Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/329

Rh themselves chiefly, and most uniformly, including even the more highly educated among them, is the sublime brutality with which they deride and combat the aspirations and rights of their fellow beings of the female sex. The mere consciousness that they belong to the sex that supplies the prizefighters and cut-throats makes of them competent judges, and privileged lords over everything feminine. No question furnishes a better and surer test of a man's vulgarity than the question of woman's rights; and since the true rabble, everywhere, is wont to dilate upon it con amore, and with complete liberty, fearing neither the police, nor the bones of the weaker sex, it is a tid-bit with which this scribbling rabble tempts the appetite of its readers, by serving it with a sauce piquante of beer-saloon wit and street-corner esprit.

Women have it in their power to take the bread away from a large number of this scribbling rabble. I know that many of them are driven by hunger, rather than viciousness, to lend themselves to even the lowest kind of newspaper work, and I do not wish the poor wretches any harm. Still I cannot agree, even apart from our special interests, to have the press, this most important institution for the education of mankind, used as a mere charitable institution for every poverty-stricken incapacity — that ought rather to turn to some manual labor — and degraded by every low-minded individual, who is willing for board and lodging to commit treason