Their only contention is that they have a program under which people can be good if they want to. They know, only too well, that with the coming of Socialism, everybody will not suddenly want to be good. They expect to have to deal with the bad man and the bad woman. But they do not expect to have to deal with so many bad men and bad women as we now have to deal with. They do not expect to have to deal with any men or women who have been made bad by poverty or the fear of poverty. They do not expect to have to deal with women who have been forced into prostitution because there seemed to be no other way to keep soul and body together. Socialists say that if there are any prostitutes under Socialism they will be women who deliberately choose prostitution as a vocation. Perhaps women, better than men, can judge how many such women there are likely to be. It is this picture of economically independent womanhood that is hailed by the wealthy detractors of Socialism as the sign that the Socialists plan to destroy the home and supplant it with free love. Socialists say that such conclusions can be based only upon these assumptions: That nothing but poverty keeps women from being “free-lovers.” That if women were given the power to support themselves decently and comfortably outside of the home, they would at once desert their children, their husbands and “destroy the family.” Socialists believe women can safely be trusted with enough money to live on. Yet the word “trust,” as here used, is not quite the word. Socialists do not believe it is within their province either to trust or to distrust women. Socialists believe economic independence is a right that women should demand and get, rather than a privilege that man should grant or deny, as he may see fit. If women do well with economic independence, well and good. If they do ill with it, still well and good. If they have not yet learned to use economic independence, they cannot begin learning too quickly, nor can they learn except by trying to use it. In any event, Socialists do not claim the right of guardianship over women. They do not believe any human being, regardless of sex, has a right to coerce another when that other is not invading the rights of some other. They believe that women to-day are being coerced. Coerced by poverty. Coerced by fear of poverty. Coerced by men who presume upon their own economic independence and the economic dependence of women. They cite, as proof of their beliefs, the growing number of divorces, together with the fact that women are the applicants for most of the divorces. And, the astounding circumstance about all of this is that because Socialists hold these views, they are denounced by rich grafters and their retainers as “destroyers of the family,” and “free-lovers.”