to them; so far from this
condition causing a diminution in the number of permanent sex unions,
one of the heaviest bars to them would be removed. It is universally
allowed that one of the disease spots in our modern social condition is
the increasing difficulty which bars conscientious men from entering
on marriage and rearing families, if limited means would in the case of
their death or disablement throw the woman and their common offspring
comparatively helpless into the fierce stream of our modern economic
life. If the woman could justifiably be looked to, in case of the man's
disablement or death, to take his place as an earner, thousands of
valuable marriages which cannot now be contracted could be entered on;
and the serious social evil, which arises from the fact that while the
self-indulgent and selfish freely marry and produce large families,
the restrained and conscientious are often unable to do so, would
be removed. For the first time in the history of the modern world,
prostitution, using that term in its broadest sense to cover all forced
sexual relationships based, not on the spontaneous affection of the
woman for the man, but on the necessitous acceptance by woman of
material good in exchange for the exercise of her sexual functions,
would be extinct; and the relation between men and women become a
co-partnership between freemen.

So far from the economic freedom and social independence of the woman
exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first
time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture
which dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading
element of seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good
offered to woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the
untrammelled action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes,
and sexual love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, would be
enabled to return at last, a king crowned.

But, apart from the two classes of persons whose objection to the
entrance of woman to new fields of labour is based more or less
instinctively on the fear of personal loss, there is undoubtedly a
small, if a very small, number of sincere persons whose fear as to
severance between the sexes to result from woman's entrance into the new
field, is based upon a more abstract and impersonal ground.

It is not easy to do full justice in an exact statement to views held
generally rath