subject by a bourgeois
writer that has yet appeared. Like all bourgeois writers Mrs. Parsons
has been very chary of using materials furnished by Socialist scholars.
Very striking is the absence from her very extensive bibliographical
notes of the names of Marx, Engels, Bebel and Ferri. But she was
compelled to avail herself freely of the wealth of materials provided by
the scholarly and industrious researches of Morgan, Kautsky, and Cunow.

In her now famous Fifteenth Lecture on "Ethical Considerations," she
suggests various modes of ameliorating the condition of Woman, and
improving conjugal and family relations; but she is again and again
driven to admit that the economic independence of women is a condition
precedent to her "reforms." Most of her suggestions are tinged with the
utopian fancifulness characteristic of the bourgeois theorist. Two
excerpts will illustrate these points sufficiently:

"Again reciprocity of conjugal rights and duties is desirable for
parenthood. If marriage have a proprietary character, neither the owner
nor the owned is entirely fit to develop free personalities in his or
her children. Moreover the idea of marital ownership more or less
involves that of parental ownership, and the latter, as we have seen, is
incompatible with a high type of parenthood. The custom of proprietary
marriage inevitably leads, for example, to restrictions upon female
education. Now just in so far as a woman's education is limited is she
handicapped as an educator of her children. It is unfortunate that in
the _emancipation of woman_ agitation of the past half-century the
reformers failed to emphasize the social as adequately as the
individualistic need of change. If women are to be fit wives and mothers
they must have all, perhaps more, of the opportunities for personal
development that men have. All the activities hitherto reserved to men
must at least be open to them, and many of these activities, certain
functions of citizenship[21] for example, must be expected of them.
Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of women to
labor will be experimentally determined, the underlying position must be
established that for the sake of individual and race character she is to
be a producer as well as a consumer of social values.[22] As soon as
this ethical necessity is generally recognized the conditions of modern
industry will become much better adapted to the needs of women workers
than they are n