least as well as enlightened individuals care for their horses, or their dogs, it is mockery to speak of it as being “civilized”! IV The foregoing proposals relate only to the conditions surrounding the child at birth, but it is equally the duty of society to safeguard the whole period of childhood. In its own interest, no less than in the interest of the child, the state should protect every child from all that menaces its life and well-being. Before the British Interdepartmental Committee many witnesses, some of them factory surgeons of long experience, testified to the harm resulting from the employment of mothers and the leaving of infants in the care of children or old persons utterly incompetent to care for them. It was proposed that the employment of married women in factories should be forbidden, except in cases where there are children “absolutely dependent on their wages.” In all such cases “the municipality must make provision for the care of the child while the mother is at work.”[159] As a minimum, this is a good and practicable proposal, though it falls far short of the ideal. Much more commendable for its humane good sense is the method adopted in some of the Socialist municipalities of France. In the case of widows and others with children absolutely dependent upon their earnings, these municipalities pay the mothers a weekly or monthly pension, thus enabling them to stay at home with their children.[160] With characteristic good sense and courage, Mr. Homer Folks has proposed a similar system of pensions to widows and others dependent upon the wages of children, on the principle that the poverty of its parents ought not to be allowed to despoil a child’s life and rob it of opportunities of healthful physical and mental development.[161] That is a perfectly sound principle, it seems to me, which applies with equal force to the working mother; for it is surely just as important to insist that poverty shall not be allowed to rob the child of its mother’s care. [Illustration: A GROUP OF WORKING MOTHERS Photograph taken in the yard of a Day Nursery, where the babies are left during their mothers’ absence at work. ]