Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/254

late ourselves or not? And if not, with whom ought we to combine? That is the question. If there is any portion of the population of a state that deserves to be designated as a class it is the women. A class in a political sense is caused by legal privilege or disfranchisement. The negroes were a class so long as they had not the right of suffrage. The wealthy form a class when the right of suffrage and government depends on the possession of money. But the entire female half of humanity bears the most pronounced class-character. It has always been distinguished in all countries, even by the disfranchised class of the male portion, as the class without rights. That she could in no way be dispensed with has been her only protection; and the only guarantee of her rights has rested with the chivalry of men. We daily read, nowadays, of the class-distinctions which are called out and fostered by the "laborers" in Europe as well as in America, the object being to develop the most intense "class-consciousness," which _ must finally lead to "class-wars." Now, we women need not have recourse to artificial means in order to call out a "class-consciousness" among us. The state as well as nature stamp us as the largest and most disfranchised class in the world. If we were to adopt the tactics of the laborers, we would regard only our special interests, concern ourselves only with that which is wanting to and oppressing us as women, we would isolate ourselves as women and as the woman-class take our stand against the entire