Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/108

 relieved of the economic incubus: the husband would be the woman's mate, but would cease to be necessarily her employer. If she chose to keep his house, that would be a piece of voluntary service, to be paid for by him like other voluntary service; for cooking and cleaning and blacking grates is not a part of motherhood. Under such a system, each sex would really make the contribution characteristic of that sex, and the question of a "family wage" would be solved. A man would be able equitably to claim a higher wage than a woman for the same work, on the ground that, as a man, he was taxed as women were not, for his share of supporting the human family, and the widows and spinsters would cease to be burdened out of their smaller wages with rates and taxes to pay for the unfulfilled duties of men. The proposal has, in fact, so many theoretical advantages that it is curious so few women can be found to look at it favourably. The reactionary would naturally not do so, because all changes are abhorrent to her. The progressive women are, some of them, oppressed by the dreary details in which Mr. Wells has revelled, and by the awful prospects of standardisation and inspection, and red tape. Utopias are always so appalling to all but their creators, and when I read Mr. Wells' enthusiastic description of how his endowed mothers will live, my soul is filled with "an unutterable sense of lamentation and mourning and woe." Is this, I ask myself, an instinct which it would be folly to suppress? Or is it merely that the idea is too new