te should be.

Whatever the answer to the crudely-stated question, "Should Wives have
Wages?" it is certain that mothers should and must have wages or their
equivalent.

To many of the well-wishers of women it is disappointing that the
Women's Charter is not more keenly supported by women themselves.
Unfortunately the suffrage has become a fetish, the mere means has
become an end, preferred even to the offer of the real ends, such as
would be attained in very large measure by this Charter. We see here, it
is to be feared, the same spirit which protests against the wisest and
most humane legislation in the interests of women and children because
"men have no business to lay down the law for women."

In general terms, one would argue that the principle of insurance must
be applied to this case, as it is now voluntarily applied by thousands
of provident fathers. Here the State may guarantee and help, even by
the expenditure of money. It should help those who help themselves. This
is a principle which may apply to many forms of insurance or provision,
whether for old age or against invalidity; just as non-contributory
old-age provisions are fundamentally wrong in principle, and have never
been defended on any but party-political grounds of expedience, even by
their advocates, so the "endowment of motherhood" which meant the
complete liberation of fatherhood from its responsibilities would be
wrong in principle. But in both of these cases the State might rightly
undertake to help those who help themselves.

Fatherhood of the new order will not be so wholly irksome and unrewarded
as might at first appear to the critic who does not reckon children as
rewards themselves. It may involve some momentary sacrifices, but it
needs very little critical study of the ordinary man's expenditure to
discover that, on the whole, these sacrifices will be more apparent than
real. It is, for instance, a very great sacrifice indeed for the smoker
to give up tobacco; but once he has done so, he is as happy as he was,
and suffers nothing at all for the gain of his pocket. Both as regards
alcohol and tobacco, the common expenditure which would so amply provide
milk and the rest for children, is necessitated by an acquired habit
which, like all acquired habits, can be discarded. The non-smoker and
non-drinker does _not_ suffer the discomfort of the smoker and drinker
who is deprived of his need. These things cease to be needs at all, soon
after