Such a woman
must answer her own question. What anyone else may tell her is far
less important than what she herself shall reply to a society that
demands more and more children and which gives them less and less when
they arrive.
What shall this woman say to a society that would make of her body a
reproductive machine only to waste prodigally the fruit of her being?
Does society value her offspring? Does it not let them die by the
hundreds of thousands of want, hunger and preventable disease? Does it
not drive them to the factories, the mills, the mines and the stores
to be stunted physically and mentally? Does it not throw them into the
labor market to be competitors with her and their father? Do we not
find the children of the South filling the mills, working side by side
with their mothers, while the fathers remain at home? Do we not find
the father, mother and child competing with one another for their
daily bread? Does society not herd them in slums? Does it not drive
the girls to prostitution and the boys to crime? Does it educate them
for free-spirited manhood and womanhood? Does it even give them during
their babyhood fit places to live in, fit clothes to wear, fit food to
eat, or a clean place to play? Does it even permit the mother to give
them a mother's care?
The woman of the workers knows what society does with her offspring.
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