=Does This Plan Make Too Little of Fathers?[9]=--There is one question, however, among others, to be asked of the authors of this plan, and that is, Can not some means be devised to make the father's share in the care of the children more definite and better rewarded, less often shirked or incompetent, in any scheme for state subsidy for the care of young children? The difficulties that inhere in all subsidies for children are chiefly those that make people of small intelligence and little conscience trade with the state for larger subsidies for larger families, begotten by the less fit for parentage and with an eye on the public purse. This catastrophe, not unknown in the past history of England, must be avoided. If there shall develop any scheme for equal sharing by all the community in the expense of raising the coming generation then there must surely be no special honor paid to those that have very large families. Better, for social purposes, that no children above a reasonable number should in any family receive a special allowance, even if older brothers and sisters did do so. It may be that in France large families are desperately needed. Not so in the United States. The number of five or six should certainly be the limit for which any just scheme of family subsidy should mulct the taxpayer. =Just Limits to Number of Children in Subsidized Families.=--The difference between the three under fourteen years which in so many cases can be cared for unassisted by the average workman, and the four and more that bring the family down to the danger-point of financial dependence, might be a subject for consideration in any scheme of family subsidy, and some clear idea of social need in family fertility should be a part of any proposition to make allowance from the public funds for each child under the earning age. In any case, the father's share in the self-sacrifice and burden of parenthood should have some clear recognition in any law dealing with such state aid. In the last analysis, unless some extreme form of socialism is better than the present industrial order and to be sought, the best way to help the family is to make fathers and mothers competent to take care of their own children without too great effort for themselves and without injurious consequences to the children. Those Trade Union leaders may be right in principle when they hesitate to accept any public family aid scheme lest it make wages less rather than more and bring on a condition in which heroic struggle for one's own, the very pith and marrow of manhood in its relation to the family, be less esteemed and less practiced.