Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/124

 made. Kings have given their mistresses titles, and have made their sons peers. How many women have been ennobled for any other services? While a first-class university woman rarely gets a higher salary than five hundred pounds a year, an illiterate courtesan, if she plays her cards well and has luck, may dip her hands into millions. The two cynical volumes of Emil Reich, entitled, Woman through the Ages, give proof of those qualities in woman which man has chosen to reward with the highest titles and the greatest riches. Every poor sweated girl knows she can in one night double her week's wage if she chooses. This is a fact. If we do not fearlessly face it, we may as well give up talking about the women's movement, for it will only be play. The clearest knowledge, the closest thinking, are wanted on the part of women and men; hitherto, except for those personally involved either as buyers or sellers, knowledge has been confined to the police (almost entirely occupied with penalising one only of the two parties to the transactions), to doctors and nurses and officials of workhouses and asylums of many sorts, and to a small body of rescue-workers. The list is significant.

It is to be wished that this subject could be approached free from the falseness of sentimentality. It is not possible, nor is it desirable to abolish all feeling when we come to act. Feeling is the property of sentient beings, and actions are not right or wrong quite independently of their effects on feeling. Women do well to feel intensely in