filthy tenements, breathing foul air, starving on bad food, become a
ready prey to infectious diseases. The infectious diseases spread. Men
of wealth, from the refined and cleanly quarters, encounter in their
business walks representatives from the degraded and disgusting
quarter, and take from them the seeds of those diseases; or, on some
fatal day, a miasma from the corruption of the degraded quarter is
wafted in at the windows of the luxurious dwellings, and the idols of
those dwellings are stricken down. So in the body politic. The wise
and well-to-do enact laws, obedience to which is for the general good.
The ignorant and poverty-stricken, because of their unenlightened
condition, cannot see that obedience is for the good of all, and break
those laws. Hence crimes, the effects of which the wise and well-to-do
are made to feel, and for the punishment of which they are made to
pay. It is the same with man and woman. Man says, "Let woman manage
her domestic concerns, attend to her children, and gain the
approbation of her husband. These are her chief duties, and for these
little culture is needed." But woman becomes the mother of sons who
become men; and the character, condition, and destiny of those sons
who become men are, as we have seen, determined largely by the
condition, pre-natal and post-natal, of the mothers. So that the
ignorance in which woman is kept by man re-acts on man.

A fourth reason for a change is, that we live in a republic. In a
republic every man has a voice in public affairs. Every man is first a
child; and children, commonly speaking, are what the mother's
influence helps to make them. Therefore, if you would have the country
wisely, honestly, and decently governed, give the children the right
kind of mothers. If the community knew its own interests, it would not
merely permit women all possible means of culture, but would force all
possible means of culture upon them. It would say, "We can't afford