I was silent for a while, pulling up bits of grass and snapping small sticks into inch pieces. "There was a good deal of talk about Eugenics, I remember," I said at last, "and--what was that thing? Endowment of Motherhood?" "Yes--man's talk," Owen explained. "You see, John, we couldn't look at women but in one way--in the old days; it was all a question of sex with us--inevitably, we being males. Our whole idea of improvement was in better breeding; our whole idea of motherhood was in each woman's devoting her whole life to her own children. That turbid freshet of an Englishman, Wells, who did so much to stir his generation, said 'I am wholly feminist'--and he was! He saw women only as females and wanted them endowed as such. He was never able to see them as human beings and amply competent to take care of themselves. "Now, our women, getting hold of this idea that they really are human creatures, simply blossomed forth in new efficiency. They specialized the food business--Hallie's right about the importance of that--and then they specialized the baby business. All women who wish to, have babies; but if they wish to take care of them they must show a diploma." I looked at him. I didn't like it--but what difference did that make? I had died thirty years ago, it appeared. "A diploma for motherhood!" I repeated; but he corrected me. "Not at all. Any woman can be a mother--if she's normal. I said she had to have a diploma as a child-culturist--quite a different matter." "I don't see the difference." "No, I suppose not. I didn't, once," he said. "Any and every mother was supposed to be competent to 'raise' children--and look at the kind of people we raised! You see, we are beginning to learn--just beginning. You needn't imagine that we are in a state of perfection--there are more new projects up for discussion than ever before. We've only made a start. The consequences, so far, are so good that we are boiling over with propositions for future steps." "Go on about the women," I said. "I want to know the worst and become resigned." "There's nothing very bad to tell," he continued cheerfully. "When a girl is born she is treated in all ways as if she was a boy; there is no hint made in any distinction between them except in the perfectly open physiological instruction as to their future duties. Children, young humans, grow up under precisely the same conditions. I speak, of course, of the most advanced people--there are still backward places--there's plenty to do yet. "Then the growing girls are taught of their place and power as mothers--and they have tremendously high ideals. That's what has done so much to raise the standard in men. It came hard, but it worked." I raised my head with keen interest, remarking, "I've glimpsed a sort of 'iron hand in a velvet glove' back of all this. What did they do?" Owen looked rather grim for a moment.