home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in
marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her
sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a
darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home
only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in _his_ home,
year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as
flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes
a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man
from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to
go. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of
all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the
outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her
movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a
weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully
inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After
all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the
hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of
children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet
orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little
victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the
Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever
made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him
in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child?
If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does
marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to
put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the
child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its
father's stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,--therein lies the curse of marriage.
Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such
an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to
forever condemn this parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man of
his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in
ignorance, i