diminution of premature births, the decrease of infantile deaths,
and the general prevalence of breast-feeding. It would probably
be hopeless to expect many employers in Anglo-Saxon lands to
adopt this policy. They are too "practical," they know how small
is the money-value of human lives. With us it is necessary for
the State to intervene.

There can be no doubt that, on the whole, modern civilized
communities are beginning to realize that under the social and
economic conditions now tending more and more to prevail, they
must in their own interests insure that the mother's best energy
and vitality are devoted to the child, both before and after its
birth. They are also realizing that they cannot carry out their
duty in this respect unless they make adequate provision for the
mothers who are thus compelled to renounce their employment in
order to devote themselves to their children. We here reach a
point at which Individualism is at one with Socialism. The
individualist cannot fail to see that it is at all cost necessary
to remove social conditions which crush out all individuality;
the Socialist cannot fail to see that a society which neglects to
introduce order at this central and vital point, the production
of the individual, must speedily perish.

It is involved in the proper fulfilment of a mother's relationship to her
infant child that, provided she is healthy, she should suckle it. Of
recent years this question has become a matter of serious gravity. In the
middle of the eighteenth century, when the upper-class women of France had
grown disinclined to suckle their own children, Rousseau raised so loud
and eloquent a protest that it became once more the fashion for a woman to
fulfil her natural duties. At the present time, when the same evil is