than the ordinary artisan of his
trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything
of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability,
that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the
purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize.
Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage.
The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her
only asset in the competitive field--sex. Thus she enters into life-long
relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged
beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe
to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and
physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex
matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an
exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up
because of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex
without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as
utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness
consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything
more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life
and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense
craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her
vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a
"good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is
precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in
failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of
marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath
of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip
of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young
people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by
the elders, drilled and pounded until they become "sensible."

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has
aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and only
God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he
support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage.
Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; he