s (James Haslam, _Englishwoman_,
June, 1909), and in Lancashire factories alone, in 1901, there
were 120,000 married women employed. But it would be easily
possible for the State to arrange, in its own interests, that a
woman's work at a trade should always give way to her work as a
mother. It is the more undesirable that married women should be
prohibited from working at a profession, since there are some
professions for which a married woman, or, rather, a mother, is
better equipped than an unmarried woman. This is notably the case
as regards teaching, and it would be a good policy to allow
married women teachers special privileges in the shape of
increased free time and leave of absence. While in many fields of
knowledge an unmarried woman may be a most excellent teacher, it
is highly undesirable that children, and especially girls, should
be brought exclusively under the educational influence of
unmarried teachers.

The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of
procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life
is by the general adoption, by the educated classes of all countries--and
it must be remembered that, in this matter at all events, all classes are
gradually beginning to become educated--of methods for the prevention of
conception except when conception is deliberately desired. It is no longer
permissible to discuss the validity of this control, for it is an
accomplished fact and has become a part of our modern morality. "If a
course of conduct is habitually and deliberately pursued by vast
multitudes of otherwise well-conducted people, forming probably a majority
of the whole educated class of the nation," as Sidney Webb rightly puts
it, "we must assume that it does not conflict with their actual code of
morality."[428]

There cannot be any doubt that, so far as England is concerned,
the prevention of conception is practiced, from prudential or
other motives, by the vast majority of the educated classes. This
fact is well within the knowledge of all who are intimately
acquainted with the facts of English family life. Thus, Dr. A.W.
Thomas writes (_British Medical Journal_, Oct. 20, 1906, p.
1066): "From my experience as a general practitioner, I have no
hesitation in saying that ninety per cent. of young married
couples of the comfortably-off classes use preven