We see, then, that when the reproach of prostitution is raised neither woman nor man dares cast the first stone; for both have been equally stained with it under Capitalism. It may even be urged by special pleaders on behalf of women that the prostitution of the mind is more mischievous, and is a deeper betrayal of the divine purpose of our powers, than the prostitution of the body, the sale of which does not necessarily involve its misuse. As a matter of fact nobody has ever blamed Nell Gwynne for selling her body as Judas Iscariot for selling his soul. But whatever satisfaction the pot may have in calling the kettle blacker than itself the two blacks do not make a white. And the abstract identity of male and female prostitution only brings out more strongly the physical difference, which no abstract argument can balance. The violation of one’s person is a quite peculiar sort of outrage. Anyone who does not draw a line between it and offences to the mind ignores the plain facts of human sensitiveness. For instance, landlords have had the power to force Dissenters to send their children to Church schools, and have used it. They have also had a special power over women to anticipate a husband’s privilege, and have either used it or forced the woman to buy them off. Can a woman feel about the one case as about the other? A man cannot. The quality of the two wrongs is quite different. The remedy for the one could wait until after the next general election. The other does not bear thinking of for a moment. Yet there it is. 49 TRADE UNION CAPITALISM Now we must go into the history of the resistance offered by the proletariat to the capitalists. It was evident, to begin with, that no woman or man could do anything against the employers single-handed. The stock retort, “If you will not take the wage offered, and do the work put upon you, there are plenty who will”, checkmated the destitute solitary bargainer for a decent living wage and a reasonable day’s work. The first necessity for effective resistance was that the employees should form some sort of union and stand together. In many cases this was impossible, because the employees did not know oneanother, and had no opportunities of coming together and agreeing on a joint course of action. For instance, domestic servants could not form unions. They were in private kitchens all over the country, more or less imprisoned in them, and working singly, or at most in groups of two or three, except in the houses of the very rich, where the groups might be as large as thirty or forty. Or take agricultural laborers. It is very difficult to organize them into unions, and still more difficult to keep their unions together for any length of time. They live too far apart. The same thing is true more or less of almost every kind of labor except labor in factories and mines or on railways.