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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
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