Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/63

 to physical maturity until the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven. But, because of our infamous and cruel ideas of life, which relegate a woman to the "upper shelf," and allow her to be spoken of in the contemptuous term of "old maid" unless she shows signs of marrying before she is well out of her teens, thousands of marriages take place between individuals who are totally unfit; and, with a few exceptions, the unfortunate offspring pay the penalty by either dying, or living in a weakly, sickly condition, a burden to themselves and to society.

So far we can prophesy, at least, that a Socialist state will not permit of marriage between immature individuals. Possibly little in the way of regulation by law will be necessary, since the main incentive to present-day marriages will have disappeared. The modern marriage, in the average, is founded, not upon mutual esteem and affection, nor upon a concern for the welfare of future citizens, but it is, for the woman, a means of escape from the struggle for a living; for the man, a means of providing himself with a useful companion at the lowest cost, and for both man