said to have begun in the Eighteenth century. The Labour movement
arose out of the Industrial Revolution with its resultant tendency to
over-population, to unrestricted competition, to social misery and
disorder. The Woman movement appeared as an at first neglected
by-product of the French Revolution with its impulses of general
human expansion, of freedom and of equality.

Since then, as we know, these two movements have each had a great and
vigorous career which is still far from completed. On the whole they
have moved independently along separate lines, and have at times
seemed indeed almost hostile to each other. That has ceased to be the
case. Of recent years it has been seen not only that these two
movements are not hostile, but that they may work together
harmoniously for similar ends.

One final step remained to be taken--it had to be realised not only
that the Labour movement could give the secret of success to the woman
movement by its method and organization, but that on the other hand,
woman held the secret without which labour is impotent to reach its
ends. Woman, by virtue of motherhood is the regulator of the
birthrate, the sacred disposer of human production. It is in the
deliberate restraint and measurement of human production that the
fundamental problems of the family, the nation, the whole brotherhood
of mankind find their solution. The health and longevity of the
individual, the economic welfare of the workers, the general level of
culture of the community, the possibility of abolishing from the world
the desolating scourge of war--all these like great human needs,
depend, primarily and fundamentally, on the wise limitation of the
human output. It does not certainly make them inevitable, but it
renders them possible of accomplishment; without it they have been