Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/165

 

we are to speak of freedom, and especially of free marriage, we must above all things establish the independence of the individual, and especially the mutual independence of husband and wife.

The great question of the times, to secure an existence to every one and thus to protect him, on the one side, from material want and, on the other side, to liberate him from conditions in which material dependence makes him a mere tool of others — this great question concerns no one more closely than the women. Let it but be borne in mind what has been said above of prostitution. Perhaps seven-eighths of the feminine sex are dependent, or degraded, or enslaved, or prostituted because — they cannot emancipate themselves economically from the men.

If the solution of the problem of existence, so far as it concerns the male sex, is already difficult enough, in the interests of the women it is still more difficult to solve. The practical course of events brings it about that the men, since they are the makers of history, want their turn to come first and make it come first; moreover, the men