Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/567

 The Selling of Love

(From "Love's Coming of Age")

(See page 186)

The commercial prostitution of love is the last outcome of our whole social system, and its most clear condemnation. It flaunts in our streets, it hides itself in the garment of respectability under the name of matrimony, it eats in actual physical disease and death right through our midst; it is fed by the oppression and the ignorance of women, by their poverty and denied means of livelihood, and by the hypocritical puritanism which forbids them by millions not only to gratify but even to speak of their natural desires; and it is encouraged by the callousness of an age which has accustomed men to buy and sell for money every most precious thing—even the life-long labor of their brothers, therefore why not also the very bodies of their sisters?

The Butcher's Stall

(From "Les Villes Tentaculaires:" The Octopus Cities)

(Belgian poet, born 1855. When Maurice Maeterlinck was suggested as a member of the French Academy, he recommended that the honor should be conferred upon Verhaeren instead. Beginning his career as a decadent and victim of disease, Verhaeren evolved into a rhapsodist of modern civilization. No poet has ever approached him in the portrayal and interpretation of factories, forges, railroads, and all the phenomena of industrialism. Of late he has become an ardent Socialist. The poem here quoted is from