CASTI-PIANI--Good business! Naturally! But good business is based on profits for both parties. I may say that I do no business which is =not= good. Every business that is not good is immoral!--Or do you believe perhaps that the love-business is a =bad= business for the woman? ELFRIEDE--How do you mean? CASTI-PIANI--I mean simply this--I don’t know whether you’re just in the mood at this moment to listen to me with some attentiveness? ELFRIEDE--Save your introduction, for God’s sake! CASTI-PIANI--Well then, I mean this: When a man finds himself in dire need there is often no choice left him but stealing or starving. But when a woman is in need, she has a third choice: the possibility of selling her love. This way out remains for the woman only because in granting her body she need not experience any emotion. Now since the world was created, woman has made use of this advantage. To speak of nothing else, man is by nature vastly superior to woman from the sheer fact that the woman suffers in childbirth---- ELFRIEDE--That’s the screaming incongruity exactly! That’s what I’m always saying. To =bear= children is pain and care, but to =beget= them passes as an amusement. And nevertheless benevolent Creation (which suffers from crazy fits in many other respects, too) has laid the burden of pain and care on the weaker sex! CASTI-PIANI--On that, young lady, we’re quite of the same opinion. And now you want to rob your unfortunate sisters of the little advantage over the male which--“crazy Creation” did confer on them: the advantage of being able, in extreme need, to sell their sexual favors,--by representing this sale as an inexpiable shame! I’ll say you’re a fine champion of woman’s rights! ELFRIEDE--[_Almost in tears._] That possibility of selling ourselves weighs on our oppressed sex as an unspeakable misfortune, an everlasting curse! CASTI-PIANI--But--God in heaven knows--it isn’t =our= fault that the buying and selling of love weighs on the female sex as an everlasting curse! We traders have no dearer aim than that this love-business should be as open and unmolested as any other honest trade! We have no loftier ideal than that prices in the love-business should be as high as they can possibly be made to be. Hurl your accusations, if you would fight the oppression of your unfortunate sex, in the face of conventional society! If you would defend your sisters’ natural rights, attack first of all the International Union for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic!