THE EXISTENCE OF THE AVERAGE MOTHER.--In considering this subject it is necessary to give some serious thought to the domestic and financial circumstances of the thousands and thousands of average mothers. Every observing, thinking person knows that the average mother's existence is more or less of a never-ending tragedy. Physically, mentally, and spiritually, they are victims of unalterable economic and social exigencies. They are compelled, because of ignorance, to live an unsanitary and unhygienic existence. The care of home and children, and maybe the unappreciative and inconsiderate attention of a careless and vindictive husband, add to the incidental worries,--fraying her nerves and disposition,--of the ordinary routine of a cheerless, hopeless life. Add to this experience the enormous drain of frequent child bearing upon her vitality, and we have a picture with which every physician is familiar. Can such a woman possibly observe the essential rules of the hygiene of pregnancy? Has she the time and the means to build up her reserve energy and strength to competently undertake the duties of maternity or motherhood? Is she physically fit to give birth to a child? After it is all over can she devote the time to permit nature to do her share of the physical readjustment? Can she afford, or will she be permitted to remain in bed long enough to allow conditions to be favorable to getting up without "taking a chance"? Inasmuch as her muscular tone is poor, her strength depleted, her vitality wasted, her ambition and hope at a low ebb, nature should be given a longer time, under the most favorable hygienic and domestic conditions, to help in the problem of readjustment, because her whole future, as an efficient machine, as wife, as mother, as home-maker, and as an economic individuality, is dependent upon how this crisis is met. This is the most important problem which an enlightened civilization has before it. It is the supreme eugenic task, and it is the most pressing and the most vital question for statesmen to solve. No man can deny that the permanency of the state is dependent upon the function of motherhood, yet motherhood is conducted by unskilled labor--labor, the quality of which no business would tolerate. We also know that the health of the workman has become an economic problem. Capital finds that labor is of better quality, and consequently more remunerative in every sense, if the environment is conducive to happiness and health. Yet motherhood, the most important labor in the world, upon which the very existence of the state depends, in addition to being performed by unskilled labor, is undertaken by physically unfit and frequently unwilling laborers, in an environment which is a disgrace to civilization and which cannot be duplicated in the whole realm of the brute world. This is the quality of labor, the products of which constitute the state.