Mary Marcy

“ The petty shop-keepers rail more against the "outrageously" high wages and the short hours of the skilled workers than against the large business organizations, like the packing interests, or the great monopolies, that hold them constantly on the edge of failure. Desper [Pg 12] ately and consistently, as they behold their competitors forced out in the irresistible march of centralization, they cling to their sinking ships, their small deceits and petty ideology in the hope of one day winning out against the terrific odds opposed to them, and landing high and dry in the capitalist class. ”

“ Youth is the world's eternal and undaunted conqueror. No matter what the odds, no matter how slim the chances of success in any undertaking, Youth dares. Experience and wisdom know, fear and hesitate. Youth rushes in and—sometimes—finds a way. ”

“ Few men any longer possess any property worthy of the name; hence, they are forced to sell their labor power for wages to keep from starving. And men are not always able to secure jobs.
The propertyless woman today is rarely reduced to starvation. If the price (or wages) offered for the sale of her laboring power are unsatisfactory, she may always supplement them through the barter or sale of her sex. That there are no women hoboes in the civilized world today is incontestable proof of the superiority of the economic status of woman over man. ”

“ On the other hand, women disguise the economic basis of the deal in every possible way; lie, cheat and compete in a life and death struggle with others of their sex. A thousand illusions, tricks, subtleties, hypocrisies are employed to cover the bald fact that wares are being displayed, are being bidden for by other men. The deal is smothered in chivalrous urbanities and sentimental verbiage. Unnumbered circumlocutions are resorted to, to conceal the salesmanship of one who has a commodity to sell. ”

“ The laws today protect the owners of property and the economically powerful. The more economic power a group, or a class, or a sex possesses, the more the state throws the mantle of its protective laws about it. Women are owners of a commodity for which men are buyers or barterers, and our modern laws protect woman at the expense of man. ”

“ Mothers are conservative when their children are secure; more predatory when they are in want. Mothers often compete successfully in making their wares attractive and in binding the male by habits and associations that hold him and induce him to continue to pay.
Among men, the possession of, and ability to support a woman in perpetuity, whom no other may touch, is honorific, a high sign of display. It announces to the world that such a man is able to hold a trophy in the struggle for existence. A monogamous wife is, in fact, an emblem of well-off-ness, and greatly to be desired. ”

“ We only claim that the root of the relation of the sexes in America is today the economic basis of buyers and sellers of a commodity and that this basis of sex, sold as a commodity, affects every phase of our social life, and all of our social institutions, and that we fail to recognize these economic roots because of the leaves upon the social tree. ”

“ The youth knows neither himself, the world nor his adversaries. He is unafraid because he does not know the strength of the forces he would conquer. But society learns from the threshings about of its individuals. ”

“ We see the small, struggling farmers, who have probably very little to lose in this world save their debts and their mortgages, counting themselves in a class of possible property owners and small exploiters, and generally throwing their support into movements promising petty reforms, when nothing but the abolition, or downfall of the system of private ownership in the means of production and distribution, can possibly help them. ”

“ Why are most small business men narrow, egoistic, conservative? For the reason that they hope one day to become men of Big Business. The young woman in America today possesses the same psychology. Being young, she not only hopes, she expects, to rise into the leisure class when some young man asks her for the privilege of supporting her through life. ”

“ But do not imagine for a single moment that women are inferior to men. Biology has long since proven that daughters inherit the same natural tendencies from their fathers and their grandfathers, their mothers and their grandmothers that sons do. In the case of the girls it is only as it would be if the sons in a family all inherited a share in the monopoly of a commodity that half the human race requires. ”

“ The private possession of a commodity necessary to man, the lower cost of living for women, are the natural causes of lower wages for women than for men, and explains why women are actually able to live on lower wages, as a sex, than men.
Few people speak frankly about sex matters today. And still fewer understand them and their economic basis. The subject of sex is clothed in pretense. We discuss women philosophically, idealistically, sometimes from the viewpoint of biology, but never from an economic and a biological standpoint, which is the only scientific basis from which to regard them. ”

“ That will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity: a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love, or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences. Once such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's thought to what we today [Pg 59] believe should be their course. ”

“ A man does not wish to be one among a corporation of men owning a woman any more than he desires to be owner of a sixth part of an automobile. Not because there is anything more intrinsically wrong in purchasing one-sixth than six-sixths, but because, in a world where the ownership of private property is the greatest of [Pg 23] all good things, individual ownership denotes respectability, comfort, ability to buy outright. Hence we have monogamy for wives and mistresses in general, and polygamy for men. ”

“ Even in rebellion youth aspires to conquer the heights, though it be through the depths. A boy finds consolation in planning to become the world's greatest hero or martyr when he is thwarted in becoming an epoch-making inventor, or discoverer. This on the male side of the house.
The daughter aspires to beauty, lovely clothes, charm, or to stardom on the theatrical or operatic stage, achievements and characteristics which mean popularity and the ultimate disposal of her wares to the highest available bidder. ”

“ And the matter of clothes is a vital one to the woman of today. Clothes are the frame that enhances the picture as well as its price tag; they are the carton wrapping the package in the show window, the case that best displays the jewel for sale within.
All our social institutions encourage girls and young women, and all women up to the age of ninety, or more, in believing that it is the supreme good for a woman to make the best possible matrimonial bargain. ”

