Page:May Walden - Woman and Socialism (1909).pdf/22

 22 till night for $6.00 a week making beautiful dresses that she can never wear? or stand all day in the stuffy air of a department store receiving insults from women, who, because they are on the other side of the counter, consider themselves superior to a saleswoman, and sell hundreds of dollars' worth of goods a week for which she gets the magnificent sum of $5.00 or $6.00? Would she do any of these distasteful, disagreeable, slavish things unless she was obliged to do so? She does it because she is an economic slave; because she cannot make a living except by applying to some one who owns the machines, or the goods she must work with, in order to make her living.

In order that this product may be sold for a profit, the girl by competing with others who want to make a living also, must work as cheaply as possible. When profits are done away with, this grinding process will cease. That will be only when the people own co-operatively the means of production. Then join the Socialist party that is working to abolish the profit system, and to establish the Co-operative Commonwealth.

Women are slaves socially because they cannot do as they choose in society. We are slaves to custom and to public opinion. We marry to get a home, and we stay in it because we consider ourselves the possession of the man who furnishes our food and clothes. We bring unwelcome children into the world because we are sex slaves. We dare not maintain the right to our own bodies because we have taken