In addition to the motives before alluded to as actuating the promoters of the factitious and bogus so-called “White Slave” agitation, there is one very powerful political and economic motive which must not be left out of sight. In view of the existing “labour unrest,” it is highly desirable from the point of view of our possessing and governing classes that popular attention should be drawn off labour wrongs and labour grievances on to something less harassing to the capitalist and official mind. Now the Anti-man agitation forms a capital red herring for drawing the popular scent off class opposition by substituting sex antagonism in its place.
If you can set public opinion off on the question of wicked Man and down-trodden Woman, you have done a good deal to help capitalistic enterprise to tide over the present crisis. The insistence of public opinion on better conditions for the labourer will thus be weakened by being diverted into urging forward vindictive laws against men, and for placing as far as may be the whole power of the State at the disposal of the virago, the shrew and the female sharper, in their designs upon their male victim. For, be it remembered, it is always the worst type of woman to whom the advantage of laws passed as the result of the Anti-man campaign accrues. The real nature of the campaign is crucially exhibited in some
