenic one. Primarily marriage is
an invention for serving the future by buttressing motherhood with
fatherhood. The judgment of all our methods of marriage and divorce lies
with their products. "By their fruits ye shall know them." If there were
any antagonism between the interests of the individual and those of the
race we should indeed be in a quandary, but as I have shown a hundred
times there is no such antagonism. The man or woman from whom a divorce
ought to be obtained is _ipso facto_ the man or woman who ought not to
be a parent.

When it is a question of life or gold, we in England are consistent
Mammon worshippers. Woe to the poacher, but the wife beater has only
strained a right and may be leniently dealt with; woe to the destroyer
of pheasants, but the destruction of peasants is a detail. Thus it is
that the great fundamental questions which, because they determine the
destiny of peoples, are the great Imperial questions, are unknown even
by repute to our professed Imperialists. Every kind of industry except
the culture of the racial life interests them profoundly--if there is
money in it. The whole nation can go wild over a budget or the proposal
to revive protection, but the conditions under which the race is
recruited are the concern of but a few, who are looked upon as cranks.
In the case of such a question as our Divorce Laws the public is
substantially unaware that we are hundreds of years behind the rest of
the civilized world; that our practice is utterly unthought out, and
that the supposed compromise of Separation Orders is insane in principle
and hideous in result. The present law bears very hardly upon both sexes
in a thousand cases, but more especially upon women, toward whom it is
grossly unjust. All honour is due to the Divorce Law Reform Union,[19]
which for many years has devoted itself to this important subject, and
has at last succeeded in obtaining the formation of a Royal Commission,
the upshot of which, we may hope, will be to reform our law on moral,
humane, and eugenic lines. The following is a striking quotation from a
pamphlet written on behalf of this Union by Mr. E. S. P. Haynes, a
distinguished expert.

"But our law of divorce is only one example among many of our
hide-bound attachment to ancient abuses. It is of the utmost
importance to realize that Divorce Law Reform will merely bring our
jurisprudence up to the level of the modern enlightened State. It
involves no revolutionary disturbance of anything but our crusted
ignorance of how modern civilization works outside England. It sets
out to place the family on a firmer basis, to regulate the marriage
contract on equitable lines, and to improve the chances of the
future generation in a country where deserted wives fill the
work-houses and forty thousand illegitimate children are born every
year."

In Germany, which we are always being asked to imitate in non-essentials
by the more stupid kind of Imperialist--the kind which only very strong
empires can survive--the law of divorce is vastly superior to ours.
There is no such thing as judicial separation, which "is rightly
condemned as being contrary to public policy." Further, as Mr. Haynes
points out, "In Germany a male cannot marry under twenty-one or a female
under eighteen, whether parental consent is available or not. In England
a man may and not infrequently does cut his wife and family out of his
will; in Germany the rights of wife and children are properly
safeguarded by limiting this liberty of disposition. In England a father
need not do more for his children than keep them out of the work-house
unless he has brought himself under Divorce Jurisdiction; in Germany he
is obliged to maintain them in a suitable manner. In England a
spendthrift or dipsomaniac can only be controlled when he has spent all
his money. In Germany such persons are protected from themselves by the
family council. In England an illegitimate child can never be
legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents. In Germany this
humane and reasonable opportunity of making reparation to the child
exists as a matter of course."

Here in England we have one law for the rich and another for the poor,
for the average cost of a decree is about L100; and a case was recently
reported in which a woman had saved up for twenty years in order to
obtain a divorce. What an absolutely abominable scandal; how hideously
beneath the level of practice amongst what we are pleased to call savage
peoples. As everyone knows, the present law directly encourages
immorality, pronouncing separation _without_ the power of
re-marriage--that is to say, the greater punishment, for lesser
offences, and divorce _with_ the power of re-marriage, that is to say,
the lesser punishment, for greater offences.

Further, the law totally ignores the interests of the future in
conspicuous cases where one or other possible parent is hopelessly unfit
for such a function. In the interests not only of the individual but the
future it would be advisable to grant divorce to a person whose partner
had been confined in a lunatic asylum for, say five years, and who could
be certified as likely to remain insane permanently, or whose partner
had been confined in an Inebriates' Home for, say, two terms of one
year, or who could be proved and certified to be an incurable drunkard.