“ As a sex, women have rarely been rebels or revolutionists. We do not see how they can ever be as long as there exists any system of exploitation to revolt against. Revolt comes from the submerged, never from the group occupying a favored place. Today the revolutionist is he who has nothing to sell but his labor power. ”

“ The almost universality of the maternal instinct is proven by the peoples in the [Pg 21] world today, for scarcely anybody would have a chance for existence if it were not for the care of the mothers.
Generally the coming of children is a handicap to a woman in the market in which Nature and the present system have placed her. Where this is the case, it is here that society, customs and laws speak for the family, in ways built up, sometimes blindly, sometimes consciously, to preserve the species, and upon the old biological and economic foundations. ”

“ When a man is out of a job and broke, he is flat on his back. His appetites, his desires cry out for satisfaction exactly as they did when he had money in his pockets to pay for the satisfaction of these appetites and these desires.
When a woman loses a job, she has always the sale of her sex to fall back upon as a last resort. ”

“ When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system and will reflect its culture. ”

“ Men love to dress their women in expensive clothes, to provide them with luxurious surroundings, because this advertises to the world the fact that they are able to purchase a superior, i. e., a higher priced commodity. Women give much time and spend money extravagantly in articles of conspicuous waste for the simple reason that by so doing they announce the fact that they are finer than other women, higher priced, of a fancier brand, possessed of better wares. ”

“ A husband may become crippled or invalided and there is no law even suggesting that it is the duty of his wife to support him; most communities would lynch a man who neglected a sick or helpless wife, and the law would certainly deal [Pg 52] most harshly with him. The law throws no safeguards about the man, to protect him against his wife's failure to live up to her theoretical marital obligations, to protect him when he is ill, or in the enjoyment of separate maintenance, alimony, or against non-support or abandonment. ”

“ Do not all respectable and well-meaning parents (and others not so respectable) seek gently to guide their daughters into safe matrimonial harbors where they [Pg 24] barter themselves for a respectable meal-ticket, or an income, presumably, for life? They would be shocked beyond measure if you told them that back of all their exalted mummeries, they desired to see their daughters barter their sex for the highest and most enduring stake rather than to see them selling their labor or brain power for wages, or selling their sex on the installment, or retail plan, to the chance purchaser. ”

“ We lay no stigma upon any class or sex or group, for down at bottom, men and women do what they do because they have to do it. The more we understand the economic and biological status of any group, the more we see they are compelled to act, under the circumstances, and in the environment they occupy, precisely as they do act. In the struggle for ex [Pg 15] istence today the laurels are only to those who use any and all methods to save themselves. ”

“ Bachofen has shown how women were strong factors in the demand for monogamy through this and the earlier periods.
Man learned to till the soil and to domesticate animals; he captured enemies from neighboring tribes and learned to make slaves instead of food of them. And the conqueror became a master, and the slave an instrument of production. It was the men who were lucky enough to be first to enslave the enemy, to acquire more precious metals and larger flocks, who evolved the state, to protect them against the commune, or the mass, in their ownership of private property. ”

“ When he finds his talents unappreciated, he usually decides to write a book that will influence the whole future course of human events, or a novel that will alter dynasties and change social systems; or he decides to become a powerful political [Pg 32] leader, or the silver-tongued orator of the times. Thwarted youth may aspire to become the world's greatest rebel, or the most heroic victim of despotic authority. ”

“ No matter what the offense of the woman, custom and public opinion demand that every "decent" man permit his wife to accuse him on "just grounds" and to secure the divorce and call on the law to force him to pay her alimony for the rest of their natural lives. ”

“ We still hear people talk about the relations of the sexes, the family [Pg 54] and marriage, as though these human and social relationships had always been and were bound to remain what they are today, whereas they have undergone far-reaching modifications within the period of our own lives.
Every change taking place in industry is always bound to send out infinite ramifications through every branch of our social institutions. ”

“ The young man expects to accomplish something in the world, to earn much money, or "high position," in order to be able to marry the most charming girl. The "most charming girl," if she be temporarily forced to earn her own living, expects to find somebody who will marry her, give her more luxuries than she has been accustomed to, and lift her far above her companions. She hopes to become a member of the leisure class even if she never attains it. ”

“ Nothing is sacred from the invasion of small boys, who climb in, and under and over all obstacles to discover what makes the wheels go around, while the small girls sit about and take care of their clothes and learn to count them of supreme importance. ”

“ And so monogamy became the law, and descent was traced by male instead of female lineage. Engels says that "the downfall of maternal law was the historic defeat of the female sex."
In order to insure the faithfulness of the wife, and the reliability of paternal lineage, the women were given absolutely into the power of the men. Husbands had power of life and death over their wives. In certain countries today it is only the man who can dissolve the marriage bonds and cast off his wife. ”

“ Is it possible that when women are released from economic and social coercion, this periodic mating instinct in the woman of the species may assert, or reassert, itself?
Wives and mistresses often submit to their husbands or lovers only through fear [Pg 26] of losing economic security to the ever alert competitor. It is certain that when all men and all women have gained individual economic opportunity and security, social institutions will change also. ”

“ Whatever she may do or leave undone in the marriage relation, if it but be with sufficient pretense and discretion, in America, at least, the world and the courts absolve her from all blame.
If she be discreet, she may entertain lovers galore; she may refuse to perform [Pg 50] any of the theoretical duties of the home; she may refuse to bear children or to surrender to her husband, without censure, and often without the knowledge of the world. If she be addicted to drunkenness, people will divine that her husband must have treated her brutally ”