Dr. Devine’s article[40] on mothers’ pensions seems to show that even the learned doctors of our social ills may disagree as to this matter. So perhaps it is not surprising that a plain mother may still go on thinking that such aid is in reality preventive in that it reaches the affairs of the home at a crisis, and tides them over without loss of self-respect. You see, mothers, in spite of the sociologists, feel themselves, for once, on their own ground in this matter; and in possession of all their faculties, will continue to think that, as far as children are concerned, not they, but the learned doctors, are in the amateur class. As far as care and time and money for children’s needs are concerned, they, and they alone, feel that they know how imperative those needs are, and from the mere fact of being able to gain more aid for more mothers by state subsidies the idea seems to them of value. They, and perhaps they only, can also feel the importance of preserving self-respect as an asset to be saved by the new attitude of the states. It is not, for them, “a mere sentiment and solemn pretense of changing the names of things.” Why, to most of us, is a marriage service a wholesome formality, if changing the name, if deriving comfort from legal sanction (even sometimes of a bad husband), is merely “a solemn pretense”? The question seems to me to touch the social evil and the housing problem (as shown in Chapter IV of Miss Addams’ “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil”), the menace of child labor, of the sweat shops, and neglected childhood and starved motherhood on many sides. Why is a free chance to live and grow, for a child, any worse than free education? A child does not ask where things come from, at first. He only knows that he is cold, or hungry, or neglected. In the nature of the case he is dependent on someone. Dr. Devine asks one question, which I should like to try to answer. He asks: “Who are the sudden heroes of a brand-new program of state subsidies to mothers, that they have grown so scornful of poor relief administration, of religious alms, of a thousand forms of organized benevolence, of the charity which, in all ages, organized and unorganized, has comforted the afflicted, fed the hungry, succored the widow and the fatherless?”