But we could not go even so far with any theory for making men
independent of women without seeing that we were no less wrong on that
side than Mrs. Gilman is on the other. Man's apparent economic
independence of women is as complete a myth as women's projected
economic independence of men. In the last resort, when we come down to
realities, and remember that both men and women are mortal, and that
unless they are replaced, everything ends, we see that the introduction
of the word economic into this question simply serves to confuse
thought, just as the older political economy confused thought and laid
itself open to the mercilessly magnificent attacks of Ruskin. Economy is
literally the law of the house or the home--where life begins. Of all
economies, life is the last judge, because there is no wealth but life.
_In the last resort the economic dependence of the sexes means nothing
because the sexes cannot independently reproduce themselves._
If Mrs. Gilman is to be arraigned for her error let us see to it most
carefully that we do not fail to arraign the men who, with not
one-thousandth part of her excuse and with no iota of her ability, fall
into the corresponding error on their side. When Women's Suffrage is
being debated, there never fails a supply of men who write to the papers
to say that men must vote and not women because men and not women "made
the State.
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