It is immediately obvious that any woman who was prepared to give for love or for nothing what other women were only prepared to give for maintenance was a blackleg of the most subversive type, and the whole force of organized female opinion has, therefore, been devoted to making her position impossible. The force of female opinion so directed is known as morality, and the bitterness with which the free lover, that is to say, the woman who loves outside the marriage tie or the prostitute’s preserves, is denounced as immoral, is due to woman’s unconscious recognition of the fact that she is cutting at the basis of the economic livelihood of her sex. It is of course true that the two women’s Unions are to some extent competitive, and that the existence of the prostitute threatens the security of the wife while it guarantees the chastity of the young girl. For this reason there is and always will be hostility between the Unions. The wife’s first commandment is the Deity’s “Thou shalt have none other woman but me”, and she is accordingly accustomed to regard the prostitute with horror, whereas she does not object to the existence of other wives, since this does not, at least in theory, threaten her own. For this reason, too, the method of earning a living adopted by the wife is generally preferred to that adopted by the prostitute, and is esteemed the more honourable by public opinion. So true is this that in most women the belief in the honourableness of wifehood has become second nature, the really nice woman feeling instinctively that the only decent way for her to live is on the earnings of some man. But while this feeling provokes hostility to members of the other Union, it is a hostility which cannot compare in bitterness with the scorn and hatred felt for the free lover. The reason for this is obvious. The number of women a man can have for money is limited by the extent of his income; the number of women he can have for nothing is limited only by the extent of his ability to find them. For this reason it is felt instinctively that the free lover is a greater menace to society than the prostitute. The prostitute, indeed, is and always has been recognized as a social necessity. She guarantees the chastity of nice women by providing a necessary solace for men up to the comparatively late age at which modern economic conditions allow them to marry. Thus in Tsarist Russia the brothel was a State-recognized institution. The new brothel was formally opened by the police officer, and was hallowed by a religious ceremony in the course of which the premises were blessed by a Russian Orthodox priest.[5] [5] _Report of Labour Delegation_, 1925.