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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman under socialism, by August Bebel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Woman under socialism
+
+Author: August Bebel
+
+Translator: Daniel De Leon
+
+Release Date: December 10, 2009 [EBook #30646]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN UNDER SOCIALISM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Peter Vachuska, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN UNDER SOCIALISM
+
+[Illustration: AUGUST BEBEL]
+
+
+Woman Under Socialism
+
+_By_
+
+AUGUST BEBEL
+
+
+Translated from the Original
+German of the 33d Edition
+_By_
+DANIEL DE LEON.
+
+
+1917
+NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY
+NEW YORK
+
+
+     "The end of social development resembles the beginning of human
+     existence. The original equality returns. The mother-web of
+     existence starts and rounds up the cycle of human
+     affairs."--Bachofen.
+
+     "Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has
+     been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding
+     and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners,
+     that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable
+     power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own
+     creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence
+     will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of
+     the State to the property it protects, as well as the obligations
+     and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of
+     society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be
+     brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career
+     is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law
+     of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed
+     away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past
+     duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to
+     come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the
+     termination of a career of which property is the end and aim;
+     because such a career contains the elements of
+     self-destruction."--Morgan.
+
+
+Copyright 1904, by the New York Labor News Company
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Bebel's work, "Die Frau und der Socialismus," rendered in this English
+version with the title "Woman under Socialism," is the best-aimed shot
+at the existing social system, both strategically and tactically
+considered. It is wise tactics and strategy to attack an enemy on his
+weakest side. The Woman Question is the weakest link in the capitalist
+mail.
+
+The workingman, we know, is a defenceless being; but it takes much
+sharpening of the intellect to appreciate the fact that "he cannot speak
+for himself." His sex is popularly coupled with the sense of strength.
+The illusion conceals his feebleness, and deprives him of help, often of
+sympathy. It is thus even with regard to the child. Proverbially weak
+and needing support, the child, nevertheless, is not everywhere a victim
+in the existing social order. Only in remote sense does the child of the
+ruling class suffer. The invocation of the "Rights of the Child" leaves
+substantially untouched the children of the rich. It is otherwise with
+woman. The shot that rips up the wrongs done to her touches a nerve that
+aches from end to end in the capitalist world. There is no woman,
+whatever her station, but in one way or other is a sufferer, a victim in
+modern society. While upon the woman of the working class the cross of
+capitalist society rests heaviest in all ways, not one of her sisters in
+all the upper ranks but bears some share of the burden, or, to be
+plainer, of the smudge,--and what is more to the point, they are aware
+of it. Accordingly, the invocation of the "Rights of Woman" not only
+rouses the spirit of the heaviest sufferers under capitalist society,
+and thereby adds swing to the blows of the male militants in their
+efforts to overthrow the existing order, it also lames the adversary by
+raising sympathizers in his own camp, and inciting sedition among his
+own retinue. Bebel's exhaustive work, here put in English garb, does
+this double work unerringly.
+
+I might stop here. The ethic formula commands self-effacement to a
+translator. More so than well-brought-up children, who should be "seen
+and not heard," a translator should, where at all possible, be neither
+seen nor heard. That, however, is not always possible. In a work of this
+nature, which, to the extent of this one, projects itself into
+hypotheses of the future, and even whose premises necessarily branch off
+into fields that are not essentially basic to Socialism, much that is
+said is, as the author himself announces in his introduction, purely the
+personal opinion of the writer. With these a translator, however, much
+in general and fundamental accord, may not always agree. Not agreeing,
+he is in duty bound to modify the ethic formula to the extent of marking
+his exception, lest the general accord, implied in the act of
+translating, be construed into specific approval of objected-to passages
+and views. Mindful of a translator's duties as well as rights, I have
+reduced to a small number, and entered in the shape of running footnotes
+to the text, the dissent I thought necessary to the passages that to me
+seemed most objectionable in matters not related to the main question;
+and, as to matters related to the main question, rather than enter
+dissent in running footnotes, I have reserved for this place a summary
+of my own private views on the family of the future.
