had inherited from my
Dutch and English forefathers, as well as to do my share in carrying
on the race. But I got rid of all that as quickly as possible, and
struck out for that plane of modern civilization planted and furrowed
and replenished by daughters of men.

III

THE REAL VICTIMS OF "SOCIETY"

I

There is nothing paradoxical in affirming that while no woman before
she has reached the age of thirty-five or forty should, if she can
avoid it, compete with men in work which the exigencies of
civilization (man-made civilization) have adapted to him alone, still,
every girl of every class, from the industrial straight up to the
plutocratic, should be trained in some congenial vocation during her
plastic years. Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it
was a thousand years ago. Socialism might solve the problem if it were
not for the Socialists. Certainly no man or body of men has yet arisen
with the proper amount of imagination, selflessness, brains and
constructive genius, necessary to plan a social order in which all men
shall work without overworking and support all women during the best
years of the child-bearing and child-rearing span. If men had been
clever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to protect women
without independent means from the terrors of life, say by taxing
themselves, they would not be pestered to-day with the demand for
equal rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of the
remunerative industries and professions, above all by the return of
the Matriarchate.

It is Life that has developed the fighting instinct in woman, bred the
mental antagonism of sex. Nature did not implant either. Nor has she
ever wavered a jot from the original mix compounded in her immemorial
laboratory. Man is man and woman is woman to-day, even to the superior
length of limb in the male (relative to the trunk) and the greater
thickness of hairs in the woman's eyelashes. In England women of the
leisure class showed during the years of the sports craze a tendency
to an unfeminine length of limb, often attaining or surpassing the
male average. But Nature avenged herself by narrowing the pelvis and
weakening the reproductive organs. Free trade drove the old sturdy
yeoman into the towns and diminished the stature and muscular power of
their descendants, but ten months of trench life and Nature laughed at
the weak spot in civilization. The moment false conditions are removed
she claims he