tical and economic
fields has in many ways worked against the right alignment of men and
women in family relations. But can we do without the father
altogether, save for a brief hour of service as a "biologic
necessity"? Still more, can we have for mothers that "calm and repose"
which Ellen Key bespeaks for them unless they have fathers of
efficiency and character to help them in their peculiar task of
life-creation? Is not the alternative to the father's partnership in
family life the creation of a class of "state mothers" or the social
endowment of all mothers by public grant?

=New Demand that Motherhood Have Social Support.=--In point of fact,
all the demands for new freedom in respect to motherhood rest
primarily upon the recognition by society-at-large of a claim upon it,
financial as well as spiritual, for the benefit of all who are allowed
to be mothers, in right of their own fitness for the function. And
this recognition of the social value of mothers is emphasized by many
who hold firmly to the monogamic family. It is not clear that any
sweeping changes away from the private family should be made to meet a
condition that may be changed by less drastic means.

=Local Discrepancies in Numbers of Men and of Women.=--Fit men and
women are not always together in the same place. To have more men in a
given locality than can possibly have wives or more women than can
possibly marry under the monogamic system is to derange its workings.
Is it conceivable that we shall always be so stupid and clumsy in
economic adjustment that such conditions shall continue, now that we
are able to be more easily mobile and flexible every decade? The mere
mechanical maladjustment caused by serious discrepancies in numbers of
the two sexes; in cities and in older countries more women, in
manufacture and pioneer agriculture more men; certainly creates
serious conditions. Social engineering is needed for remedy. We may
not, as so long ago was done in Virginia, transport hundreds of
"attractive damsels" from crowded towns, where women most do
congregate, to a new country, to be eagerly accepted wives on landing
from the ships. We are told, however, that many girls are being
assisted to emigrate from England to places where their service is
needed and where there are so many surplus men that they do marry in
short order. We shall find that nature and economic adjustments will
unite to more and more even up the two sides of life. It is a