een solved at
the same time.

Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled
tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both
ends of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed
of their ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were
perfectly fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material
benefit and intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of
mechanical for human labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer
absorbed by the few but dispersed among the whole mass of males in
return for their trained labour, yet the woman's problem might be
further from satisfactory solution than it is today; and, if it were
affected at all, might be affected for the worse. It is wholly untrue
that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male as the result of
his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him in supporting
non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or mistresses, is
the same thing to the female or to the race as though that sum had been
earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or indirectly by
toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the moment, truly,
the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been compelled
to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even
physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and
on the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between
life and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity
benefits and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the
increased wealth of his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or
physically a poodle because she can give him a down cushion in place of
one of feathers, and chicken in place of beef. The wealthier the males
of a society become, the greater the temptation, both to themselves and
to the females connected with them, to drift toward female parasitism.

The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a
more equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish
slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest
female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those
conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today
leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt
upon that parasitism is not connected with any defini