The grave error of excusing purchase by the plea of consent, is fully shown when the relations of capital to labour in the present system of competitive industry are understood. We are now so far removed from the primitive trade of barter, where values were determined by necessities, that first principles are commonly lost sight of. Generations have passed, during which ideas about wealth have become confused through complicated exchanges, stored-up labour inherited by those who no longer labour, violent seizures in the past or cunning ones in the present, with constantly changing standards or ideals. The quite new standard of converting everything into a money value, and measuring its value by money, has taken the place of older methods. As a result, money has become the autocrat of industry. Character, talent, activity still possess their uses, but only as the servants of money or capital, which have practically become interchangeable terms. The weaker portions of the human race are ever more and more deeply crushed down by the misery of a limitless competitive system, which is not based on the legitimate foundations of trust, freedom, and sympathy, and which consequently, by placing money as the irresponsible governor of the industrial world, makes the hypocrisy of so-called ‘freedom of contract’ the most bitter mockery. It is necessary to realize the overwhelming and illegitimate power of money in the present day, if the condition of any grade is to be justly judged, and the responsibilities for the evils of a vicious trade rightly apportioned. In the terrible trade which converts the human body into a marketable commodity, it is no figure of speech, but a very weighty fact, that vicious men are the capitalists. The responsibility of that position must be recognised. In judging either of the parties concerned in the trade, the question, ‘Who are the capitalists or paymasters?’ is the point to be insisted on. This is the fundamental fact to be steadily borne in mind--whether we consider the demoralized women who consent to the conversion of their bodies into merchandise; or the wholesale traders who organize to meet a demand increasing beyond the power of individuals to supply; or the State which connives at the trade; or society which condones it--the capital on which this nefarious traffic rests is supplied by licentious men. This is the great economic fact on which the whole system rests. All legislation and all benevolent effort that do not recognise this fundamental fact, will hopelessly wander in the labyrinth of evil trade, with no clue to direct their energies aright. From this unnatural employment of capital, two other economic evils directly arise--viz., first, the discouragement of honest industry; second, an unfair competition with male labour.