t all, we go
on year after year, improving. "Self-improvement" is the watch-word of
the Century. If "self-improvement," then social improvement. Mankind
is still in the making, as far as external conditions are concerned.

The complaint goes up from every side, that women refuse motherhood.
Girls who have been carefully reared, brought up in the most orthodox
movement, are heard to openly, unashamed, announce their intention of
finding a rich husband and not, emphatically, _not_ having any
children.

May this not be Nature's revenge upon our inhuman treatment of girls
who become mothers without first becoming wives?

We are wont to refer to unmarried mothers as "unfortunates" and
"ruined." But in what does the misfortune consist, and wherein are
they ruined?

Is a woman ever unfortunate if she gives birth to a child because she
has loved, and because she loves the child? Is she ruined in any way
except that she becomes the target for our inhumanity; our well-nigh
unforgivable stupidity?

The world, and especially women, owe a debt of gratitude to a certain
famous woman who, by her force of character; her defiant self-respect
in the face of social criticism, because she had a child and no
husband, has wrung from the unwilling public the highest place
accorded any actress in this or any previous age. This artist's
well-known reply to an openly expressed criticism of her is worthy of
perpetuation. "Ah, so!" she said, "true I have a son and no husband,
but you women have husbands and lovers, and no children!"

We would not have it understood that we commend this woman's example,
and criticise that of the woman to whom she referred. We do not regard
child-bearing as the end and aim of woman's mission. It has been said
that the first duty of Man is to perpetuate the species, but
observation should convince us that in all too many instances the
first duty of the individual would be to refrain from such a crime
against posterity.

We neither criticise nor advise the adoption of the position of a
husbandless mother; nor that of the women who are childless wives. We
endorse any woman's insistence upon her right to self-respect; and we
insist that a better civilization cannot come without permitting the
greatest degree of personal liberty in matters pertaining to the
sex-relation, and, above and beyond all, without conceding to the
unmarried mother the same respect that we accord to the married one,
when she is otherwise