Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/31

 too dreadful to permit of two opinions about the matter. It may take generations to achieve, but the purity of men as well as the purity of women is an ideal which very few feminists will be found to reject.

But the number of feminists who support in its entirety the claim of the out-and-out feminist for the economic freedom of women is comparatively small. Most women who think are convinced of the desirability of economic independence for women, if only that they may not be driven into a loveless marriage for the sake of bread to eat and clothes to wear. But economic independence and economic freedom are not quite the same thing. Many women are economically independent to-day, or, rather they are economically dependent upon a part of the community unknown to them, which works to supply them with dividends. In the sense that their income is tolerably secure, however, and that they have not to look to another for bread, these women are economically independent; but they are not economically free. Economic freedom means absolute security from want, a security which nothing short of the annihilation of the whole community could touch. Economic freedom can be secured only through the organisation of society in such a way as to provide food and other necessaries for all, from the day of their