To one aspect of this contention we shall later
return. Meanwhile, the answer is that, rather than abolish monogamy, we
should strive to alter the conditions which produce such an excess of
women. If such an aim were necessarily impracticable, we might well feel
inclined to vote for polygamy rather than the present state of things.
It is a very decent alternative to prostitution. But in point of fact
our aim of equalizing the numbers of the sexes, which I assert as a
canon of fundamental politics, is eminently practicable; and here we may
briefly outline, as very relevant to the problems of womanhood, the
methods by which that aim is to be realized for the good of both sexes
in the present and the future.
Nature gives us more than a fair start, almost as if she knew that the
wastage of male life is apt to be higher at all ages even under the best
conditions. She sends more male children into the world, as if to
secure, on the whole, an equality of the sexes in adult life. That ideal
is realizable, even allowing for a considerable excess of male deaths.
One of our duties, then, is to control that part of the male death-rate,
if any, which is controllable. To begin at the beginning, we find that
infant mortality claims our attention at once. For years past in the
campaign against infant mortality I have urged this as an apparently
somewhat remote, yet very real and important issue.
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