Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/61

 mother, and the determining influence of the parents upon the children that are going to be.

One would fain believe that, if the people of this country could be made to realise even faintly the terrible waste of infant life and the horrible curse laid upon the coming generation by reason of unsuitable, immoral, and too early unions, they would rise as one individual and demand that the State shall interfere to prevent such unions.

It has already been pointed out that, under Socialism, every potential mother (which includes the entire female sex) shall receive proper training for the maternal functions she may be called upon to undertake. Here is a reform which should be established at once, and which should not be allowed to wait until the Collectivist programme in other particulars has been completed. All who have lately read the soul-sickening articles appearing in a leading newspaper on the subject of child mortality will surely endorse this sentiment. It is no small matter that nearly a quarter of a million infants annually die before they reach their first year, through the ignorance or the neglect of the mothers.