practices, and indeed they have used them less than any other class. But,
owing to their poverty, lack of learning, and helplessness, the poor are
the natural victims of those who seek to make experiments on their fellows.
In the midst of a London slum a woman, who is a doctor of German philosophy
(Munich), has opened a Birth Control Clinic, where working women are
instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as
"the most harmful method of which I have had experience." [78] When we
remember that millions are being spent by the Ministry of Health and by
Local Authorities--on pure milk for necessitous expectant and nursing
mothers, on Maternity Clinics to guard the health of mothers before and
after childbirth, for the provision of skilled midwives, and on Infant
Welfare Centres--all for the single purpose of bringing healthy children
into our midst, it is truly amazing that this monstrous campaign of birth
control should be tolerated by the Home Secretary. Charles Bradlaugh was
condemned to jail for a less serious crime.

(c) _Tending towards the Servile State_

Thirdly, the policy of birth control opens the way to an extension of the
Servile State, [79] because women as well as men could then be placed under
conditions of economic slavery. Hitherto, the rule has been that during
child-bearing age a woman must be supported by her husband, and the general
feeling of the community has been opposed to any conditions likely to force
married women on to the industrial market. In her own home a woman works
hard, but she is working for the benefit of _her_ family and not directly
for the benefit of a stranger. If, instead of bearing children, women
practise birth control, and if children are to be denied to the poor as a
privilege of the rich, then it would be very easy to exploit the women of
the poorer classes. If women have no young children why should they be
exempt from the economic pressure that is applied to men? And indeed,