Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/335

Rh branches of industry, she would as the weaker, be crushed without consideration. Gallantry is an invention of prosperity and leisure. Want and hunger destroy this sentiment upon which woman calculates when she imagines a world in which she could wrestle with man for her daily bread. The most difficult and the most indispensable kinds of work man alone must undertake; he will rate them higher than those performed by woman and as at present, woman's labor will always receive a smaller remuneration than his. Why? Because he has the strength to make his views into laws and to accomplish his will; for no other reason. Woman is accorded a high and dignified position in our civilization because she is acquiescent, because she is content to be the complement of man and to acknowledge his material supremacy. In fact, if she attempts to question it, she is soon compelled to recognize its actuality. The fully emancipated woman, entirely independent of man and in many cases his enemy when their conflicting interests clash, must soon be crowded into the corner. It is in such a case a genuine wrestling match, and there can be no question as to which would succumb first. This emancipation would bring man and woman necessarily into the relation of a higher and lower race—for man is better equipped for the struggle for existence and competency than woman—with the result that the latter would be brought into a far worse condition of dependence and slavery than that condition from which this emancipation is to-release her. The aim of the emancipation preachers is to make it possible for woman to live without man and to renounce matrimony. This method of curing the evil is about as efficacious as that of some philanthropist who might give lectures during a time of famine on the subject of how man could be weaned most effectually from the habit of