into another, until one cannot tell from one day to the next which man's wife a woman is, and children will not know their own parents. Let us ask ourselves seriously: Is it human nature, civilized human nature, to desire promiscuity? Would all people, or even a majority of people, seek a constant variety in the object of their affections if the law did not restrain them? One need not wait for Socialism nor even more liberal divorce laws to answer these questions in the negative. Every reader of these pages knows at least some happily married couples among his acquaintances. Let him go to any such happily married pair and ask them whether they would rush apart to-morrow and seek new mates if they were not bound by the law. The persons so questioned may laugh or may get angry, according to their dispositions, but, at any rate, they will declare that no change in the laws could change their relation; that it is not the law which holds them together, but love, comradeship, habit, common interest and common memories, all those tender little bonds of intimacy that make up married life. Those who are well mated will remain together, regardless of the laws, and those who are not well mated, who suffer from being tied to one another and make life miserable for each other accordingly, ought to be parted, in the interest of society as well as in their own.
MOTHERHOOD
What provisions will the co-operative commonwealth make for its children? How will the freely working and freely mating men and women of the future shoulder the responsibilities of parenthood? If women are going to continue at their socially productive labor outside the home after marriage, how will they be able to care for their little ones? In regard to children as in regard to marriage the most grotesque misconceptions of Socialism prevail. The assertion sometimes made by Socialist speakers that under Socialism the state will take care of the children, causes gruesome pictures to loom up before the mental vision of the unenlightened, pictures of great, state-owned orphan asylums, in which all the
26
