The number of wives permitted to a single husband or of husbands to
a single wife under a marriage system, is not an ethical problem: it
depends solely on the proportion of the sexes in the population. If in
consequence of a great war three-quarters of the men in this country
were killed, it would be absolutely necessary to adopt the Mohammedan
allowance of four wives to each man in order to recruit the population.
The fundamental reason for not allowing women to risk their lives in
battle and for giving them the first chance of escape in all dangerous
emergencies: in short, for treating their lives as more valuable than
male lives, is not in the least a chivalrous reason, though men may
consent to it under the illusion of chivalry. It is a simple matter of
necessity; for if a large proportion of women were killed or
disabled, no possible readjustment of our marriage law could avert the
depopulation and consequent political ruin of the country, because a
woman with several husbands bears fewer children than a woman with one,
whereas a man can produce as many families as he has wives. The
natural foundation of the institution of monogamy is not any inherent
viciousness in polygyny or polyandry, but the hard fact that men and
women are born in about equal numbers. Unfortunately, we kill so many
of our male children in infancy that we are left with a surplus of adult
women which is sufficiently large to claim attention, and yet not large
enough to enable every man to have two wives. Even if it were, we should
be met by an economic difficulty. A Kaffir is rich in proportion to the
number of his wives, because the women are the breadwinners. But in our
civilization women are not paid for their social work in the bearing and
rearing of children and the ordering of households; they are quartered
on the wages of their husbands. At least four out of five of our men
could not afford two wives unless their wages were nearly doubled. Would
it not then be well to try unlimited polygyny; so that the remaining
fifth could have as many wives apiece as they could afford? Let us see
how this would work.