Women, as we have repeatedly seen, were the first producers. Creative industry is theirs by the deepest laws of nature. The female is the original reproductive stream of life; and in the higher stages of her development she still manifests the larger range of race-activities. In the human species for by far the longest period of our life, the proto-social, she was the main—almost the sole—producer, men being mostly destroyers. But for the most of our historic period, all the time that is best known to us, women have been prevented from taking part in progressive human production and restricted to the duties of a house servant. What tendency to specialised social service they might manifest was promptly banned as “unwomanly,” belonging only to men. The man elected himself to be sole producer, in the large social sense; and the woman was to be only a consumer, to depend on him for her maintenance and take what he gave her. The position is acutely abnormal—quite opposite to the inherent nature of the female. It is her instinct to _give_—not to take; ably to do, not feebly to be done for. This unnatural attitude was forced upon her, however, with two results, inevitable results, as regards consumption. One is that all her flood of power and patience and infinite service being confined to her one master and their children, she has developed in them inordinate appetites and morbid tastes. The productive force that should flow broad and smooth in Society at large, being bottled up at home, with no consumer but the family, necessarily accustomed the family to receiving more than was good for it; thus maintaining in the world the ancient selfishness of the primitive individual, which real social life tends steadily to reduce. The social instincts, those large and outflowing feelings we call generosity, justice, altruism, are bred in the mutual service of specialised social industry; but the individual instincts, once virtues, now become vices if too prominent, are nursed and fed continually in that hotbed of all personal indulgence, the wife-served home. Thus the position of woman promotes the tendency to inordinate and morbid consumption in man and child. But it has also a direct influence on her. She is born and reared in this same atmosphere; she inherits from father as well as mother; the habits of many generations have a gradual effect upon her, and all old civilisations show one monstrous sight, the bottomless greed of the artificially bred women. As Cleopatra outdid Antony in “conspicuous consumption”—swallowing a dissolved pearl worth more than all his gobbled delicacies; as Nana destroyed expensive furnishings just to amuse herself; so have these horse-leech’s daughters outdone any sons that estimable sucker may have had, in the cry of Give! Give!