people should have an indissoluble permanence or prohibit an
ampler grouping. The question is greatly complicated by the economic
disadvantage of women, which makes wifehood the chief feminine
profession, while only for an incidental sort of man is marriage a
source of income, and further by the fact that most women have a period
of maximum attractiveness after which it would be grossly unfair to cast
them aside. From the point of view we are discussing, the efficient
mother who can make the best of her children, is the most important sort
of person in the state. She is a primary necessity to the coming
civilization. Can the wife in any sort of polygamic arrangement, or a
woman of no assured status, attain to the maternal possibilities of the
ideal monogamic wife? One is disposed to answer, No. But then, on the
other hand, does the ordinary monogamic wife do that? We are dealing
with the finer people of the future, strongly individualized people, who
will be much freer from stereotyped moral suggestions and much less
inclined to be dealt with wholesale than the people of to-day.

I have already shown cause in these Anticipations to expect a period of
disorder and hypocrisy in matters of sexual morality. I am inclined to
think that, when the New Republic emerges on the other side of this
disorder, there will be a great number of marriage contracts possible
between men and women, and that the strong arm of the State will insist
only upon one thing--the security and welfare of the child. The
inevitable removal of births from the sphere of an uncontrollable
Providence to the category of deliberate acts, will enormously enhance
the responsibility of the parent--and of the State that has failed to
adequately discourage the philoprogenitiveness of the parent--towards
the child. Having permitted the child to come into existence, public
policy and the older standard of justice alike demand, under these new
conditions, that it must be fed, cherished, and educated, not merely up
to a respectable minimum, but to the full height of its possibilities.
The State will, therefore, be the reserve guardian of all children. If
they are being undernourished, if their education is being neglected,
the State will step in, take over the responsibility of their
management, and enforce their charge upon the parents. The first
liability of a parent will be to his child, and for his child; even the
dues of that darling of our current law, the land