The Bishop of London denounces the checks and preventive measures taken by women of all classes, but especially the more comfortable classes, for preventing child-birth. His Lordship touches only the fringe of a great subject. Why does he not denounce great landlords who extract huge ground rents from every district in every great city, or those owners of houses who refuse to let their premises to those who have children, and in many instances stipulate there shall be no children at all? These are economic causes which no amount of mere talking or preaching will put right. The working-class mother bears children, and as each one comes she dreads its coming. I marvel that under present conditions there is not much more prevention; that is, I marvel that women do not tell men that, until proper means for maintaining and rearing children under healthy conditions are organised, they will refuse to bring children into the world. The wife of the business man or Government official is in another category. She refuses motherhood because she dreads sinking lower and lower in the social scale. The rich woman refuses motherhood because it interferes with her pleasures in society. There is no royal road out of this. The population of England will go down unless we are prepared to re-establish motherhood and womanhood on a loftier plane, unless we are willing to maintain that empire building shall take a second place to home building. The prevalent idea that children are only a nuisance to be tolerated must be superseded by a love and reverence for mother and child as God’s greatest gift to mankind. The present system by which people with families are not allowed to live in certain homes and flats, the restrictions which are made in some of the great model dwellings for the poor, controlled sometimes by philanthropists and sometimes by municipalities, must be swept away, and a woman, as her family grows, instead of being driven out, must be given more and more accommodation. In the case of a working-class woman it must always be remembered that her husband’s wages are fixed, not according to his family, but according to a particular rate set for his job, and as each new baby comes his wife’s struggle to live grows harder and harder: it is she who always is the worst sufferer; it is the mother who is served last at the table and takes what is left. Women who belong to the upper classes get out of motherhood, as I say, because they want a pleasure of another kind; working-class women or middle-class women because of economic reasons.