t; if
they are poor they establish a cheap imitation of this phase of
semi-communal life in what is paradoxically known as "light"
housekeeping, usually represented by one small dark room where the
nearest delicatessen serves as a convenience, the public laundry
minimizes domestic labor, and the department store supplies ready
made, the family clothing, from undergarments to top coats. Under
these conditions, whether of fashionable hotel suites or dark "light
housekeeping," it is plain that children are not welcome.

Even those of the class found between these extremes are discouraged
from rearing children, since city life tends more and more to
apartments as a substitute for the home; and no well regulated
apartment house is open to children. The average observer, as we say,
notes these conditions, but fails to realize that there must be a
cosmic cause for a condition so wide-spread. There must be "something
back of it," as we say of many things which we note in our every day
life. Looked at from the surface only, these conditions seem
deplorable and ultimately race-suicidal. But the cosmic law is always
upward in tendency. We may safely trust it, if we will.

This does not mean that the conscious motive which actuates the
average woman, who is able physically and financially to bear children
and yet will not, is a high and noble one. The law deals with the
planet, not directly with the individual; it acts upon the developed
and the undeveloped with equal impartiality, even as the rain falls
upon the just and the unjust alike.

Spiritually conscious persons realize the necessity for a change in
human ethics. The world is in need of a more exalted ideal; an ideal
in which equality shall be more nearly represented and they give
themselves consciously to the task of assisting in this regenerating
work.

The difference is not in the law itself, but in our comprehension of
it. The curriculum of the school of life is unchanged. We graduate
from it or we return for another term, according as we have mastered
the studies. Applying this truth to the conditions just stated, and we
see that this rebellion on the part of woman against child birth has
two aspects. One is from apparent selfishness and lack of the
temperamental quality, which has erroneously been attributed to women
as an exclusive possession, namely, the maternal instinct.

The other aspect of woman's disinclination to maternity is due to a
restless, vague bu