_Unless poverty is good for the family, capitalism is not good for the family, because capitalism means poverty or the fear of poverty for all but a few and can never mean anything else. Capitalism can never mean anything else because capitalism is essentially parasitical in its nature. It lives and can live only by preying upon the working class._ _If plenty for everybody, without too much or too little for anybody will purify, glorify and vivify the family, Socialism will purify, glorify and vivify it. Socialism will place all of the great machinery of modern production in the hands of the people, to be used fully and freely for nobody’s advantage but their own._ Of course, the family cannot be improved without changing it. Upon this obvious fact is based the whole capitalist attack upon Socialism as a destroyer of the home. Socialists believe that freedom from poverty would have a profound effect upon domestic relationships. And Socialist writers have tried to picture the world as it will be when all of the hot hoops of want have been removed from the compact little group that is called the family. They have pictured woman standing firmly upon her feet, with the ballot in one hand and the power under the law to live from her labor with comfort and self-respect, either inside or outside of her home. But no Socialist has ever pictured a world in which woman would be compelled to work outside her home if she did not want to. Such a picture is reserved for capitalism in the present day. Socialists merely contend that Socialism would make women economically independent, by guaranteeing to them the full value of their labor. No woman would be compelled to marry to get a home. No woman who had a home would be compelled by poverty to stay in it if she were badly treated. For the sake of her children, she might do so if she wished, but she could not be compelled to do so. She would simply be free to act as her judgment might dictate—to profit from a wise choice or to suffer from an unwise one. Briefly, such is the Socialist picture of the Socialist world for women. No Socialist contends that it is a picture of a perfect world. A perfect world could contain neither fools, hotheads, nor vicious persons. The hard conditions of the present world, and the harder conditions of those long past have created too many fools, hotheads and vicious persons to justify the hope that all such persons can quickly be made wise, cool and good. Socialists, with all their optimism, are not so optimistic as that. They have absolutely no program, patented or otherwise, for making people good.