the young that a vast problem has grown up in our midst which seriously
disturbs the normal adjustment of sex relationships. It would seem to
have been Nature's intention that there should be slightly more men
than women in the world, for boy babies outnumber girl babies
[Footnote: The actual figures are 1052 boy babies to 1000 girl babies.]
What it would mean if there were more adult men than women in the world
it is hard to imagine. It would at once have enormous social
consequences. No woman would remain a celibate except by her own
choice. Men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives, and
would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get
wives whenever they want them. It would in fact mean a new world in
many ways.

As things are, however, the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce
a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies, and males
come to be in a minority. This state of affairs has been greatly
aggravated by the war, but it was serious even before 1914. It was then
the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million. The
number must be nearer a million and a half to-day.

The result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a
life in which their most deeply implanted instincts--the instincts for
wifehood and motherhood--cannot find their normal satisfaction, and the
problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life.
It is, of course, nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about
these women as "superfluous women." Behind the very phrase there lurks
the old delusion that women are only needed in the world as wives
and mothers. As a matter of fact a great deal of the work that is most
needed in our civilization--work in education, art, literature,
nursing, social service, and other departments of life--is being done