ess of those who are artists first and men
afterwards. But meanwhile we can only rely upon the sympathy and the
understanding of the individual.

Far be it from me to advise that girls refrain from doing their part
in the general work of the home, if servants are out of the question;
that won't hurt them; but if some one must go out and support the
family it would better be the mother or the maiden aunt.

Better still, a husband, if marriage is their goal and children the
secret desire of their hearts.

If girls are so constituted mentally that they long for the
independent life, self-support, self-expression, they will have it and
without any advice from the worldly-wise; it is as driving an impulse
as the reproductive instinct in those who are more liberally sexed.
And these last are still in the majority, no doubt of that. Therefore,
far better they marry and have children in their youth. They, above
all, are the women whose support and protection is the natural duty of
man, and while it is one of life's misfortunes for a girl to marry
simply to escape life's burdens, without love and without the desire
for children, it is by far the lesser evil to have the consolation of
home and children in the general barrenness of life than to slave all
day at an uncongenial task and go "home" to a hall bedroom.

These views were so much misunderstood when they appeared in magazine
form that I have felt obliged to emphasize the differences between the
still primitive woman and the woman who is the product of the higher
civilization. One young socialist, who looked quite strong enough to
support a family, asked me if I did not think it better for a girl to
support herself than to be the slave of a man's lust and bear
innumerable children, whether she wished for them or not, children to
whose support society contributed nothing. But why be a man's slave,
and why have more children than you can support? We live in the
enlightened twentieth century, when there is precious little about
anything that women do not know, and if they do not they are such
hopeless fools that they should be in the State Institutions. The time
has passed for women to talk of being men's slaves in any sense,
except in the economic. There are still sweatshops and there is still
speeding up in factories, because society is still far from perfect,
but if a woman privately is a man's slave to-day it is because she is
the slave of herself as well.

VI