Since then both the abandonment of infants and infanticide have greatly diminished, though they are increasing in those parts of France which possess no facilities of this kind.

It is widely held that the State should unify the arrangements for assuring secret maternity, and should, in its own interests, undertake the expense.

In 1904 French law ensured the protection of unmarried mothers by guaranteeing their secret, but it failed to organize the general establishment of secret maternities, and has left to doctors the pioneering part in this great and humane public work (A.Maillard-Brune, _Refuges, Maternites, Bureaux d'Admission Secrets, comme Moyens Preservatives des Infanticide_, These de Paris, 1908).

It is not among the least benefits of the falling birth rate that it has helped to stimulate this beneficent movement.
The development of an industrial system which subordinates the human body and the human soul to the thirst for gold, has, for a time, dismissed from social consideration the interests of the race and even of the individual, but it must be remembered that this has not been always and everywhere so.
Although in some parts of the world the women of savage peoples work up to the time of confinement, it must be remarked that the conditions of work in savage life do not resemble the strenuous and continuous labor of modern factories.

In many parts of the world, however, women are not allowed to work hard during pregnancy and every consideration is shown to them.