new, would at no great length of time become
extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be seen, there never
will be, a time when the majority of the males in any society will be
supported by the rest of the males in a condition of perfect mental and
physical inactivity. "Find labour or die," is the choice ultimately put
before the human male today, as in the past; and this constitutes his
labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete parasitism on the part
of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in ancient Rome at the
time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the bulk of the
population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn, wine,
and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely without
exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short
duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased
Empire itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males
of various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely
parasitic after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been
met by a short and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become
extinct. The condition of the males of the upper classes in France
before the Revolution affords an interesting illustration of this
point.)

The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to
his society, or it may even be distinctly harmful and antisocial, as in
the case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing
and despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of
the share speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and
monopolists of the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of
society without contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so
occupied are compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a
low intelligence in their callings; and, however injurious to their
societies, they run no personal risk of handing down effete and
enervated constitutions to their race. Whether beneficially or
unbeneficially, the human male must, generally speaking, employ his
intellect, or his muscle, or die.

The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different.
The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip
from her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice
between finding new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious
in its ultimate reac