phesied by men when
first a girl took a public examination in geometry; whenever women have
been given complete control of their own property; when they have been
received into the professions and industries; and now in like manner
people dread the condition of things that they imagine might follow if
women are given the right to vote and to hold office. We may well
believe, with Lecky, that there are "certain eternal moral landmarks
which never can be removed." But no matter what our views may be of the
destinies, characteristics, functions, or limitations of the sex,
certain reforms are indispensable before woman and, through her, family
life can reach their highest development. Of these reforms I shall speak
briefly and with them close my history.

I. The double standard of morality for the sexes must gradually be
abolished.[423] Of all the sad commentaries on Christian nations none
is so pathetic or so tragical as the fact that for nineteen centuries
men have been tacitly and openly allowed, at least before marriage,
unrestrained liberty to indulge in sexual vice and intemperance, while
one false step on the part of the woman has condemned her to social
obloquy and, frequently, to a life on the street. This strange system, a
blasphemy against the Christ who suffered death in order to purify the
earth, has had its defenders not merely among the uneducated who do not
think, but even among the most acute intellects. The philosopher Hume
justifies it by commenting on the vastly greater consequences attendant
on vice in women than in men; divines like Jeremy Taylor have encouraged
it by urging women meekly to bear the sins of their husbands. This
subject is one of the great _taboos_ in modern society. Let me exhort
the reader to go to any physician and get from him the statistics of
gonorrhea and syphilis which he has met in his practice; let him learn
of the children born blind and of wives rendered invalid for life
because their husbands once sowed a crop of wild oats with the sanction
of society; let him read the Report of the Committee of Fifteen in New
York (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902) on _The Social Evil_, the records of the
Watch and Ward Society in Boston, or the recent report of the special
jury in New York which investigated the "White Slave Traffic."[424]

The plain facts are not pleasant. A system which has been in vogue from
the beginning of history cannot be changed in a decade; but the desired
state of thin