In order that the child may be surrounded at its birth with all possible
care and skill, it must be born somewhere else than upon the floor of a
factory. Notwithstanding all that may be said in its favor, it is little
likely that the Jevonian proposal to forbid the employment of any mother
within a period of three years from the date of the birth of her
youngest child will be adopted for many years to come, if ever at all.
Among the foremost opponents of such a proposal would be many of the
advocates and defenders of “women’s rights,” begging the whole question
of children’s rights, and ignoring the question whether it can ever be
“right” for mothers to leave their babies and enter the factory,
displacing men, or, what is finally the same thing, lowering their
wages. It would be difficult, however, to imagine any such opposition to
the proposal that the employment of women should be forbidden within a
period of six weeks or two months prior to and following childbirth.
Decency and humanity alike suggest that such a law should be embodied in
the factory legislation of every industrial state, as is the case in
most countries at the present time.
With our cosmopolitan population it is certain that the enforcement of
such a law would be no easy matter.[158] Little difficulty would seem to
be necessarily involved in the enforcement of the period of rest _after_
confinement; all that would be necessary would be to insist upon a copy
of the birth certificate of the youngest child, accompanied by the sworn
statement of the mother. If the whole onus of responsibility were placed
upon the employer, and penalties were imposed in a few cases, there is
no reason to suppose that the law in this respect would be less
effective than other laws relating to employment. That it would not be
perfectly successful is no more an argument against its enactment than
the partial failure of child-labor laws, for example, is an argument for
their repeal. But the period of exemption prior to childbirth is a much
more delicate and difficult matter. It has not, I believe, been found
possible in European countries to enforce the law in this direction with
as much success as in the other, but the results have been sufficiently
successful, nevertheless, to warrant continued effort. In actual
practice such a law would have a tendency, doubtless, to discourage the
employment of married women in factories, since employers as a rule
would not care to take the trouble, or to assume the risks, thus
involved in their employment.
But, as already noted, if working mothers are to be forced into
prolonged periods of idleness, in the interests of their offspring and
the future of society, some means must be provided whereby they may be
maintained and secured against want. The philanthropic experiments noted
in an earlier chapter owed all their success to such provisions. While
it would perhaps be too Utopian to advocate as a measure for immediate
adoption state pensions for childhood and youth as well as old age, as
Mr. C. Hanford Henderson does in his wonderfully suggestive and
stimulating book, _Education and the Larger Life_, it is not, it seems
to me, too much to demand that the state shall (1) allow no mother to
imperil her own life and that of her offspring by working too close to
the period of parturition, nor (2) allow any mother to suffer want
because she is prevented from, or of her own free will and intelligence
avoids, such work. If the right of the child to be well born, to be
ushered into the world with loving care and all the skill possible, is
to be anything but a mere cant phrase, the safeguards thus briefly
sketched cannot, it seems to me, be lightly denied. Recently I visited
the stables of a friend interested in the breeding of horses. I saw that
he had taken great care and pains to secure a well-trained veterinary
surgeon, that the brood mares were patiently and lovingly cared for and
tended, both before and after foaling. No humane and intelligent breeder
of animals would deny them the protection and care here suggested for
human beings. Until the state is willing to care for its children, at
least as well as enlightened individuals care for their horses, or their
dogs, it is mockery to speak of it as being “civilized”!