to observe the oceans of misery endured by women and children because of
their economic dependence on the fortunes of husbands and fathers.

Whatever may be the solution of poverty, whatever be the future status
of the family, it seems certain to me that some way will be devised
whereby motherhood will cease to be a privately supported profession. In
some way society will pay its own account. If producing citizens to the
State be the greatest service a woman citizen can perform, the State
will ultimately recognize the right of the woman citizen to protection
during her time of service. The first step towards solving the problem
is for women to learn to support themselves before the time comes for
them to serve the State. Through the educating process of productive
labor the woman mind may devise a means of protecting the future mothers
of the race.

The second fact, the growing prevalence of divorce, on the face of it
seems to menace the security of the home and of children. So deeply
overlain with prejudice, conventionalities, and theological traditions
is the average woman as well as the average man that it is difficult to
argue in favor of a temporary tolerance of divorce that a permanent high
standard of marriage may be established. But to my mind any state of
affairs, even a Reno state of affairs, looks more encouraging than the
old conditions under which innocent girls married to rakes and drunkards
were forbidden to escape their chains. It is not for the good of
children to be born of disease and misery and hatred. It is not for
their good to be brought up in an atmosphere of hopeless inharmony. What
is happening in this country is not a weakening of the marriage bond,
but a strengthening of it. For soon there will grow up in the American
man's mind a desire for a marriage which will be at least as equitable
as a business partnership; as fair to one party as to the other. He will