We must abolish these atrocious Separation Orders, with their direct
promotion of every kind of immorality, illegitimacy and cruelty to
women. But perhaps this chapter may be brought to a close since in
England the matter is now before a Royal Commission, and since our
stupidities are of no direct interest to the American reader. It was
necessary, however, to deal with the subject because of its immediate
and urgent bearing upon many of the problems of Womanhood.




CHAPTER XIX

THE RIGHTS OF MOTHERS


We reach here a central question which must be approached from the right
point of view or we shall certainly fail to solve it. That point of view
is the child's. There is a school of thought which approaches the
question otherwise--on abstract principles of justice and individual
independence. The only objection to them is that, if upheld on modern
conditions, these principles would soon leave us without anyone to
uphold them. The relation of the mother to the State is central and
fundamental, however considered, and the principles on which it must be
settled must, above all, be principles which are compatible with the
fundamental conditions on which States can endure.

Those principles, surely, are two. The first is that in a State we are
members one of another, and that those who need help must be helped.
This will be indignantly repudiated by a stern school of thought, but
what if it applies, everywhere, always and above all, to children? They
are members of the community who need help and they must be helped. The
second principle is indeed only a special case of the first. It is that
if the State is to continue, it must rear children.

We take it then, first, that the moral and social law is perfectly final
as to the right of every child to existence. There are no principles of
national welfare which can divorce us from the simple truth that we must
regard every human individual as sacred from the moment of its coming
into existence--and that is a long time before birth. A familiar medical
dogma is, "Keep everything alive." There may be exceptions to it, but it
is dangerous to discuss them with the unprepared. The only safe
principle is to maintain, as long as possible, the life of all--the
centenarian or the embryo conceived since the sun set. At times the
State deliberately takes life on behalf of life. The sentence of
execution passed upon the murderer may be warrantably passed by the
State of the future or its officers upon a monstrous birth, a baby
riddled with congenital syphilis or some such horrible fruit of our
present carelessness and wickedness in such matters. The State may
regard such children or their survival as illegitimate, since the laws
of nature as we see them at work throughout the living world do not
approve the survival of such. Apart from these cases, all children are
legitimate, and all children are natural. Whatever the history of the
reader's parents, he or she was assuredly both a legitimate child and a
natural child--a paradox which may be left to the solution of the
curious. Directly a new human being has been conceived, its right to
existence and survival may be conceded. Vast numbers of human beings are
conceived every year whose conception is a sin against themselves and
the State. That is a question on which the present writer has written
and spoken incessantly for years, and which no one can accuse him of
neglecting. But here we have to deal with the facts of the world as they
are and as they will be for some time to come.

All children are to be cared for. No child should die; there should be
no infant mortality; the children that are not fit to live should not be
conceived, and those that are fit to live should be allowed to live; all
children are legitimate. If the State has any kind of business at all,
this is its business.

Our subject here, the reader may say, is not children, but woman and
womanhood. The reply is that unless we have our principles rightly
formulated, we cannot solve this question of the rights of women as
mothers. Failing our principles, we shall be reduced to the prejudices
which serve as principles for our political parties. We shall have
individualist and socialist at loggerheads, the friends of marriage and
its enemies, and many other opposing parties who cannot solve the
question for us because they have not waited first to discover its
fundamentals. The rights of mothers can be approached only from the
point of view of the rights of children. We may happen to believe, as
the present writer certainly does, that parents should be responsible
for their children. He once lectured for, and published the lectures in
association with, a body called the British Constitution Association,
which holds the same belief, but when he found as he did that protests
were raised against any suggestion to help children whose parents do not
do their duty, it became plain that principles which were right in a
merely secondary and conditional way were being made absolute and
fundamental. The fundamental is that the child shall be cared for; the
conditional and secondary principle is that this is best effected
through the parents. To say that if the parents will not do it, the
child must be left to starve, is immoral and indecent. Worse words than
those, if such exist, would be required to describe our neglect of
illegitimate infancy; our cruelty toward widows and orphans; our utterly
careless maintenance of the conditions which produce these hapless
beings in such vast numbers.

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