institutions tainted with injustice and flawed with unrealities. All
Socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers far ahead of the
main advance. The organized state that should own and administer their
possessions for the general good has not arrived to take them over; and
in the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory agents according to
their lights and make things ready for its coming.

The Believer then who is not in the public service, whose life lies
among the operations of private enterprise, must work always on the
supposition that the property he administers, the business in which he
works, the profession he follows, is destined to be taken over and
organized collectively for the commonweal and must be made ready for the
taking over; that the private outlook he secures by investment, the
provision he makes for his friends and children, are temporary,
wasteful, though at present unavoidable devices to be presently merged
in and superseded by the broad and scientific previsions of the
co-operative commonwealth.


3.9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE AND MOTHER.

These principles give a rule also for the problem that faces the great
majority of thinking wives and mothers to-day. The most urgent and
necessary social work falls upon them; they bear, and largely educate
and order the homes of, the next generation, and they have no direct
recognition from the community for either of these supreme functions.
They are supposed to perform them not for God or the world, but to
please and satisfy a particular man. Our laws, our social conventions,
our economic methods, so hem a woman about that, however fitted for and
desirous of maternity she may be, she can only effectually do that duty