We have reached the conclusion that all motherhood is to be protected.
This means that from some source or other the money shall be forthcoming
for the maintenance of the mother and her children. For, in the first
place, the children are not to work because, if they do, they will not
be able to work as they should in the future. The State cannot afford to
let them work. Further, the proper care of childhood is so continuous
and exacting a task, and of such supreme moment, that it is the highest
and foremost work that can be named; and therefore, in the second place,
she whose business it is must not be hampered by having to do anything
else. If any labourer is worthy of his hire, she is. Her economic
security must be absolute. She must be as safe as the Bank of England,
because England and its banks stand or fall with her. In the rightly
constituted State, if there be any one at all whose provision and
maintenance are absolutely secure, it will be the mothers. Whoever else
has financial anxiety, they shall have none. Any State that can afford
to exist can afford to see to this. No economist can inform me what
proportion of the labour and resources of England are at this moment
devoted to the means of life, and what proportion to superfluities,
luxuries and the means of death. But it is a very simple matter with
which the reader, who is doubtless a better arithmetician than I am, may
amuse himself, to estimate the number of married women of reproductive
age in the community, and allowing anything in reason for illegitimate
motherhood and nothing at all for infertile wives, to satisfy himself
that the total cost which would be involved in the adequate care of
motherhood, is a mere fraction of the national expenditure.
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