than any other human function, must undergo scientific study, must be
voluntarily directed and controlled with intelligence and foresight. As
long as we countenance what H. G. Wells has well termed "the 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" any attempt to furnish "maternal education"
is bound to fall on stony ground. Children brought into the world as the
chance consequences of the blind play of uncontrolled instinct, become
likewise the helpless victims of their environment. It is because
children are cheaply conceived that the infant mortality rate is high.
But the greatest evil, perhaps the greatest crime, of our so-called
civilization of to-day, is not to be gauged by the infant-mortality
rate. In truth, unfortunate babies who depart during their first twelve
months are more fortunate in many respects than those who survive to
undergo punishment for their parents' cruel ignorance and complacent
fecundity. If motherhood is wasted under the present regime of "glorious
fertility," childhood is not merely wasted, but actually destroyed.
Let us look at this matter from the point of view of the children who
survive.

(1) U.S. Department of Labor: Children's Bureau. Infant
Mortality Series,
No. 3, pp. 81, 82, 83, 84.

(2) Henry H. Hibbs, Jr. Infant Mortality: Its Relation to
Social and
Industrial Conditions, p. 39. Russell Sage Foundation, New
York, 1916.