View report page

11
Whilst authorities may differ as to the actual extent of the
harm done generally by the displacement of male labour by
women in factories and workplaces, there can be no difference
of opinion amongst sociologists that the factory or workshop is
no place for a pregnant woman, nor for a mother suckling, or
who should be suckling, her young child.
The State, in the most mean and despicable manner
possible, has recognised this principle by forbidding a woman
to return to her work in a less period than one month from the
time of her confinement.
The principle is good and should be applied for a much
longer period both before and after the confinement, but not at
the expense of the mother who, poor wretch, is often the sole
support of the family. and who has to starve or do as best she
can during the period her work is stopped in the interest of the
State, without compensation by the State.
So far as the question of improving the race of babies is
concerned, it should be recognised once and for all that, neither
during pregnancy nor the nursing period should a mother be
permitted to do work in factories or workshops or in any
industrial capacity.
There remains the question of heredity and environment,
both of which factors have an enormous bearing on the
question.
On the first point it will be sufficient to refer to a fact
recently mentioned to me by Mr. Ex-Mayor Barnard in connection
with a special school for the mentally deficient.
Here we see a school provided at the cost of the fit for
those that are unfit, where, after years of education, certain of
these unfits are allowed to marry and, in the natural course of
events, to produce a further brood of unfits more burdensome
to the community than were the original begetters of all these
unfits.