+
+It is an error to imagine that, in its spiral course, society ever
+returns to where it started from. The spiral never returns upon its own
+track. Obedient to the law of social evolution, the race often is
+forced, in the course of its onward march, to drop much that is good,
+but also much that is bad. The bad, it is hoped, is dropped for all
+time; but the good, when picked up again, never is picked up as
+originally dropped. Between the original dropping and return to its
+vicinity along the tracks of the spiral, fresh elements join. These new
+accretions so transmute whatever is re-picked up that it is essentially
+remodeled. The "Communism," for instance, that the race is now heading
+toward, is, materially, a different article from the "Communism" it once
+left behind. We move in an upward spiral. No doubt moral concepts are
+the reflex of material possibilities. But, for one thing, moral concepts
+are in themselves a powerful force, often hard to distinguish in their
+effect from material ones; and, for another, these material
+possibilities unfold material facts, secrets of Nature, that go to
+enrich the treasury of science, and quicken the moral sense. Of such
+material facts are the discoveries in embryology and kindred branches.
+They reveal the grave fact, previously reckoned with in the matter of
+the breeding of domestic animals, that the act of impregnation is an act
+of inoculation. This fact, absolutely material, furnishes a
+post-discovered material basis for a pre-surmised moral concept,--the
+"oneness of flesh" with father and mother. Thus science solidifies a
+poetic-moral yearning, once held imprisoned in the benumbing shell of
+theological dogma, and reflects its morality in the poetic expression of
+the monogamic family. The moral, as well as the material, accretions of
+the race's intellect, since it uncoiled out of early Communism, bar, to
+my mind, all prospect,--I would say danger, moral and hygienic,--of
+promiscuity, or of anything even remotely approaching that.
+
+Modern society is in a state of decomposition. Institutions, long held
+as of all time and for all time, are crumbling. No wonder those bodies
+of society that come floating down to us with the prerogatives of
+"teacher" are seen to-day rushing to opposite extremes. On the matter of
+"Woman" or "The Family" the divergence among our rulers is most marked.
+While both extremes cling like shipwrecked mariners to the water-logged
+theory of private ownership in the means of production, the one extreme,
+represented by the Roman Catholic church-machine, is seen to recede ever
+further back within the shell of orthodoxy, and the other extreme,
+represented by the pseudo-Darwinians, is seen to fly into ever wilder
+flights of heterodoxy on the matter of "Marriage and Divorce." Agreed,
+both, in keeping woman nailed to the cross of a now perverse social
+system, the former seeks to assuage her agony with the benumbing balm of
+resignation, the latter to relieve her torture with the blister of
+libertinage.
+
+Between these two extremes stand the gathering forces of revolution that
+are taking shape in the militant Socialist Movement. Opinion among these
+forces, while it cannot be said to clash, takes on a variety of
+shades--as needs will happen among men, who, at one on basic principles,
+on the material substructure of institutional superstructure, cannot
+but yield to the allurements of speculative thought on matters as yet
+hidden in the future, and below the horizon. For one, I hold there is as
+little ground for rejecting monogamy, by reason of the taint that clings
+to its inception, as there would be ground for rejecting co-operation,
+by reason of the like taint that accompanied its rise, and also clings
+to its development. For one, I hold that the smut of capitalist
+conditions, that to-day clings to monogamy, is as avoidable an
+"incident" in the evolutionary process as are the iniquities of
+capitalism that to-day are found the accompaniment of co-operative
+labor;--and the further the parallel is pursued through the many
+ramifications of the subject, the closer will it be discovered to hold.
+For one, I hold that the monogamous family--bruised and wounded in the
+cruel rough-and-tumble of modern society, where, with few favored
+exceptions of highest type, male creation is held down, physically,
+mentally and morally, to the brutalizing level of the brute, forced to
+grub and grub for bare existence, or, which amounts to the same, to
+scheme and scheme in order to avoid being forced so to grub and
+grub--will have its wounds staunched, its bruises healed, and, ennobled
+by the slowly acquired moral forces of conjugal, paternal and filial
+affection, bloom under Socialism into a lever of mighty power for the
+moral and physical elevation of the race.
+
+At any rate, however the genius of our descendants may shape matters on
+this head, one thing is certain: Woman--the race's mothers, wives,
+sisters, daughters--long sinned against through unnumbered
+generations--is about to be atoned to. All the moral and intellectual
+forces of the age are seen obviously converging to that point. It will
+be the crowning work of Militant Socialism, like a mightier Perseus, to
+strike the shackles from the chained Andromeda of modern society, Woman,
+and raise her to the dignity of her sex.
+
+DANIEL DE LEON.
