If the evils of industry were removed a great many social ills would
cease. For instance, if women were independent, industrial members of
the community, they would never be forced into distasteful, ill-assorted
or convenient marriages, which are the most fruitful of all the sources
of vice and crime in children, and consequently in the community. But
beyond the industrial and dependent relations of the sexes there are
many purely social ills that as much as those of industry require a
remedy. Marriage is regarded as a too frivolous matter; is rushed into
and out of in a haste that shows utter ignorance or else a total
disregard for its responsibilities, and as if it were an institution
specially designed for the benefit of the selfish wishes and passions of
the sexes. But to look at marriage in this light is to not see it at all
in that of the public good, or ultimately, in that of individual
happiness. Marriages that are based upon selfishness or passion can
never result in anything save misery to all concerned. Men and women who
cannot look above these interests, who do not recognize that these
interests should be secondary; who, after finding that their personal
feelings would lead them to marry, cannot coolly ask themselves, are we
prepared to become God’s architects to create His images, and be
governed by the truthful reply, are not fit to marry. Many have the idea
that I am opposed to marriage, but nothing could be further from the
truth. I am opposed to improper marriages only; to marriages that bring
unhappiness to the married, and misery to their fruits; and such as do
this, had I the power, I would prohibit. I would guard the door by which
this state is entered with all the vigilance with which the young mother
watches her first-born darling babe; I would have no one enter its
precincts save on bended knee and with prayerful heart, as if
approaching the throne of God; as if to enter there were to more than in
any other way to give one’s self to the service of God. So strictly
would I guard it that none who should once enter could ever wish to
retrace their steps. I would make divorces an unknown thing by
abolishing imprudent and ill-assorted marriages. I would make the stigma
so great that woman should find it impossible to confront the world in a
marriage for a home, for position, or for any reason save love alone;
and I would have her who should sell her person to be degraded in
marriage, as culpable, as guilty, as impure at heart, as she is held to
be who sells it otherwise. I would put every influence of the community
against impure relations and selfish purposes, in whatever form they
might exist, and encourage honour, purity, virtue and chastity. I would
take away from marriage the idea that it legally conveys the control of
the person of the wife to the husband, and I would make her as much its
guardian against improper use as she is supposed to be in maidenhood. It
should be her own, sacredly, never to be desecrated by an unwelcome
touch. I would make enforced commerce as much a crime in marriage as it
is now out of it, and unwilling child-bearing a double crime. As the
architects of humanity, I would hold mothers responsible for the
character and perfection of their works; make them realize that they can
make their children what they ought to be, every one of them God’s image
in equality. I would have them come to know that their bodies are the
temples of God, and that within their inner sanctuaries, within “the
holy of holies” God performs his most marvellous creations; that it is
there that God Himself dwells, there that He will make Himself manifest
to man, and that every act that He does not inspire is sacrilege, is
worship of the Evil One, while every other, is an offering of sweet
incense to the Heavenly Father. I would have man so honour woman that an
impure or improper thought, or a self desire other than a wish to bless
her, could never enter in his heart, would have him hold her to be the
holy temple to which God has appointed him to be High Priest, as
elaborately set forth by St. Paul in Hebrews, as the Garden of Eden into
which the Lord God put him, “to dress it and to keep it,” forbidding him
to eat of the fruit of the tree that stands in the midst of the garden;
would have him awake to the consciousness that, by not so regarding her,
he is repeating the sin of Adam, and by not compelling him to so regard
her, she is repeating the sin of Eve; and that by these sins they are
thrust out of the garden, and prevented from eating of the fruit of the
tree of life and living forever; more than this, I would enlarge the
sphere of parental responsibility so that they should be held
accountable for the instruction of their children in all of the
mysteries of sex, so that none could go into marriage in ignorance of
the laws and uses of the reproductive functions. I would rob the subject
of the mawkish sentimentality in which it is submerged, and make it a
common and proper matter for earnest consideration and complete
understanding. Indeed, I would make it a crime to enter marriage in
ignorance of any of its possible duties and responsibilities; and twice
a crime to bear improper children, for they who, to satisfy their own
propensities, bring children into the world marked with the brand of
Cain or Judas, are the worst kind of criminals. I would frown upon
prostitution in every form; and make promiscuousness an abomination in
the sight of man as it is in the sight of God; and I would drive out of
the race the morbid passions that are consuming it. I would stop
marrying until it should be no longer done in ignorance; and
child-bearing until it could be done intelligently, so that every child
might be a son or else a daughter of the living God. And I would have
every woman remember the injunction of St. Paul, “Wives, submit
yourselves unto your own husband as it is fit in the Lord,” but in no
other way; and men, “Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against
them.” And if there be any other things let St. Paul also speak for me
of them. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if
there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”