Please understand that this is in no way a criticism of the conduct of women. We desire to lay no stigma upon them. We lay no stigma upon any class or sex or group, for down at bottom, men and women do what they do because they have to do it. The more we understand the economic and biological status of any group, the more we see they are compelled to act, under the circumstances, and in the environment they occupy, precisely as they do act. In the struggle for existence today the laurels are only to those who use any and all methods to save themselves. We only want to point out that women =are able= to save themselves because of their "favored" position in the biological world. Since economic interest and economic control are at the basis of all social institutions, we want to show some of the results of this sex monopoly possessed by women, and required by men. Every group which possesses anything which is necessary to the health and well-being of any other group, is bound to be pursued, wooed, bribed, paid. The monopolistic class, or sex, in turn, learns to withhold, to barter, to become "uncertain, coy and hard to please," to enhance and raise the price of her commodity, even though the economic basis of the transaction be utterly concealed or disguised. All this is exactly as natural and inevitable as a group of wage workers demanding all they can get in payment for their labor power, or the land-owner holding up the farm renters for all the tenants will bear, or the broker selling to the highest bidder. No one is to be blamed. The private possession of a commodity necessary to man, the lower cost of living for women, are the natural causes of lower wages for women than for men, and explains why women are actually able to live on lower wages, as a sex, than men. Few people speak frankly about sex matters today. And still fewer understand them and their economic basis. The subject of sex is clothed in pretense. We discuss women philosophically, idealistically, sometimes from the viewpoint of biology, but never from an economic =and= a biological standpoint, which is the only scientific basis from which to regard them. Everywhere in the animal world except among humankind, the male possesses the gay and attractive plumage, the color and form to please the eye. Naturally he should possess them. But this is not so in the world of man. Here we find the woman decorating herself in the colorful garb. Woman has ceased to ask, "Is he beautiful?" She asks "What does he =own=?" or, "How much can he =pay=?"