Procreation
The fundamental need of the pregnant woman is _rest_. Without a large
degree of maternal rest there can be no puericulture.[4] The task of
creating a man needs the whole of a woman's best energies, more especially
during the three months before birth. It cannot be subordinated to the tax
on strength involved by manual or mental labor, or even strenuous social
duties and amusements. The numerous experiments and observations which
have been made during recent years in Maternity Hospitals, more especially
in France, have shown conclusively that not only the present and future
well-being of the mother and the ease of her confinement, but the fate of
the child, are immensely influenced by rest during the last month of
pregnancy. "Every working woman is entitled to rest during the last three
months of her pregnancy." This formula was adopted by the International
Congress of Hygiene in 1900, but it cannot be practically carried out
except by the cooeperation of the whole community. For it is not enough to
say that a woman ought to rest during pregnancy; it is the business of the
community to ensure that that rest is duly secured. The woman herself, and
her employer, we may be certain, will do their best to cheat the
community, but it is the community which suffers, both economically and
morally, when a woman casts her inferior children into the world, and in
its own interests the community is forced to control both employer and
employed. We can no longer allow it to be said, in Bouchacourt's words,
that "to-day the dregs of the human species--the blind, the deaf-mute, the
degenerate, the nervous, the vicious, the idiotic, the imbecile, the
cretins and epileptics--are better protected than pregnant women."
Increasing Efficiency In Business
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