foresight to exact life contracts, legally enforcible, and not to be broken even legally, without the curse of the churches.
In many cases, the woman who surrenders her person in consideration of a life contract for her keep, performs no labor, not even caring for her own person; bears no children (unless inadvertently); and makes absolutely no return to society for the labor of many individuals expended upon her—except the personal return to her husband. Needless to say, “wives” of this sort are distinguished from mistress, by the law merely.[1] They are more properly and accurately designated as hetairæ.
It would not be possible to do away with legalized hetairæ altogether, without radical revision of our entire economic system—for the whole marriage problem, while not entirely a problem in economics, is so hedged about with economic conditions that its solution must be largely economic. The conjugal relation should not in any case have an economic consideration. Any form of compensation for sexual relations is as much prostitution as if a fixed price in coin were exacted; and the legal form of prostitution is especially dangerous
- ↑ The conventional standards of female morality, it must be understood, are matters of necessity and law, not of personal ethics. The implacable resentment of reputable women against the “weak sister” is not a result of abstract moral sentiment, but is precisely the feeling of the union laborer against the “scab” who cuts prices. And this solidarity of the women’s “union” against lowering of the market, from life contrast to less, has been an important protection to the sex as a whole.
