important
of all missions--the one which insures the future of the race by her
enlightened care of the moral and physical health of her children.

Unfortunately it happens that the wages of the working-man are
insufficient for the support of a family, and the poor woman is
therefore compelled to go to the factory. The results are deplorable.
The child is either entirely abandoned, or given to the State, and the
solidarity of the family suffers in consequence.

Then again a generation of women with new ideas has arisen, who think
they should have, if they wish it, the right to live alone and by
themselves, without a husband's protection. However much some of us may
regret this attitude, it is one which must be accepted, since I cannot
believe that the worst tyrants would dare to make marriage obligatory.
These women have a right to live, and consequently a right to work. Also
there are the widows and the abandoned women.

Women first took places which seemed best fit for them, and which the
men turned over to them because the work appeared to be of a character
suitable to the feminine sex. But the modern woman has had enough of the
meagre salary which is to be obtained by means of needle-work, and she
has invaded the shop, the office, the desks of the banks and post
office. In industry also she has taken her place by the side of the
working-man, who has made room for her first with ironical grace, then
with grumbling, and sometimes with anger. I believe that in Europe at
least this kind of difficulty will have to be faced in the future.

As to the rich woman (and in LA FEMME SEULE I have treated this subject
only slightly because it is one to which I expect to come back), they
have been driven from the home where the progress of domestic science
has left them very little to do. We have reached a kind of hypocritical
form of State Socialism, or perhaps it would be better to say
Collectivism, and this will profoundly change the moral outlook. All, or
nearly all, of the work of the home seems to be done by people from the
outside--from the cleaning of the windows to the education of the
children. The modern home is but a fireside around which one hardly sees
the family gathered for intimate talk.

It has thus happened that the woman who finds herself without work, and
with several children, looks out of the windows of her home away from it
for the employment of her activities. The future will tell us whether or
no thi