“Do you not think that bearing and nursing offspring is productive labor? Should not mothers receive equal pay for administering maternal cares to dependent children as a laborer receives for his physical labor? But are your men doing that? Are they not putting off more than half of all the physical productive labor onto the women, and then incidentally, and often superstitiously, burdening them with bearing and nursing unwelcome offspring? Do you not think that the thoughts, the temperament and the state of happiness and contentment of the mother are transmitted to the child long before it is born? How can the babe be otherwise than the parental natures out of which it is built? Do you think that a frowny, irritated, poverty-stricken, overburdened, careworn, slavish mother can give birth to a child having directly opposite traits and temperament? Do you not think that your marriage system produces untidy, slovenly and careless men and women, while, on the contrary, our system is just the opposite? Notice how much more slovenly and untidy your married men and women are, as a rule, than those who are not married. We are beaux and sweethearts as long as we live. A rude, careless, untidy, cruel person is not appreciated in our society. He is not likely to leave many offspring. The survival of the fittest with us is in full bloom; with you, in the human family, it is comparatively dead; because, if they are once married, they are bound to stay together, whether they are tidy or filthy and slovenly. Do you not think that your marriage system has caused the abnormal sexual function in your human being as we now find him on earth? Do you not take the management of the sex relations out of the hands of the women, where it properly belongs, and place it practically under the control of the man?” “It is true, no doubt, that a husband and wife often ignore the rule of sexual purity, according to your standard of it,” said Rev. Dudley; “but I do not see why men and women should be more excessive sexually in a wedded state than in a state of sexual freedom. Why cannot purity be practiced in matrimony?” “There are many reasons why there can be no sexual purity, as a whole, in your wedlock. “The vast majority of the wedded people, as near as I can ascertain, believe that there can be no sexual excesses between a married husband and wife. They seem to believe that as soon as an officer or priest has mumbled a few words over the contracting parties, the law of sexual purity can thereafter not be broken.