+
+New York, June 21, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE                                                 iii
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                           1
+
+WOMAN IN THE PAST--
+  Chapter I--Before Christianity                                       9
+  Chapter II--Under Christianity                                      47
+
+WOMAN IN THE PRESENT--
+  Chapter I--Sexual Instinct, Wedlock, Checks and Obstructions
+    to Marriage                                                       79
+  Chapter II--Further Checks and Obstructions to Marriage, Numerical
+    Proportion of the Sexes, Its Causes and Effects                  118
+  Chapter III--Prostitution a Necessary Social Institution of
+    the Capitalist World                                             146
+  Chapter IV--Woman's Position as a Breadwinner, Her Intellectual
+    Faculties, Darwinism and the Condition of Society                167
+  Chapter V--Woman's Civic and Political Status                      216
+  Chapter VI--The State and Society                                  235
+  Chapter VII--The Socialization of Society                          272
+
+WOMAN IN THE FUTURE                                                  343
+
+INTERNATIONALITY                                                     350
+
+POPULATION AND OVER-POPULATION                                       355
+
+CONCLUSION                                                           372
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+We live in the age of a great social Revolution, that every day makes
+further progress. A growingly powerful intellectual stir and unrest is
+noticeable in all the layers of society; and the movement pushes towards
+deep-reaching changes. All feel that the ground they stand on shakes. A
+number of questions have risen; they occupy the attention of ever
+widening circles; and discussion runs high on their solution. One of the
+most important of these, one that pushes itself ever more to the fore,
+is the so-called "Woman Question."
+
+The question concerns the position that woman should occupy in our
+social organism; how she may unfold her powers and faculties in all
+directions, to the end that she become a complete and useful member of
+human society, enjoying equal rights with all. From our view-point, this
+question coincides with that other:--what shape and organization human
+society must assume to the end that, in the place of oppression,
+exploitation, want and misery in manifold forms, there shall be physical
+and social health on the part of the individual and of society. To us,
+accordingly, the Woman Question is only one of the aspects of the
+general Social Question, which is now filling all heads, which is
+setting all minds in motion and which, consequently, can find its final
+solution only in the abolition of the existing social contradictions,
+and of the evils which flow from them.
+
+Nevertheless, it is necessary to treat the so-called Woman Question
+separately. On the one hand the question, What was the former position
+of woman, what is it to-day, and what will it be in the future?
+concerns, in Europe at least, the larger section of society, seeing that
+here the female sex constitutes the larger part of the population. On
+the other hand, the prevailing notions, regarding the development that
+woman has undergone in the course of centuries, correspond so little
+with the facts, that light upon the subject becomes a necessity for the
+understanding of the present and of the future. Indeed, a good part of
+the prejudices with which the ever-growing movement is looked upon in
+various circles--and not least in the circle of woman herself--rests
+upon lack of knowledge and lack of understanding. Many are heard
+claiming there is no Woman Question, because the position that woman
+formerly occupied, occupies to-day and will in the future continue to
+occupy, is determined by her "natural calling," which destines her for
+wife and mother, and limits her to the sphere of the home. Accordingly,
+whatever lies beyond her four walls, or is not closely and obviously
+connected with her household duties, concerns her not.
+
+On the Woman Question, the same as on the general Social Question, in
+which the position of the working class in society plays the chief role,
+opposing parties stand arrayed against each other. One party, that which
+would leave everything as it is, have their answer ready at hand; they
+imagine the matter is settled with referring woman to her "natural
+calling." They forget that, to-day, for reasons later to be developed,
+millions of women are wholly unable to fill that "natural calling," so
+much insisted upon in their behalf, of householders, breeders and nurses
+of children; and that, with other millions, the "calling" has suffered
+extensive shipwreck--wedlock, to them, having turned into a yoke and
+into slavery, compelling them to drag along their lives in misery and
+want. Of course, this fact concerns those "wise men" as little as that
+other fact, that unnumbered millions of women, engaged in the several
+pursuits of life, are compelled, often in unnatural ways, and far beyond
+the measure of their strength, to wear themselves out in order to eke
+out a meager existence. At this unpleasant fact those "wise men" stuff
+their ears, and they shut their eyes with as much violence as they do
+before the misery of the working class, consoling themselves and others
+with "it has ever been, and will ever remain so." That woman has the
+right to share the conquests of civilization achieved in our days; to
+utilize these to the easing and improving of her condition; and to
+develop her mental and physical faculties, and turn them to advantage as
+well as man,--they will none of that. Are they told that woman must also
+be economically, in order to be physically and intellectually free, to
+the end that she no longer depend upon the "good-will" and the "mercy"
+of the other sex?--forthwith their patience is at end; their anger is
+kindled; and there follows a torrent of violent charges against the
+"craziness of the times," and the "insane emancipational efforts."
