I often tell the story of this girl as an example of the neglect of women’s interests and the consequent need for the recognition of their citizenship so that legislation and administrators of the law should be responsible to both sexes. My listeners have sometimes commented: “But what difference could the vote make? and how could legislation alter these admittedly tragic situations?” At this very time (March, 1909) the women of Norway who had recently been enfranchised, but had not yet exercised the vote, were drafting a bill for the protection of illegitimate children. I think there could not be a better example of how a fundamental change could be made in both the educative and protective side of legislation as between men and women, pre-eminently just and without any reactionary vindictiveness on the part of women. The essence of this law is simply recognition of the fact that every child has two parents and that the burden and responsibility of producing children should, therefore, be shared by both in so far as law can secure equality. According to this Norwegian law, _the mother is given the right during pregnancy to inform the local authorities of the name of the father. The man whose name is given may deny responsibility within fourteen days. If he does not, he is registered as the father; if he denies it the burden of proof rests with the mother. The father can be compelled to support the mother for three months before_ (in England the law gives her no claim upon the father until after the birth of the child), _and, in certain instances, for nine months after confinement, and he is bound to support the child until it is sixteen years old_. A man at the time of intimacy is comparatively willing to undertake his share of these situations; after the lapse of many months he is more inclined to try and shirk them. In the case of denial on the part of the man, how much easier it would be for the woman to prove her case when the friendship had been recent and witnesses could be brought forward in support of corroborating evidence. Ten or twelve months later such witnesses have often dispersed or their memories grown hazy. Owing to the undefended, economically unsupported position of these mothers, certain results inevitably follow--loss of respectable situations and consequent necessity for the women to have recourse to more precarious, more laborious, and worse paid employment, with their lowered social status pressing heavily upon them in every direction. These conditions, reacting on the exceptional physical state of the mother, claim their inevitable toll from the life-blood of the child. It is not surprising that the deaths of illegitimate children are nearly double those of children born in wedlock; for 1911, the statistics, the latest issued, show deaths of infants under one year in England and Wales, in wedlock 249.37 per thousand births, illegitimate 489.99. With the mother’s maintenance secured, something tangible is being done to save the health as well as the life of future generations. _The woman can draw the amount of her claim through the local authorities who recover it from the father._ This is an immense safeguard. Constantly under the legal conditions here, when the mother’s claim has been proved, admitted by the father and paid by him for a few weeks, he moves away before long, leaving no address and the woman, even if she knows of his whereabouts, cannot enforce her claim without irksome and difficult legal procedure. It is far easier for the public authority to pursue him, but even if this proves in some cases impossible, it is better for the State to lose its money than the life or health of its citizens. The State always pays in the end. _The child has the right to bear the father’s name and, in the event of his intestacy, has the same rights of succession as his legitimate children._ Just imagine how this clause would alter the outlook of parents when educating their sons, more especially in those spheres of society where such unions on the part of men are almost invariably with women of a lower class than their own, and it is these unions which produce tragic and evil results far more socially and racially injurious than illegitimate unions among men and women of the same class.[6]