Page:May Walden - Woman and Socialism (1909).pdf/23

 Rh a vow to obey our husbands and to cleave to them until death parts us, no matter what the exactions or the abuse they heap upon us! Out upon such teachings, say I!

Look over the women of your acquaintance between the ages of twenty and forty. Do you not know many attractive ones who would make excellent wives and mothers, but who are unmarried because no man has ever come to claim them? The cost of living is so great that men and women dare not take upon themselves the responsibility of a family.

And no woman, even if she was able to support and educate a child, would dare public opinion to the extent of rearing a family without a (so-called) head to it. Sot a father's daughter of them! They smother their natural instincts and desires and drag out a wretched existence that too often ends in an insane asylum. Unless she were socially a slave do you think a woman would starve her mother-instinct when her whole nature craved the comfort of a baby's clinging touch? Unless she were socially a slave, would she bring unloved children into the world to prove herself loyal to a brutal ruler who demands that there be no race suicide?

It is only in a state of society where woman is looked upon as the private property of man, that such perversions of woman's nature can be found; the prostitute, the childless woman, and the worn-out over-burdened mother.

When woman is socially free, free to accept