ess of one who thinks and does
nothing to be ashamed of. She had always been self-supporting, she
said, and she would be self-supporting still. To her mind, that
was an essential step towards the emancipation of women. Their
friendship implied for her no change of existence, merely an
addition to the fulness of her living. He was the complement of
her being. Every woman should naturally wish to live her whole
life, to fulfil her whole functions; and that she could do only by
becoming a mother, accepting the orbit for which nature designed
her. In the end, no doubt, complete independence would be secured
for each woman by the civilized state, or in other words by the
whole body of men, who do the hard work of the world, and who would
collectively guarantee every necessary and luxury to every woman of
the community equally. In that way alone could perfect liberty of
choice and action be secured for women; and she held it just that
women should so be provided for, because the mothers of the
community fulfil in the state as important and necessary a function
as the men themselves do. It would be well, too, that the mothers
should be free to perform that function without preoccupation of
any sort. So a free world would order things. But in our present
barbaric state of industrial slavery, capitalism, monopoly,--in
other words under the organized rule of selfishness,--such a course
was impossible. Perhaps, as an intermediate condition, it might
happen in time that the women of certain classes would for the most
part be made independent at maturity each by her own father; which
would produce for them in the end pretty much the same general
effect of freedom. She saw as a first step the endowment of the
daughter. But meanwhile there was nothing for it save that as many
women as could should aim for themselves at economic liberty, in
other words at self-support. That was an evil in itself, because
obviously the prospective mothers of a community should be relieved
as far as possible front the stress and strain of earning a
livelihood; should be set free to build up their nervous systems to
the highest attainable level against the calls of maternity. But
above all things we must be practical; and in the practical world
here and now around us, no other way existed for women to be free
save the wasteful way of each earning her own livelihood.
Therefore she would continue her schoolwork with her pupils as long
as the