+
+These are the Philistines of male and female sex, incapable of finding
+their way out of the narrow circle of their prejudices. It is the breed
+of the owls, to be found everywhere when day is breaking, and they cry
+out in affright when a ray of light falls upon their comfortable
+darkness.
+
+Another element among the adversaries of the movement cannot shut its
+eyes before the glaring facts. This element admits that there was hardly
+a time when a larger number of women found themselves in so
+unsatisfactory a condition as to-day, relatively to the degree of
+general civilization; and they admit that it is therefore necessary to
+inquire how the condition of woman can be improved, in so far as she
+remains dependent upon herself. To this portion of our adversaries, the
+Social Question seems solved for those women who have entered the haven
+of matrimony.
+
+In keeping with their views, this element demands that, to unmarried
+woman, at least, all fields of work, for which her strength and
+faculties are adequate, shall be opened, to the end that she may enter
+the competitive field for work with man. A small set goes even further,
+and demands that competition for work be not limited to the field of the
+lower occupations, but should also extend higher, to the professions, to
+the field of art and science. This set demands the admission of woman to
+all the higher institutions of learning, namely, the universities, which
+in many countries are still closed to her. Their admission is advocated
+to the classes of several branches of study, to the medical profession,
+to the civil service (the Post Office, telegraph and railroad offices),
+for which they consider women peculiarly adapted;, and they point to the
+practical results that have been attained, especially in the United
+States, through the employment of woman. The one and the other also make
+the demand that political rights be conferred upon woman. Woman, they
+admit, is human and a member of the State, as well as man: legislation,
+until now in the exclusive control of man, proves that he exploited the
+privilege to his own exclusive benefit, and kept woman in every respect
+under guardianship, a thing to be henceforth prevented.
+
+It is noteworthy that the efforts here roughly sketched, do not reach
+beyond the frame-work of the existing social order. The question never
+is put whether, these objects being attained, any real and thoroughgoing
+improvement in the condition of woman will have been achieved. Standing
+on the ground of bourgeois, that is, of the capitalist social order, the
+full social equality of man and woman is considered the solution of the
+question. These folks are not aware, or they slide over the fact that,
+in so far as the unrestricted admission of woman to the industrial
+occupations is concerned, the object has already been actually attained,
+and it meets with the strongest support on the part of the ruling class,
+who as will be shown further on, find therein their own interest. Under
+existing conditions, the admission of women to all industrial
+occupations can have for its only effect that the competitive struggle
+of the working people become ever sharper, and rage ever mere fiercely.
+Hence the inevitable result,--the lowering of incomes for female and
+male labor, whether this income be in the form of wage or salary.
+
+That this solution cannot be the right one is clear. The full civic
+equality of woman is, however, not merely the ultimate object of the
+men, who, planted upon the existing social order, favor the efforts in
+behalf of woman. It is also recognized by the female bourgeois, active
+in the Woman Movement. These, together with the males of their mental
+stamp, stand, accordingly, with their demands in contrast to the larger
+portion of the men, who oppose them, partly out of old-fogy narrowness,
+partly also--in so far as the admission of woman to the higher studies
+and the better-paid public positions is concerned--out of mean
+selfishness, out of fear of competition. A difference in principle,
+however, a class difference, such as there is between the working and
+the capitalist class, does not exist between these two sets of male and
+female citizens.
+
+Let the by no means impossible case be imagined that the representatives
+of the movement for the civic rights of woman carry through all their
+demands for placing woman upon an equal footing with man. What then?
+Neither the slavery, which modern marriage amounts to for numberless
+women, nor prostitution, nor the material dependence of the large
+majority of married women upon their marital lords, would thereby be
+removed. For the large majority of women it is, indeed, immaterial
+whether a thousand, or ten thousand, members of their own sex, belonging
+to the more favored strata of society, land in the higher branches of
+learning, the practice of medicine, a scientific career, or some
+government office. Nothing is thereby changed in the total condition of
+the sex.
