l young prostitute who had been expelled from a high grade house
after the exposures of the Lexow Investigation, once said to the writer:
"It would never do for good women to know what beasts men are. We girls
have got to pay."

The lady, dwelling on her pedestal of isolation, from which she commands
the veneration of the chivalrous gentleman and the adoration of the
poet, is the product of a leisure assured by property. At the end of the
social scale is the girl who wants to be a lady, who doesn't want to
work, and who, like the lady, has nothing to sell but herself. The life
of the prostitute is the nearest approach for the poor girl to the life
of a lady with its leisure, its fine clothes, and its excitement. So
long as we have a sex ethics into which are incorporated the taboo
concepts, the lady cannot exist without the prostitute. The restrictions
which surround the lady guard her from the passions of men. The
prostitute has been developed to satisfy masculine needs which it is not
permitted the lady to know exist.

But in addition to the married woman who has fulfilled the destiny for
which she has been prepared and the prostitute who is regarded as a
social leper, there is a large and increasing number of unmarried women
who fall into neither of these classes. For a long time these
unfortunates were forced to take refuge in the homes of their luckier
sisters who had fulfilled their mission in life by marrying, or to adopt
the life of the religieuse. Economic changes have brought an alteration
in their status, however, and the work of the unattached woman is
bringing her a respect in the modern industrial world that the "old
maid" of the past could never hope to receive.

Although at first often looked upon askance, the working woman by the
sheer force of her labours has finally won for herself a recognized
place in society. This was the first influence that worked against the
old taboos, and made possible the tentative gropings toward a new
standardization of women. The sheer weight of the number of unattached
women in present day life has made such a move a necessity. In England,
at the outbreak of the war, there were 1,200,000 more women than men. It
is estimated that at the end of the war at least 25% of English women
are doomed to celibacy and childlessness. In Germany, the industrial
census of 1907 showed that only 9-1/2 millions of women were married, or
about one-half the total number over eighteen years