supported by
the united labour of all of us--she has a first mortgage to that amount
upon the earnings of the community. You and I are taxed to pay her. But
is she therefore more dependent than the woman who lives upon what she
can get out of the scanty earnings of a drunken husband? Does the
community therefore think it has a right to control her? Not a bit of
it. She is in point of fact the only free woman among us. My dream was
to see all women equally free--inheritors from the community of so much
of its earnings; holders, as it were, of sufficient world-consols to
secure their independence.

That, however, is not the main point to which I desire just now to
direct attention. I want rather to suggest an underlying fallacy of all
so-called individualists in dealing with schemes of so-called
Socialism--for to me your Socialist is the true and only individualist.
My correspondent's argument is written from the standpoint of the class
in which women have or may have money. But most women have none; and
schemes of reconstruction must be for the benefit of the many. So-called
individualists seem to think that under a more organised social state
they would not be so able to buy pictures as at present, not so free to
run across to California or Kamschatka. I doubt their premiss, for I
believe we should all of us be better off than we are to-day; but let
that pass; 'tis a detail. The main thing is this: they forget that most
of us are narrowly tied and circumscribed at present by endless
monopolies and endless restrictions of land or capital. I should like to
buy pictures; but I can't afford them. I long to see Japan; but I shall
never get there. The man in the street may desire to till the ground:
every acre is appropriated. He may wish to dig coal: Lord Masham
prevents him. He may have a pretty taste in Venetian glass: the flints
on the shore are private property; the furnace and the implements belong
to a capitalist. Under the existing _regime_, the vast mass of us are
hampered at every step in order that a few may enjoy huge monopolies.
Most men have no land, so that one man may own a county. And they call
this Individualism!

In considering any proposed change, whether imminent or distant, in
practice or in day-dream, it is not fair to take as your standard of
reference the most highly-favoured individuals under existing
conditions. Nor is it fair to take the most unfortunate only. You should
look at the average.