Custom is perhaps as powerful as law in putting obstacles in the way of life’s wayfarers. It is by custom that the poor are treated as belonging to a lower, and the rich to a higher class; that employers expect servility as well as work for the wages they pay; that property is more highly regarded than a man’s life; that competition is held in a sort of way sacred. It is custom which exalts inequality, and makes every one desirous of securing others’ service, and to be called Master. Many a man is, I believe, hindered in the race because he meets with treatment which marks him out as an inferior. He is discouraged by discourtesy, or he is tempted to cringe by assertions of inferiority. Charity to-day is often an insult to manhood. Many of our customs, which survive from feudalism, prevent the growth of a sense of self-respect and of human dignity. Men breathe air which relaxes their vigour, they complain of neglect, they seek favour, they follow after rewards, they give up, and thus sink into poverty. It may not seem a great matter, but among the cures for poverty I may put greater courtesy; a wider recognition of the equality in human nature; a more set determination to regard all men as brothers. It is not only gifts which demoralize; it is the attitude of those who think that gifts are expected of them, and of those who expect gifts. Gifts are only safe between those who recognize one another as equals. The subject is so vast that one paper can hardly scratch the surface, but I hope I have suggested some lines of thought. In conclusion, I would repeat that for the cure of poverty, nothing avails but personal influence. He does best who turns one sinner to righteousness, that is, who helps to make one poor man more earnest of purpose, and one rich man more thoughtfully unselfish. But circumstances also are important, and he does second best who helps to alter the laws and customs which put stumbleblocks in the ways of the simple. SAMUEL A. BARNETT. THE BABIES OF THE STATE.[1] BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT. July, 1909. [1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor. Without organization and without combination a widespread and effective strike has been slowly taking place--the strike of the middle and upper-middle class women against motherhood. Month by month short paragraphs can be seen in the newspapers chronicling in stern figures the stern facts of the decrease of the birth rate. At the same time the marriage rate increases, and the physical facts of human nature do not change. The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that the wives have struck against what used to be considered the necessary corollary of wifehood--motherhood. The “Cornhill Magazine” is not the place to discuss either the physics or the ethics of this subject, but it is the place to suggest thoughts on the national and patriotic aspects of this regrettable fact.