e cannot afford
to engage men, because he knows they usually possess more brains than
their lovely sisters, and because they remain longer. The beautiful
woman sees no need for intelligence nor for understanding because she
has always been able to outstrip her less attractive competitors in
making the best match and securing the rich husbands. And so her
neurones rarely "connect," or react, except to stimuli pertaining to
things that will enhance her charms and increase her selling price.

The young man expects to accomplish something in the world, to earn much
money, or "high position," in order to be able to marry the most
charming girl. The "most charming girl," if she be temporarily forced to
earn her own living, =expects= to find somebody who will marry her, give
her more luxuries than she has been accustomed to, and lift her far
above her companions. She hopes to become a member of the leisure class
even if she never attains it.

Arnold Bennett says that men usually marry through the desire to mate,
while women marry for economic reasons. It seems to us that this is
often true.

Women are =potential= parasites even if they never become real ones, and
this is the gist of the matter we are discussing. Why are nearly all
small farmers reactionary, individualistic, distrustful, competitive?
Because they hope some day to become gentleman farmers. Why are most
small business men narrow, egoistic, conservative? For the reason that
they hope one day to become men of Big Business. The young woman in
America today possesses the same psychology. Being young, she not only
=hopes=, she =expects=, to rise into the leisure class when some young man
asks her for the privilege of supporting her through life.

We are making no claim that the lot of millions of housekeeping mothers,
married to working men, is more enviable than is the condition of their
husbands. We merely wish to point out that millions of women,
potentially, actually, or psychologically, =are= "of the leisure class,"
and that =fact= and =expectation= keep women, as a sex, allied to the
forces of reaction. When a woman is competing in a life and death
struggle among a score of other young women, to make a permanent legal
bargain which entails the promise of an income or support for life, she
has little leisure or energy to spare in making over, or revolutionizing
the present social system.

The mind of the average woman today is that of the petty shop-keeper.