that I myself
may roll in needless luxury. I will monopolise whatever I can seize, and
the people may eat straw." That temper, too, humanity must outlive. And
those who can't outlive it of themselves, or be warned in time, must be
taught by stern lessons that their race has outstripped them.

As for slavery, 'tis now gone. That was the vilest of them all. It was
the naked assertion of the Monopolist platform: "You live, not for
yourself, but wholly and solely for me. I disregard your life entirely,
and use you as my chattel." It died at last of the moral indignation of
humanity. It died when a Southern court of so-called justice formulated
in plain words the underlying principle of its hateful creed: "A black
man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect." That finally
finished it. We no longer allow every man to "wallop his own nigger."
And though the last relics of it die hard in Queensland, South Africa,
Demerara, we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that one
Monopolist Instinct out of the group is pretty well bred out of us.

Except as regards women! There, it lingers still. The Man says even now
to himself:--"This woman is mine. If she ventures to have a heart or a
will of her own, woe betide her! I have tabooed her for life; let any
other man touch her, let her look at any other man--and--knife,
revolver, or law court, they shall both of them answer for it!" There
you have in all its natural ugliness another Monopolist Instinct--the
deepest-seated of all, the vilest, the most barbaric. She is not yours:
she is her own: unhand her! The Turk takes his offending slave, sews her
up in a sack, and flings her into the Bosphorus. The Christian
Englishman drags her shame before an open court, and divorces her with
contumely. Her shame, I say, in the common phrase, because though to me
it is no shame that any human being should follow the dictates of his or
her own heart, it is a shame to the woman in the eyes of the world, and
a life of disgrace she must live thenceforward. All this is Monopoly and
essentially slavery. As man lives down the Ape and Tiger stage, he will
learn to say, rather: "Be mine while you can; but the day you cease to
feel you can be mine willingly, don't disgrace your own body by yielding
it up where your soul feels loathing; don't consent to be the mother of
children by a father you despise or dislike or are tired of. Let us kiss
and part. Go where you will; and my good will go wi