This is what is known as the "double standard," and the double standard prevails everywhere under the system of marriage-plus-prostitution, and proves that capitalist "monogamy" is not a spiritual ideal, but a matter of class privilege. It is a breach of honor for the ruling class male to tamper with the wife of his friend; it is frequently dangerous for him to tamper with the young females of his own class; but it is in general practice taken for granted that the young females of lower classes are his legitimate prey. In England a man may have a marriage annulled, if he can prove that the woman he married had what is called a "past"; but everybody takes it for granted that the man has had a "past"; it is covered by the polite phrase, "sowing his wild oats." Wherever among the ruling class you find men bold enough to discuss the facts of the sex order they have set up, you find the idea, expressed or implied, that this "wild oats" is a necessary and inevitable part of this order, and that without it the order would break down. The English philosopher, Lecky, making an elaborate study of morals through the ages, speaks of the prostitute in the following frank language: "Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." I invite you to study these sentences and understand them fully. Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned historian of sex customs who has ever written in English; a man whose authority is recognized in our schools, whose books are in every college library. William Edward Hartpole Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist; he is a conventional English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those who now own the world and run it. I quote him, because he tells in plain language what kind of world they have made; I invite you to study his words, and then judge my statement that the sex arrangement under which we live in modern society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prostitution.