It is important to remember that it is by no means only the women in factories who are induced to work as usual during the whole period of pregnancy, and to return to work immediately after the brief rest of confinement.  The Research Committee of the Christian Social Union (London Branch) undertook, in 1905, an inquiry into the employment of women after childbirth.  Women in factories and workshops were excluded from the inquiry which only had reference to women engaged in household duties, in home industries, and in casual work.  It was found that the majority carry on their employment right up to the time of confinement and resume it from ten to fourteen days later.  The infantile death rate for the children of women engaged only in household duties was greatly lower than that for the children of the other women, while, as ever, the hand-fed infants had a vastly higher death rate than the breast-fed infants (British Medical Journal, Oct. 24, 1908, p. 1297).

In the great French gun and armour-plate works at Creuzot (Saone et Loire) the salaries of expectant mothers among the employees are raised; arrangements are made for giving them proper advice and medical attendance; they are not allowed to work after the middle of pregnancy or to return to work after confinement without a medical certificate of fitness.  The results are said to be excellent, not only on the health of the mothers, but in the diminution of premature births, the decrease of infantile deaths, and the general prevalence of breast-feeding.  It would probably be hopeless to expect many employers in Anglo-Saxon lands to adopt this policy.  They are too “practical,” they know how small is the money-value of human lives.  With us it is necessary for the State to intervene.

There can be no doubt that, on the whole, modern civilized communities are beginning to realize that under the social and economic conditions now tending more and more to prevail, they must in their own interests insure that the mother’s best energy and vitality are devoted to the child, both before and after its birth.  They are also realizing that they cannot carry out their duty in this respect unless they make adequate provision for the mothers who are thus compelled to renounce their employment in order to devote themselves to their children.  We here reach a point at which Individualism is at one with Socialism.  The individualist cannot fail to see that it is at all cost necessary to remove social conditions which crush out all individuality; the Socialist cannot fail to see that a society which neglects to introduce order at this central and vital point, the production of the individual, must speedily perish.

It is involved in the proper fulfilment of a mother’s relationship to her infant child that, provided she is healthy, she should suckle it.  Of recent years this question has become a matter of serious gravity.  In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the