Page:Women Wanted.djvu/418

 women as a national service the speeding up of population, that plunged the world into the agony of this war. Because 55% of the families of Berlin live in one-room tenements and there is not where to put the babies that have kept on coming, Germany reached out for the territory of her neighbours. The pressure of population too large for too narrow boundaries is as certain in its consequences as is the pressure of steam in a tea kettle with the spout stopped up. There's sure to be an explosion. Germany exploded. Back of her military system, it is her maternity system that is responsible for the woe of the world to-day. It's plain that the way not to have war anywhere ever again is not to have too many babies!

John Stuart Mill, the great economist who two generations ago looked into the future and saw a vision of the woman movement that would be, said: "Little advance can be expected in morality until the production of large families is regarded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess." And he added: "Among the probable consequences of the industrial and social independence of women, I predict a great diminution of the evil of overpopulation." John Stuart Mill meant Mrs. Webber and Mrs. Smith. Two children to be enjoyed instead of ten to be endured, is an ideal of family policy possible of attainment even in the east ends and the east sides of the world. For to Mrs. Webber or to Mrs. Smith, handling her own wage