The question of divorce is so important that we must defer it to the next chapter.
We have briefly alluded to the question of the wife's possession of herself. We must now refer to the question, scarcely less important, of her possession of her own property and her claims upon her husband's. It is difficult for the present generation to realize that very few decades have passed since the time when everything which a woman possessed became, when she married, the property of her husband. That is now a question which there is no need to discuss, but there remains a very great issue, lately become prominent, and suggested by the popular phrase, the endowment of motherhood.
We should obviously be false to our first principles if we did not assent with all our hearts to the fundamental principle expressed by this phrase. If it is necessary that the wife be protected as a wife, it is even more necessary that she be protected as a mother. There are twelve hundred thousand widows in this country at the present time, and of these a large number stand in unaided parental relation to a great multitude of children. I showed some years ago that, as we shall see in more detail in a later chapter, alcohol makes not less than forty-five thousand widows and orphans every year in England and Wales. Nothing can be more certain than that, in the interests of all except the worthless type of man, the economic protection of motherhood is an urgent need, less open to criticism perhaps than any other economic reconstruction proposed by the reformer. Some will argue, of course, that the State is to look after children directly, but I, for one, as a biologist, have no choice but to believe that the way to save children is to safeguard parenthood, and I cannot question that our duty is to provide the mother with the necessary means for performing her supreme function, whether she has a living husband or is a widow or is unmarried.
The question remains, how is this to be done, and whence is the money to be obtained?
Here we join issue with those Socialist writers who advocate the endowment of motherhood and give it their own meaning; and that is why in a preceding paragraph the word fundamental has been emphasized, since in the endowment of motherhood as understood by socialists there are two principles, one which I call fundamental, and a second—that the endowment shall be by the State—which now falls to be considered. I do not see how any one can challenge the following sentences from Mr. H. G. Wells:
"So the monstrous injustice of the present time which makes a mother dependent upon the economic accidents of her man, which plunges the best of wives and the most admirable of children into abject poverty if he happens to die, which visits his sins of waste and carelessness upon them far more than upon himself, will disappear. So too the still more monstrous absurdity of women discharging their supreme social function, bearing and rearing children in their spare time, as it were, while they earn their living by contributing some half mechanical element to some trivial industrial product, will disappear."[18]
But the remarkable circumstance is that Mr. Wells proposes to remedy these consequences of, for instance, "sins of waste and carelessness," not by dealing with those sins but by the simple method that "a woman with healthy and successful offspring will draw a wage for each one of them from the State so long as they go on well. It will be her wage. Under the State she will control her child's upbringing. How far her husband will share in the power of direction is a matter of detail upon which opinion may vary—and does vary widely amongst Socialists." How far a father is to share in directing his children's upbringing is "a matter of detail," we are told. The phrase suffices to show that whatever we are dealing with here is either sheer fantasy or else thinking of so crude a kind as to be unworthy of the name. Since early in the history of the fishes paternal responsibility has been a factor of ascending evolution. It has ever been a more and more responsible thing to be a father. It is now proposed to reduce fatherhood to the purely physiological act—as amongst, shall we say, the simpler worms; and the proposal is only "a matter of detail."
Probably we had better go our own way, and waste no more time upon this kind of thing. There remains to answer our question, how is motherhood to be endowed; and the answer I propose is by fatherhood. Motherhood is already so endowed in many a happy case. There are quite a number of men to be found who take such a remarkable pride and interest in their own children that their "share in the power of direction" is a real one, and would never occur to them to be "a matter of detail." They regard their earnings, these unprogressive fathers, as in large measure a trust for their wives and children, and expend them accordingly. They are not guilty of "sins and waste and carelessness"; and some of them are even inclined to question whether they should pay for the results of such sins on the part of other men: and since those who believe in the "fetish of parental responsibility," to quote the favourite Socialist cliché, can show that this is not a fetish but a tutelary deity of Society, whose power has been increasing since backbones were invented, they may be well assured that the last word will be with them.
What we require is the application of the principle of insurance; we must compel a husband and father to do his duty, as many husbands and fathers do their duty now without compulsion. We must regard him as responsible in this supremely important sphere, as we do in every other. Doubtless, this will often mean some interference with his "sins of waste and carelessness"; and so much the better for everybody. Those who prefer to be wasteful and careless had best remain in the ranks of bachelorhood. We have no desire for any representation of their moral characteristics in future generations, but if they do marry they must be controlled. Meanwhile our champions of paternal irresponsibility are having things all their own way. Every year more children are being fed at the expense of the State, and there is no one to challenge the father who smokes and drinks away any proportion of his income that he pleases.