It will be seen that, even on the assumption that all wives are provided for by their husbands, which is by no means universally true, a very large proportion of women before 35 and after 55 are not thus provided for, and that an unknown but not inconsiderable proportion never marry at all. In the case of the educated middle class, as Miss Collet pointed out in 1892, the surplus of women over men is considerably above the average, and consequently the prospect of marriage is less in this than in the working class. "Granted an equal number of males and females between the ages of 18 and 30, we have not therefore in English society an equal number of marriageable men and women. Wherever rather late marriage is the rule with men--that is, wherever there is a high standard of comfort--the disproportion is correspondingly great. In a district where boy and girl marriages are very common, everybody can be married and be more or less miserable ever after: but in the upper middle class equality in numbers at certain ages implies a surplus of marriageable women over marriageable men."[20] In some quarters the adoption of professions, even of the teaching profession, by women, is opposed on the ground that women are thereby drawn away from marriage and home-making. It is difficult to understand how such an objection can be seriously raised in face of the facts of social life. The adoption of occupations by women may in a few cases indicate a preference for independence and single blessedness; but it is much more often due to economic necessity. It is perfectly plain that not all women can be maintained by men, even if this were desirable. The women who have evolved a theory of "economic independence" are few compared with the many who have economic self-dependence forced upon them. Human nature is far too strong to make it credible that any large number of women will deliberately decline the prospect of husband, home and children of their own for the sake of teaching little girls arithmetic or inspecting insanitary conditions in slums. If a woman has to choose between marrying a man she cares for and earning her own bread, I am sentimental enough to believe that nearly all women would choose the former. The choices of real life are seldom quite so simple. When a woman has to choose between an uncongenial marriage and fairly well-paid work, it is quite likely that nowadays she frequently chooses the latter. In former days the choice might easily have been among the alternatives of the uncongenial marriage, the charity, willing or unwilling, of friends and relations, and sheer starvation, not to mention that even the bitter relief of the uncongenial marriage, usually available in fiction, is not always forthcoming in real life. The case grows clearer every year, that women need training and opportunity to be able to support themselves, though not all women will do so throughout life.