equitable distribution of wealth among males, might indeed diminish
slightly the accompanying tendency to parasitism in the very wealthiest
female class; but it would, on the other hand, open up exactly those
conditions which make parasitism possible to millions of women today
leading healthy and active lives. (The fact cannot be too often dwelt upon
that parasitism is not connected with any definite amount of wealth. Any
sum supplied to an individual which will so far satisfy him or her as to
enable them to live without exertion may absolutely parasitise them; while
vast wealth (unhealthy as its effects generally tend to be) may, upon
certain rare and noble natures, exert hardly any enervating or deleterious
influence. An amusing illustration of the different points at which
enervation is reached by different females came under our own observation.
The wife of an American millionaire was visited by a woman, the daughter
and also the widow of small professional men. She stated that she was in
need of both food and clothing. The millionaire's wife gave her a leg of
mutton and two valuable dresses. The woman proceeded to whine, though in
vigorous health, that she had no one to carry them home for her, and could
not think of carrying them herself. The American, the descendant of
generations of able, labouring, New England, Puritan women, tucked the leg
of mutton under one arm and the bundle of clothes under the other and
walked off down the city street towards the woman's dwelling, followed by
the astonished pauper parasite.

The most helpless case of female degeneration we ever came into contact
with was that of a daughter of a poor English officer on half-pay and who
had to exist on a few hundreds a year. This woman could neither cook her
own food nor make her own clothes, nor was she engaged in any social,
political, or intellectual or artistic labour. Though able to dance for a
night or play tennis for an afternoon, she was yet hardly able to do her
own hair or attire herself, and appeared absolutely to have lost all power