Such a prohibition, by lessening the competition of the labour-market, and by thus increasing the value of labour (which the flood of female industry inevitably cheapens) would automatically so increase the wage of men as to make of these true living wage, sufficient for the maintenance of home and family. Such a prohibition would, moreover, so diminish the competitive pressure among women as to make it possible for unmarried women, the future wives and mothers, as well as for the older spinsters and widows, to select in every fitting trade and industry, work suited to the lesser strength and endurance of the female brain and body. VII Nothing has characterised the Feminist Movement throughout so much as lack of knowledge of human nature (both masculine and feminine), lack of prevision to foresee the trend of new developments, lack of intuitive apprehension to gauge the issues of such trend. Its leaders have never suspected, accordingly, that, in propaganda and in practice, they have been tampering with a great biological ordinance; and that, in obliterating women's Sex-characteristics, they have been destroying that counterpoise of human powers and faculties whereon progress and permanence rest, and that morale which is the inspiration of advance. Regarding their own masculine Rationalism as the ideal and standard for all women, they have believed it possible to shape all women successfully thereto. Nature is not to be thwarted, however. And when we destroy the balance of the Normal, abnormal developments--gravely mischievous and singularly difficult to deal with--crop up and require to be dealt with. One may raise the familiar cry that some modern developments are due to our being in "a transition stage." But from that remote day when Nature first evolved us as a race of _amoebæ_, further to evolve into the human species, we have been always in "transition stages." Normal transition upwards is so slow an impulse as to be well-nigh imperceptible, however. Rapid change invariably betokens regression--descent being vastly easier and swifter in movement than ascent is. Deplorably mistaken has been a doctrine of Emancipation which, by disparaging the arts domestic, has sent out young girls and women, indiscriminately, from the sphere domestic, to de-sexing and demoralising work in factories and businesses; and has engendered the race of stunted, precocious, bold-eyed, cigarette-smoking, free-living working-girls who fill our streets; many tricked out like cocottes, eyes roving after men, impudence upon their tongues, their poor brains vitiated by vulgar rag-times and cinema-scenes of vice and suggestiveness. Some of our working-girls are charming-looking, pretty-mannered, pure of thought and life, of course. A small minority--alas, how small!--are normal of development and sound of constitution. But these are not the average. And it is the average with which a nation has to reckon.