eating. The question would be then, how to supply the hungry with food, not how to teach them to do without it. And the little band of self-constituted agents of the victims of our civilization ought not to persuade and make it possible for woman to renounce marriage, but should try to secure her her natural share in the love-life of humanity. As I asserted in the preceding chapter that it is the duty of society to care for its children, to educate them completely, and as often as is necessary, to support them until they become capable of supporting themselves, I now assert that it is the duty of society to protect woman, its most valuable breeding material, against physical want. The community owes protection and support to woman. Man's role in the life of the species is that of the bread winner, the preserver and defender of the living generation; woman's role is that of the preserver and defender of the future generations, the improver of the race by natural selection, as she excites strife between the men, of which she is the prize and in which the ablest competitors secure the most valuable spoils. As a child the girl should receive the advantages of the public education of the young, and later, if it is necessary, she should be entitled to complete support, either in her parents' house or in a separate home of her own. Society should look upon it as a disgrace if any woman, young or old, beautiful or ugly, should feel the pangs of want in any civilized community. In a society reorganized upon these principles, in which woman would have no anxiety in regard to her daily bread, knowing that she is protected from want in any case, whether married or single, in which the children would be supported and educated by the community, in which man could not expect to buy as many women with his money as he wants, because hunger would no longer be his go-between, in such a society woman would soon
