ex which came first and remains first in the immediacy
and indispensableness of its relations to the coming life will base its
economic claims--in the vulgar and narrow sense of that term--upon the
worth of those relations. The society which cannot afford to pay
for--that is, to sustain--the characteristic functions of womanhood,
cannot continue; and societies have continued and will continue in
proportion as they hold hard by these first conditions of their lives.
The case of Jewish womanhood is the supreme illustration of a thesis
which requires no experimental demonstration, but is necessarily true.

Here, then, is the solution, as the future will prove, of the problem of
the economic status of woman. At present, though Ellen Key is the only
feminist writer who recognizes it, women can compete successfully with
men only at the cost of complete womanhood,--and that is a price which
society as a whole cannot afford to pay, if it wishes to continue.
Therefore we must, in effect, pay women in advance for their work, the
actual realization of the value of which is always necessarily deferred.
The case is parallel to that of expenditure upon forestry. In the
planting of trees or the nurture of babies the State will get value for
its money in the long run, but it must be prepared to wait. States are
slowly becoming more provident, and already we are coming to see this
about trees. Soon we shall see it about babies, and the problem of the
economic status of woman will then be solved in practice as it is
assuredly soluble in principle.

Mankind must first learn to renounce Mammon and set up Life as its God;
but to that also we shall come--or perish, for Life is a jealous God and
visits the sins of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CHIEF ENEMY OF WOMEN

If we believe that the sexes are mutually dependent and, in the long
run, can neither be injured nor befriended apart, we shall be prepared
to expect that the chief enemy of civilized mankind is no less inimical
to women than to men. So long as it was supposed that drinking merely
injured the drinker, and so long as the drinkers were almost entirely
men, it could be argued by persons sufficiently foolish that indulgence
in alcohol was a male vice or delight which really did not concern women
at all--if men choose to drink or to smoke or to bet or to play games,
what business is that of women? It is an argument which would not appeal