dependence on her husband. There has been markedly little support for this proposal as yet among women in England, although Ellen Key in Sweden is a warm advocate, seeing in it the opportunity of women to do their life-work well. So far as the scheme applies to women who have lost their husbands, there is a considerable measure of approval; it has sometimes been described as "boarding out children with their mothers," and is, to a very limited and inadequate extent, actually practised by some Poor Law authorities. A small beginning, too, has been made in the maternity benefit, and now that it has been made payable to the mother, it may be considered a true experiment in the direction of endowment.
In the abstract there is a great deal to be said for the notion that, since children are not properly held to be the property of their parents, and since the welfare of the children is the highest interest and the gravest concern of the State, it is the State as a whole that should shoulder the responsibility of the children, and they should not be at the mercy of the vicissitudes of one single life. The women should have the responsibility of bearing and rearing the children, and the men should have the responsibility of providing maintenance for the children and their guardians; but the men should pool their responsibilities, and, out of taxation levied upon all men, the children and child-bearing women should be supported. In this way it is claimed that the personal relations of men and women would be
