Such measures sharply illustrate the superficial and fragmentary manner in which the whole problem of motherhood is studied to-day.  It seeks a LAISSER Faire policy of parenthood or marriage, with an indiscriminating paternalism concerning maternity.  It is as though the Government were to say:  “Increase and multiply; we shall assume the responsibility of keeping your babies alive.”  Even granting that the administration of these measures might be made effective and effectual, which is more than doubtful, we see that they are based upon a complete ignorance or disregard of the most important fact in the situation—­that of indiscriminate and irresponsible fecundity.  They tacitly assume that all parenthood is desirable, that all children should be born, and that infant mortality can be controlled by external aid.  In the great world-problem of creating the men and women of to-morrow, it is not merely a question of sustaining the lives of all children, irrespective of their hereditary and physical qualities, to the point where they, in turn, may reproduce their kind.  Advocates of Birth Control offer and accept no such superficial solution.  This philosophy is based upon a clearer vision and a more profound comprehension of human life.  Of immediate relief for the crushed and enslaved motherhood of the world through State aid, no better criticism has been made than that of Havelock Ellis: 

“To the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on paper, nothing seems simpler than to cure the present evils of child-rearing by setting up State nurseries which are at once to relieve mothers of everything connected with the men of the future beyond the pleasure—­if such it happens to be—­of conceiving them, and the trouble of bearing them, and at the same time to rear them up independently of the home, in a wholesome, economical and scientific manner.  Nothing seems simpler, but from the fundamental psychological point of view nothing is falser....  A State which admits that the individuals composing it are incompetent to perform their most sacred and intimate functions, and takes it upon itself to perform them itself instead, attempts a task that would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement.(4)” It may be replied that maternity benefit measures aim merely to aid mothers more adequately to fulfil their biological and social functions.  But from the point of view of Birth Control, that will never be possible until the crushing exigencies of overcrowding are removed—­overcrowding of pregnancies as well as of homes.  As long as the mother remains the passive victim of blind instinct, instead of the conscious, responsible instrument of the life-force, controlling and directing its expression, there can be no solution to the intricate and complex problems that confront the whole world to-day.  This is, of course, impossible as long as women are driven into the factories, on night as well as day shifts, as long as children and girls and young women are driven into industries to labor that is physically deteriorating as a preparation for the supreme function of maternity.