Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/65

 in attendance to see that the mother is in need of nothing for her own, and the child's well-being. What a different prospect for the Socialist child of the future from that of the child of the poor at present, often sodden with drink, diseased and dirty, and (120,000 of them) dead before it is twelve months old.

One other reform which will certainly be accomplished under a well-directed order of society is, that marriage between the mentally weak will not be allowed. Imbeciles, lunatics, and those with dangerous and ineradicable criminal tendencies will not be permitted to reproduce their species at all, and in this way will be prevented the dire calamity which is afflicting this country at present, to its terrible cost in the future unless more control over these people be exercised. For it is the people of this quality, those individuals who are less developed intellectually, and more strongly developed in the selfish, gross, and animal part of their natures, who are to-day reproducing themselves in the largest numbers. That these unfortunates of society, more to be pitied than blamed, should be deprived of the joy of intimate human