least worthy of careful study. The movement, remarks the Spokane Spokesman Review, is "an expression of the new social consciousness," and "has taken firm hold on popular sympathy." Under the present system in Ohio, remarks the Columbus Citizen, the indigent mother whose husband has died or deserted her has choice of three things

"1. She may give her children up, place them in an orphan's home, and go in the bleak desolation of bereaved motherhood about her dreary task of keeping body and soul together.

"2. She may strive to keep the children at home, and leave their lives to chance while she labors, away from them, 10, 12, 14 hours a day, returning only in time to place them in their beds.

3. She may STAY AT HOME WITH THEM AND STARVE."

“We have waited long enough," exclaims the Citizen, "for legislation to remedy these conditions."

The Ohio law, we are informed by the press, provides for pensions of $15 a month to dependent widows with one child under fourteen, and to mothers with one child under fourteen whose husbands are helpless or in prison, or who have abandoned their families. There is an extra pension of $7 a month for each additional child under fourteen years. The court, we read further, "must satisfy itself that the child is living with its mother, that without the pension the home would be broken up, that it is beneficial to the child to stay with its mother and, after investigation, that the home is a proper one." This

mothers' aid measure, the Cincinnati Enquirer notes, "is really an extensive codification of the juvenile delinquency laws and a revision of acts relating to children's homes, occupations of youths, and the management and direction of private and public orphan asylums and refuges. Its ramifications are extensive and will affect many industries employing females under twenty-one years of age and males under eighteen."

Such aid to mothers, explains the New York World in its news columns, "is a tax payers' money saver, while increasing the self-respect of both mothers and children." The expensive supervision in State institutions is replaced by the home supervision of the mothers.

Yet the New York Times points to the allegations of weaknesses in the workings of the motherhood pension law in Illinois, the pioneer State in this movement. And the Brooklyn Eagle, discussing the proposals for similar legislation in New York, believes that though “the pension system, according to the theorists, is better than any other plan of relief," it probably "never could be carefully administered and the opportunity for extravagance developed from sentimentalism is gravely apparent." Objection to the description of this reform as "mothers' or widows' pensions" is made by the New York Evening Post.

"Motherhood has not been endowed," it carefully explains: “The State is merely giving assistance to needy children and older persons while allowing them to remain at home, instead of following the more usual procedure of putting them into an insti

tution. The 'pensions' are not to be spent at the free will of those who receive them, as an old soldier may spend his, but under strict regulation by the courts. They are payments for certain purposes rather than pensions. For such an arrangement there is much to be said. Where a mother has the strength and the capacity to take care of her children, but cannot do so if she must employ her time away from home in earning their bread, it is surely wiser to give her the money that will enable her to make useful citizens out of her children, than to turn them over to professional caretakers, however worthy the latter may be. Nor will there be any objection to such payments to indigent widows without children as will keep soul and body together, if the whole matter is carefully supervised. Preservation of the home is worth all it may cost in this way. But let us not carelessly talk as if a new and large section of society were about to be pensioned for life.”

FROM The Survey

The following States have adopted the pensioning of mothers, 1915:

SEVEN TIMES SIX. GIVING IN MARRIAGE

BY JEAN INGELOW

To bear, to nurse, to rear,

To watch, and then to lose:
To see my bright ones disappear,
Drawn up like morning dews,—
To bear, to nurse, to rear,

To watch and then to lose:

This have I done when God drew near
Among his own to choose.

To hear, to heed, to wed,
And with thy lord depart
In tears that he, as soon as shed,
Will let no longer smart,-

To hear to heed, to wed,

This while thou didst I smiled, For now it was not God who said, "Mother, give me thy child."

O fond, O fool, and blind,

To God I gave with tears,
But when a man like grace would find,
My soul put by her fears,-
O, fond, O fool, and blind,

God guards in happier spheres ;
That man will guard where he did bind
Is hope for unknown years.

To hear, to heed, to wed,

Fair lot that maidens choose,

Thy mother's tenderest words are said,
Thy face no more she views;
Thy mother's lot, my dear,

She doth in nought accuse;
Her lot to bear, to nurse, to rear,
To love,- and then to lose.

LITTLE MOTHERS

BY S. T. R.

To-day everything is being done for the child. The child is the hope of the race of the next generation.

the father and mother

The children of the poor though were long left, in the great cities, to grow up as best they could, but now that modern living with its improved conditions of work has given woman a chance to reach out and make the world her household, the little people are claiming the attention of the Mother Spirit that is abroad. Now it is realized how important is the child of the poor and how that life can be nourished and inspired and some joy and childhood given it.

Children love their dolls. The mother instinct is early shown both in girls and boys. The boy is quickly laughed out of it but often a teddy-bear is still allowed him and is as consoling for all hours of the day and night as the doll is to the girl. Alas, if people were wiser, and let this gentleness and love have full play, there might be reared men who would