Were the entire male labour problem of this age satisfactorily settled
tomorrow; were all the unemployed or uselessly employed males at both ends
of societies, whom the changes of modern civilisation have robbed of their
ancient forms of labour, so educated and trained that they were perfectly
fitted for the new conditions of life; and were the material benefit and
intellectual possibilities, which the substitution of mechanical for human
labour now makes possible to humanity, no longer absorbed by the few but
dispersed among the whole mass of males in return for their trained labour,
yet the woman's problem might be further from satisfactory solution than it
is today; and, if it were affected at all, might be affected for the worse.
It is wholly untrue that fifty pounds, or two thousand, earned by the male
as the result of his physical or mental toil, if part of it be spent by him
in supporting non-labouring females, whether as prostitutes, wives, or
mistresses, is the same thing to the female or to the race as though that
sum had been earned by her own exertion, either directly as wages or
indirectly by toiling for the man whose wages supported her. For the
moment, truly, the woman so tended lies softer and warmer than had she been
compelled to exert herself; ultimately, intellectually, morally, and even
physically, the difference in the effect upon her as an individual and on
the race is the difference between advance and degradation, between life
and death. The increased wealth of the male no more of necessity benefits
and raises the female upon whom he expends it, than the increased wealth of
his mistress necessarily benefits mentally or physically a poodle because
she can give him a down cushion in place of one of feathers, and chicken in
place of beef. The wealthier the males of a society become, the greater
the temptation, both to themselves and to the females connected with them,
to drift toward female parasitism.

The readjustment of the position of the male worker, if it led to a more