commodity. The general attitude on
this question of sex may be, and in fact usually is, wholly unconscious;
but the fact remains that men and women meet each other, in the
capitalist system, as buyers and sellers of, or barterers for, a
commodity.

Scarcely anybody recognizes this fact, and those who sense it fail to
understand the inevitable result upon society and upon women themselves.
There is no office or saloon scrub-woman so displeasing and decrepit, no
stenographer so old and so unattractive, no dish-washer so sodden, that
she does not know, tucked far away in her inner consciousness, perhaps,
that, if the very worst comes and she loses her job, there is the truck
driver or the office clerk, the shaky-legged bar patron on the road to
early locomotor ataxia, or the squint-eyed out-of-town salesman, who can
be counted on to tide her over an emergency--usually for goods
delivered.

When a man is out of a job and broke, he is flat on his back. His
appetites, his desires cry out for satisfaction exactly as they did when
he had money in his pockets to pay for the satisfaction of these
appetites and these desires.

When a woman loses a job, she has always the sale of her sex to fall
back upon as a last resort.

Please understand that this is in no way a criticism of the conduct of
women. We desire to lay no stigma upon them. We lay no stigma upon any
class or sex or group, for down at bottom, men and women do what they do
because they have to do it. The more we understand the economic and
biological status of any group, the more we see they are compelled to
act, under the circumstances, and in the environment they occupy,
precisely as they do act. In the struggle for existence today the
laurels are only to those who use any and all methods to save
themselves.

We only want to point out that women =are able= to save themselves because
of their "favored" position in the biological world. Since economic
interest and economic control are at the basis of all social
institutions, we want to show some of the results of this sex monopoly
possessed by women, and required by men.

Every group which possesses anything which is necessary to the health
and well-being of any other group, is bound to be pursued, wooed,
bribed, paid. The monopolistic class, or sex, in turn, learns to
withhold, to barter, to become "uncertain, coy and hard to please," to
enhance and raise the price of her commodity, even though the economic
b