Is not the quality, rather than the quantity, of children the thing to be aimed at? If, then, by improving woman’s status the breed improves, as improve it must, is not this preferable to the “plenty” in their present very mixed condition? Has no one sufficient imagination to see in the mind’s eye a race that would be incapable of breeding this mass of “undesirable aliens”, who are tossed about from shore to shore, welcome nowhere, and a curse to themselves?
Fewer and Better Children
By Helen Campbell
(In “The Arena.”)
Slowly, how slowly, has dawned the thought that something more than mere numbers is the need of the family. Man found out long ago what laws must be studied and carried out in breeding for the high results in animal life; the brood mare or other animal rested and skillfully fed. For the woman, such thought never entered the mind of either husband or wife. The formula “God wills it”, lifted the burden of responsibility for defectives, or diseased, deformed or crippled children.... “Fewer and better”, has its own mission, till the day comes when a trained motherhood and fatherhood will ensure to the state an order of citizens for whom that war cry is no longer needed. The old phrase “God’s will”, is to fill with new meaning. God’s will and man’s, more and more with every step forward in the knowledge of what life was meant to bring to every child of man.
Equality in Fitness
By Helen G. Putnam, M. D. LL. D.
It makes no difference to the child’s inheritance which parent is unfit. Neither should be. It makes no difference to the child whether, after birth, the ignorance, evil instruction, contagious blighting of him come from a man or from a woman; from domestic conditions (said to be women’s work), or from municipal conditions (said to be man’s work). The responsibility cannot be divided. Before this ideal—the child’s well being—these sexes are on an equal footing, nor is one sex justified in wronging the child because the other says or does so. Nature forgives no spurious reasoning. The child and the race suffer the consequences.
Where Women Have Long Voted
By Florence Kelly