even when they naturally prefer higher things, to spend the freest, freshest, most beautiful years of their lives in trifles and the chase after butterflies, content if they are "favourites with gentlemen," if they are considered "jolly," and if they "have a good time?" A writer in the Nation has justly remarked that girls seem to be educated with the view of pleasing young men at the age when these are the least worthy of being pleased. But why must they please young men? Primarily, because they do not earn their own living. They are burdens at home upon their fathers, and when they marry, they will be burdens upon their husbands. The young man therefore holds in his gift for the young girl, not only what she too keeps for him, love, but also support, position, social consideration and dignity, enjoyment,—in short, the whole of that ordinary human success which she cannot achieve for herself, but must receive from him alone. She is the trembling, silken courtier before the absolute despot, and with so much at stake, she cannot venture to exact anything from him. I repeat it, I believe young men to be so immoral principally because women are in no condition to insist on their virtue; because, let them run almost what private career of vice they please, they know well enough that they can marry whenever they like, and almost whom they like, and that no questions will be asked or conditions demanded, no, not even by the girls' own mothers!
How Independence may be attained.
When, however, every yoimg girl, on leaving school, begins at once to support herself in the co-operative association; when she knows that she could be married to-morrow, and be no additional burden to her husband; when, too, as the member of a great industrial organization, she has a thousand eager and absorbing interests along with the married and unmarried of her own sex, so that life is not a dull craving after a change or an excitement, but a round of healthy mental and physical activity all the time,—then she will begin to look on the young man with different
