Now, Sir, I know that there is a serious divergence of views as to what this amendment should imply, in what manner the family should be protected and how its stability should be ensured. Let me, Sir, in all frankness place before you very briefly what was in my mind about the means of ensuring the stability of the family. In the first place, I believe it implies that in the majority of instances, in a normal state of society, the mother of the family should have freedom and leisure to give all her attention to the upbringing of her children and to the maintenance of that family. Now, I do not say that it is obligatory on her to do so always – there are exceptions, and she may sometimes find it convenient to give her best energies to answer the higher vocation of public life and public service. But under normal conditions this is her main and her sacred duty, and this implies that the wage-earner, be he the working man, be he the poorest in the country, should have a wage which will enable him to maintain his wife and children, a family wage, a concept which modern social legislation tends to accept more and more. I say, therefore, that the head of the family is not to get a wage in accordance with the strict principle of remuneration for labour done according to the laws of liberal economics. I rather say that society owes him, as the head of a family and as one of the most important elements in the organisationof society, a maintenance to which he has a right, partly independently of whatever work he does. That is one principle which this amendment implies.
