106 Sterilization
As in every other movement of modern times which has extended beyond the experimental or embryonic stage, the great interest being manifested in "race betterment" is largely traceable to the influence of good women.
It is they who have investigated the factories and sweat shops and turned up for the public to behold, conditions which it is proved have very often been responsible for the spread of disease and the weakening of human beings who work in these hives of industry.
It is the women who have made it apparent that the social disease and the conditions which lead to its development can never be eradicated so long as the great army of working women are not permitted to even earn enough to cover the bare cost of living.
There are those who hold that the subject of wages has little relation to that of the social evil. Statistics show and science has proven that care of the body is necessary to the fullest enjoyment of health; and care of the body means proper food, proper housing conditions and sufficient clothing to insure a certain measure of self-respect, as well as enough leisure time to warrant a reasonable amount of exercise and relaxation. Deprive some of the army of women workers of these fundamental rights, and it is argued they will give way to impulses that can only end in their own destruction and the ultimate weakening of the race.
Likewise the women have started the fight for the "single moral standard," a uniform code of morals which does not give the man any greater right to transgress than it does the woman. "Why should you mother," they ask, "give your pure daughter into the keeping of a man, because he happens to belong to the other sex, believes he may defile his body and come unquestioned into the embrace of a pure trusting girl?" And all science and law and moral doctrine justify their question.
Out of the problem of this single moral standard, with