Surely, from the large standpoint of true national economy, no wiser use
could be made of the vast expansion of the wealth-producing power of the
nation under the reign of machinery, than to secure for every woman
destined to be a wife and a mother, that relief from the physical strain
of industrial toil which shall enable her to bring forth healthy
offspring, and to employ her time and attention in their nurture, and in
the ordering of a cleanly, wholesome, peaceful home life. So long as
public opinion permits or even encourages women, who either are or will
be mothers, to neglect the preparation for, and the performance of, the
duties of domestic life and of maternity, by engaging in laborious and
unhealthy industrial occupations, so long shall we pay the penalty in
that physical and moral deterioration of the race which we have traced
in low city life. How can the women of Cradley Heath engaged in wielding
huge sledge-hammers, or carrying on their neck a hundredweight of chain
for twelve or fourteen hours a day, in order to earn five or seven
shillings a week, bear or rear healthy children? What "hope of our race"
can we expect from the average London factory hand? What "home" is she
capable of making for her husband and her children? The high death-rate
of the "slum" children must be largely attributed to the fact that the
women are factory workers first and mothers afterwards. Roscher, the
German economist, assigns as the reason why the Jewish population of
Prussia increases so much faster than the Christian, the fact that the
Jewish mothers seldom go out of their own homes to work.
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