relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured
and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the Children

of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less.
This is our "WOMAN'S RIGHT!"

Chapter II. Parasitism (continued).
Is it to be, that, in the future, machinery and the captive motor-forces of

nature are largely to take the place of human hand and foot in the labour
of clothing and feeding the nations; are these branches of industry to be

no longer domestic labours?--then, we demand in the factory, the warehouse,
and the field, wherever machinery has usurped our ancient labour-ground,

that we also should have our place, as guiders, controllers, and
possessors. Is child-bearing to become the labour of but a portion of our

sex?--then we demand for those among us who are allowed to take no share in
it, compensatory and equallyhonourable and important fields of social

toil. Is the training of human creatures to become a yet more and more
onerous and laboriousoccupation, their education and culture to become

increasingly a high art, complex and scientific?--if so, then, we demand
that high and complexculture and training which shall fit us for

instructing the race which we bring into the world. Is the demand for
child-bearing to become so diminished that, even in the lives of those

among us who are child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen
years out of the three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an

additional outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the
tale of the years not so employed. Is intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectual labour to take ever and

increasingly the place of crude muscularexertion in the labour of life?--
then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which

alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the intellectual" target="_blank" title="n.知识分子">intellectualvigour and
strength which will enable us to undertake the same share of mental which

we have borne in the past in physical labours of life. Are the rulers of
the race to be no more its kings and queens, but the mass of the peoples?--

then we, one-half of the nations, demand our full queens' share in the
duties and labours of government and legislation. Slowly but

determinately, as the old fields of labour close up and are submerged
behind us, we demand entrance into the new.

We make this demand, not for our own sakes alone, but for the succour of
the race.

A horseman, riding along on a dark night in an unknown land, may chance to
feel his horse start beneath him; rearing, it may almost hurl him to the

earth: in the darkness he may curse his beast, and believe its aim is
simply to cast him off, and free itself for ever of its burden. But when

the morning dawns and lights the hills and valleys he has travelled,
looking backward, he may perceive that the spot where his beast reared,

planting its feet into the earth, and where it refused to move farther on
the old road, was indeed the edge of a mightyprecipice, down which one

step more would have precipitated both horse and rider. And he may then
see that it was an instinct wiser than his own which lead his creature,

though in the dark, to leap backward, seeking a 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" target="_blank" title="ad.无用地；徒劳地">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 new, would at no great
length of time become extinct. There never has been, and as far as can be

seen, there never will be, a time when the majority of the males in any
society will be supported by the rest of the males in a condition of

perfect mental and physical inactivity. "Find labour or die," is the
choice ultimately put before the human male today, as in the past; and this

constitutes his labour problem. (The nearest approach to complete
parasitism on the part of a vast body of males occurred, perhaps, in

ancient Rome at the time of the decay and downfall of the Empire, when the
bulk of the population, male as well as female, was fed on imported corn,

wine, and oil, and supplied even with entertainment, almost entirely
without exertion or labour of any kind; but this condition was of short

duration, and speedily contributed to the downfall of the diseased Empire
itself. Among the wealthy and so-called upper classes, the males of

various aristocracies have frequently tended to become completely parasitic
after a lapse of time, but such a condition has always been met by a short

and sharp remedy; and the class has fallen, or become extinct. The
condition of the males of the upper classes in France before the Revolution

affords an interesting illustration of this point.)
The labour of the man may not always be useful in the highest sense to his

society, or it may even be distinctlyharmful and antisocial, as in the
case of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, who lived by capturing and

despoiling all who passed by their castles; or as in the case of the share
speculators, stock-jobbers, ring-and-corner capitalists, and monopolists of

the present day, who feed upon the productive labours of society without
contributing anything to its welfare. But even males so occupied are

compelled to expend a vast amount of energy and even a low intelligence in
their callings; and, however injurious to their societies, they run no

personal risk of handing down effete and enervated constitutions to their
race. Whether beneficially or unbeneficially, the human male must,

generally speaking, employ his intellect, or his muscle, or die.
The position of the unemployed modern female is one wholly different. The

choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip from her,
is not generally or often at the present day the choice between finding new

fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious in its ultimate
reaction on humanity as a whole--it is the choice between finding new forms

of labour or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less complete and
passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without profound interest to note the

varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as they present themselves in the
animal world, both in the male and in the female form. Though among the

greater number of species in the animal world the female form is larger and
more powerful rather than the male (e.g., among birds of prey, such as

eagles, falcons, vultures, &c., and among fishes, insects, &c.), yet sex-
parasitism appears among both sex forms. In certain sea-creatures, for

example, the female carries about in the folds of her covering three or
four minute and quite inactive males, who are entirely passive and

dependent upon her. Among termites, on the other hand, the female has so
far degenerated that she has entirely lost the power of locomotion; she can

no longer provide herself or her offspring with nourishment, or defend or
even clean herself; she has become a mere passive, distended bag of eggs,

without intelligence or activity, she and her offspring existing through
the exertions of the workers of the community. Among other insects, such,

for example, as certain ticks, another form of female parasitism prevails,
and while the male remains a complex, highly active, and winded creature,

the female, fastening herself by the head into the flesh of some living
animal and sucking its blood, has lost wings and all activity, and power of