act, we have most husbands older than their wives,
it follows that in a great preponderance of cases the husband will die
first; and so we have produced the phenomenon of widowhood. The greater
the seniority of the husband, the more widowhood will there be in a
society. Every economic tendency, every demand for a higher standard of
life, every aggravation for the struggle for existence, every increment
of the burden of the defective-minded, tending to increase the man's age
at marriage, which, on the whole, involves also increasing his
seniority--contributes to the amount of widowhood in a nation.

We therefore see that, as might have been expected, this question of the
age ratio in marriage, though first to be considered from the average
point of view of the girl, has a far wider social significance. First,
for herself, the greater her husband's seniority, the greater are her
chances of widowhood, which is in any case the destiny of an enormous
preponderance of married women. But further, the existence of widowhood
is a fact of great social importance because it so often means unaided
motherhood, and because, even when it does not, the abominable economic
position of woman in modern society bears hardly upon her. It is not
necessary to pursue this subject further at the present time. But it is
well to insist that this seniority of the husband has remoter
consequences far too important to be so commonly overlooked.

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRST NECESSITY

At this stage in our discussion it is necessary to consider a subject
which ought rightly to come foremost in the provident study of the facts
that precede marriage--a subject which craven fear and ignorance combine
to keep out of sight, yet which must now see the light of day. For the
writer would be false to his task, and guilty of a mere amateur trifling
with the subject, who should spend page after page in discussing the
choice of marriage, the best age for marriage, and so forth, without
declaring that as an absolutely essential preliminary it is necessary
that the girl who mates shall at least, whatever else be or be not
possible, mate with a man who is free from gross and foul disease.

The two forms of disease to which we must refer are appalling in their
consequences, both for the individual and the future. In technical
language they are called contagious; meaning that the infection is
conveyed not through the air as, say, in the case of measles or
small