health and happiness. The worker, though no longer slave or serf, it still the step-child of humanity. Workingman and working woman are still terms applied to the representatives of an inferior social class. In the Socialistic society of the future the terms workingman and working woman may go out of usage altogether because they will no longer designate any special class or part of the population. All men and all women will be workers. All human beings, except the sick and feeble, except children and the aged, will be social producers.
HUMAN WORK
Under Socialism all men and women will be workers. Let the reader consider this statement in its full significance. That all men will be workers under Socialism is readily accepted by all who begin to understand Socialism; but that all women will be workers also is a revelation to many. The wildest confusion still prevails in many minds in regard to woman's future relation to labor. Many persons assume that under a higher social order women will be entirely released from the necessity of working. Others hold that women will devote all their intelligence and ability to a more perfect performance of their purely feminine and domestic functions; that they will again limit their activity to the service of the family and the home. Both assumptions are false, because they are directly opposed to the trend of development. Both are false because they are not in keeping with human evolution, but would mean the return to a lower social order.
If, under Socialism, women would be entirely released from the necessity of working, it would not mean progress but the worst kind of retrogression. It would reduce all womanhood to the level of the harem woman. It would make Socialism impossible, or-if it were possible—it would lead to the speedy degeneration and ultimate extinction of the human race. If, under Socialism, women would again devote all their energy and skill to the family and the home it would place them exactly where
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