When unmarried women have secured economic independence they will be able to demand some such arrangement before marrying. The kind of “modesty” which would prevent a woman from having an understanding before marriage in regard to income and children is a very costly and foolish luxury. Let them insist that the ritual words, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” must mean something more than that they shall have chocolates and pretty dresses if they humour the moods of a husband. Our law, which secures for a wife full maintenance when she has ceased to do any work for it (after a separation), but has no interest in her when she is working dutifully for twelve or fourteen hours a day, is infinitely more dangerous to marriage than are the puritan assaults of Mr. G. B. Shaw. In any case, a voluntary agreement that a wife has access to the bank and cash-box, and a right to take for personal use the same sum as her husband, removes all need of asking money from a husband (which is justly odious to many women), and makes a wife economically independent in any important sense of the word.
But it would be futile to hope either that the majority of men will thus surrender their privileged position, or that all women will recognise even such an arrangement as economic independence. A grave conflict undoubtedly lies before us, and there will be an increasing demand for the State-endowment of wifehood, or at least of motherhood. The suffrage movement has naturally inflamed the
