Food, clothing, and shelter are the essential needs of man. When the price of food, shelter, and clothing increases and wages remain the same, the money income of the family is relatively less. If the price of food remains the same and wages are lowered because of an oversupply of labor to meet the demand, or for other causes, the effect is practically the same. When marriage means an increase of the financial burden, and foresight comes into play there will naturally follow a postponement of marriage. Letourneau says, the “principal causes which influence matrimony are the greater or less existence, and the extreme importance attached to money. As a general rule, life and death tend to balance each other, and the populations whose mortality is great have, as compensation, a rich birth-rate. We invariably see the number of marriages and births increasing after a series of prosperous years, and _vice versa_. General causes have naturally a greater influence on the population living from hand to mouth. The well-to-do classes escape this, and we find that the chances of marriage for the rich increase during years of high prices.”[83] Economic conditions will not prevent people from marrying when it is understood the wife will continue her work in the factory as is true in many manufacturing towns, especially in Europe. Under such conditions marriage does not signify an immediate increase of the financial burden of the husband. In fact, if marriage meant that the entire burden of support was to fall upon the man alone, it would be a serious matter when under the existing conditions husband and wife together can scarcely make a living.[84] European countries are cited as admirable examples of advanced legislation for the protection of the home. Farsightedness and a love of domesticity are not so much responsible for the protection of women in industry as the fact that they have become a well established factor in industrial life, such as they have not yet reached in the United States. When legislation provides women with a longer noon hour than men, it is an acknowledgment of the fact that many women, so many as to make legislation in their behalf a crying need, are employed outside of the home and at the same time carrying the burden of maintaining a household after working hours. The extra half hour at noon allowed married women is time in which to prepare the noonday meal for the members of the family. Beneficent as legislation is in behalf of married women looking toward the welfare of the race, it is significant of the fact that women are being forced out of the home into the industrial field and compelled to assume heavier burdens than the men. To restrict fecundity under such circumstances, or to refuse to be mothers at all, is hardly a reproach to the women who are thus forced to toil, but rather a reproach to civilization imposing home-making, motherhood, and breadwinning upon the supposed weaker sex.