asis of the transaction be utterly concealed or disguised. All this is
exactly as natural and inevitable as a group of wage workers demanding
all they can get in payment for their labor power, or the land-owner
holding up the farm renters for all the tenants will bear, or the broker
selling to the highest bidder. No one is to be blamed.

The private possession of a commodity necessary to man, the lower cost
of living for women, are the natural causes of lower wages for women
than for men, and explains why women are actually able to live on lower
wages, as a sex, than men.

Few people speak frankly about sex matters today. And still fewer
understand them and their economic basis. The subject of sex is clothed
in pretense. We discuss women philosophically, idealistically, sometimes
from the viewpoint of biology, but never from an economic =and= a
biological standpoint, which is the only scientific basis from which to
regard them.

Everywhere in the animal world except among humankind, the male
possesses the gay and attractive plumage, the color and form to please
the eye. Naturally he should possess them. But this is not so in the
world of man. Here we find the woman decorating herself in the colorful
garb. Woman has ceased to ask, "Is he beautiful?" She asks "What does he
=own=?" or, "How much can he =pay=?"

Men love to dress their women in expensive clothes, to provide them with
luxurious surroundings, because this advertises to the world the fact
that they are able to purchase a superior, i. e., a higher priced
commodity. Women give much time and spend money extravagantly in
articles of conspicuous waste for the simple reason that by so doing
they announce the fact that =they= are finer than other women, higher
priced, of a fancier brand, possessed of better wares.

Everybody knows that the office clerk who aspires to the affections of
an artistically gowned, jewel decked young woman, often spends most of
his wages upon her in the hope of winning her attention. His office
associates may describe her as "fancy," or speak of her as "an expensive
package." And so the twenty dollar-a-week clerk magnifies his "income"
in order to bribe the young lady into "giving herself" to him in
exchange for his name and some sort of life-long support, provided he
can produce it.

How many young wives have learned, to their chagrin, of the deceits thus
practiced upon them by their husbands! Alas! The scenes that are enacted
when