With our cosmopolitan population it is certain that the enforcement of such a law would be no easy matter.[158] Little difficulty would seem to be necessarily involved in the enforcement of the period of rest _after_ confinement; all that would be necessary would be to insist upon a copy of the birth certificate of the youngest child, accompanied by the sworn statement of the mother. If the whole onus of responsibility were placed upon the employer, and penalties were imposed in a few cases, there is no reason to suppose that the law in this respect would be less effective than other laws relating to employment. That it would not be perfectly successful is no more an argument against its enactment than the partial failure of child-labor laws, for example, is an argument for their repeal. But the period of exemption prior to childbirth is a much more delicate and difficult matter. It has not, I believe, been found possible in European countries to enforce the law in this direction with as much success as in the other, but the results have been sufficiently successful, nevertheless, to warrant continued effort. In actual practice such a law would have a tendency, doubtless, to discourage the employment of married women in factories, since employers as a rule would not care to take the trouble, or to assume the risks, thus involved in their employment. But, as already noted, if working mothers are to be forced into prolonged periods of idleness, in the interests of their offspring and the future of society, some means must be provided whereby they may be maintained and secured against want. The philanthropic experiments noted in an earlier chapter owed all their success to such provisions. While it would perhaps be too Utopian to advocate as a measure for immediate adoption state pensions for childhood and youth as well as old age, as Mr. C. Hanford Henderson does in his wonderfully suggestive and stimulating book, _Education and the Larger Life_, it is not, it seems to me, too much to demand that the state shall (1) allow no mother to imperil her own life and that of her offspring by working too close to the period of parturition, nor (2) allow any mother to suffer want because she is prevented from, or of her own free will and intelligence avoids, such work. If the right of the child to be well born, to be ushered into the world with loving care and all the skill possible, is to be anything but a mere cant phrase, the safeguards thus briefly sketched cannot, it seems to me, be lightly denied. Recently I visited the stables of a friend interested in the breeding of horses. I saw that he had taken great care and pains to secure a well-trained veterinary surgeon, that the brood mares were patiently and lovingly cared for and tended, both before and after foaling. No humane and intelligent breeder of animals would deny them the protection and care here suggested for human beings. Until the state is willing to care for its children, at