new path along which both might travel. (Is it not recorded that even
Balaam's ass on which he rode saw the angel with flaming sword, but
Balaam saw it not?)

In the confusion and darkness of the present, it may well seem to
some, that woman, in her desire to seek for new paths of labour and
employment, is guided only by an irresponsible impulse; or that she
seeks selfishly only her own good, at the cost of that of the race,
which she has so long and faithfully borne onward. But, when a clearer
future shall have arisen and the obscuring mists of the present have
been dissipated, may it not then be clearly manifest that not for
herself alone, but for her entire race, has woman sought her new paths?

For let it be noted exactly what our position is, who today, as
women, are demanding new fields of labour and a reconstruction of our
relationship with life.

It is often said that the labour problem before the modern woman and
that before the unemployed or partially or almost uselessly employed
male, are absolutely identical; and that therefore, when the male labour
problem of our age solves itself, that of the woman will of necessity
have met its solution also.

This statement, with a certain specious semblance of truth, is yet, we
believe, radically and fundamentally false. It is true that both the
male and the female problems of our age have taken their rise largely
in the same rapid material changes which during the last centuries,
and more especially the last ninety years, have altered the face of the
human world. Both men and women have been robbed by those changes of
their ancient remunerative fields of social work: here the resemblance
stops. The male, from whom the changes of modern civilisation have taken
his ancient field of labour, has but one choice before him: he must find
new fields of labour, or he must perish. Society will not ultimately
support him in an absolutely quiescent and almost useless condition.
If he does not vigorously exert himself in some direction or other (the
direction may even be predatory) he must ultimately be annihilated.
Individual drones, both among the wealthiest and the poorest classes
(millionaires' sons, dukes, or tramps), may in isolated cases be
preserved, and allowed to reproduce themselves without any exertion
or activity of mind or body, but a vast body of males who, having lost
their old forms of social employment, should refuse in any way to exert
themselves or seek for