Page:Co-operative housekeeping.djvu/114

101 now a "University," when the curriculum of her studies is wanting in only about half of the circle of the arts and sciences, and when also she shuts out the best minds of half the human race. No university proper has ever yet existed or can exist, until every department of human knowledge is represented in it, and until mind is free to come there for culture as mind simply, and not as mind plus a particular sex. But to this noble end, since women would reap half the benefit, I would have women contribute to the utmost of their power. The Rochdale Pioneers always devote two per cent. of their profits to education, and their example should be imitated by co-operative housekeepers, for so not only schools and colleges could be enriched, but individual cases of great talent stimulated and developed.

When these various important educational questions are considered by the mothers of the community, we may hope that at last the most important of them all,—their fearful responsibility in regard to the morals of society,—may be brought home to them also, so that they will realise how much of the ruin of their own sex now wrought and handed on continually from one set of young men to another is due to their own neglect of duty. It is too often the case that parents train their boys in every virtue save those of chastity and honour to the other sex. I have said that a great agent in reforming society would be the possibility and encouragement of early marriage, and the demand of a higher morality from men than young girls now venture to make. But this is only the last half of the work. The first half must come from education, from early discipline. Mothers must teach their young sons to control their selfish impulses, not only as regards theft, violence, lying, deceit, drinking, the seeds of all of which can often be detected even in little