+
+The mass of the female sex suffers in two respects: On the one side
+woman suffers from economic and social dependence upon man. True enough,
+this dependence may be alleviated by formally placing her upon an
+equality before the law, and in point of rights; but the dependence is
+not removed. On the other side, woman suffers from the economic
+dependence that woman in general, the working-woman in particular, finds
+herself in, along with the workingman.
+
+Evidently, all women, without difference of social standing, have an
+interest--as the sex that in the course of social development has been
+oppressed, and ruled, and defiled by man--in removing such a state of
+things, and must exert themselves to change it, in so far as it can be
+changed by changes in the laws and institutions within the frame-work of
+the present social order. But the enormous majority of women are
+furthermore interested in the most lively manner in that the existing
+State and social order be radically transformed, to the end that both
+wage-slavery, under which the working-women deeply pine, and sex
+slavery, which is intimately connected with our property and industrial
+systems, be wiped out.
+
+The larger portion by far of the women in society, engaged in the
+movement for the emancipation of woman, do not see the necessity for
+such a radical change. Influenced by their privileged social standing,
+they see in the more far-reaching working-women's movement dangers, not
+infrequently abhorrent aims, which they feel constrained to ignore,
+eventually even to resist. The class-antagonism, that in the general
+social movement rages between the capitalist and the working class, and
+which, with the ripening of conditions, grows sharper and more
+pronounced, turns up likewise on the surface of the Woman's Movement;
+and it finds its corresponding expression in the aims and tactics of
+those engaged in it.
+
+All the same, the hostile sisters have, to a far greater extent than the
+male population--split up as the latter is in the class struggle--a
+number of points of contact, on which they can, although marching
+separately, strike jointly. This happens on all the fields, on which the
+question is the equality of woman with man, within modern society. This
+embraces the participation of woman in all the fields of human activity,
+for which her strength and faculties are fit; and also her full civil
+and political equality with man. These are very important, and as will
+be shown further on, very extensive fields. Besides all this the working
+woman has also a special interest in doing battle hand in hand with the
+male portion of the working class, for all the means and institutions
+that may protect the working woman from physical and moral degeneration,
+and which promise to secure to her the vitality and fitness necessary
+for motherhood and for the education of children. Furthermore, as
+already indicated, it is the part of the working-woman to make common
+cause with the male members of her class and of her lot in the struggle
+for a radical transformation of society, looking to the establishment of
+such conditions as may make possible the real economic and spiritual
+independence of both sexes, by means of social institutions that afford
+to all a full share in the enjoyment of all the conquests of
+civilization made by mankind.
+
+The goal, accordingly, is not merely the realization of the equal rights
+of woman with man within present society, as is aimed at by the
+bourgeois woman emancipationists. It lies beyond,--the removal of all
+impediments that make man dependent upon man; and, consequently, one sex
+upon the other. Accordingly, this solution of the Woman Question
+coincides completely with the solution of the Social Question. It
+follows that he who aims at the solution of the Woman Question to its
+full extent, is necessarily bound to go hand in hand with those who have
+inscribed upon their banner the solution of the Social Question as a
+question of civilization for the whole human race. These are the
+Socialists, that is, the Social Democracy.
+
+Of all existing parties in Germany, the Social Democratic Party is the
+only one which has placed in its programme the full equality of woman,
+her emancipation from all dependence and oppression. And the party has
+done so, not for agitational reasons, but out of necessity, out of
+principle. _There can be no emancipation of humanity without the social
+independence and equality of the sexes._
+
+Up to this point all Socialists are likely to agree with the
+presentation made of fundamental principles. But the same cannot be said
+on the subject of the manner in which we portray the ultimate aims to
+ourselves; how the measures and special institutions shall be shaped
+which will establish the aimed-at independence and equality of all
+members of the sexes, consequently that of man and woman also.
+
+The moment the field of the known is abandoned, and one launches out
+into pictures of future forms, a wide field is opened for speculation.
+Differences of opinion start over that which is probable or not
+probable. That which in that direction is set forth in this book can,
+accordingly, be taken only as the personal opinion of the author
+himself; possible attacks must be directed against him only; only he is
+responsible.
+
+Attacks that are objective, and are honestly meant, will be welcome to
+us. Attacks that violate truth in the presentation of the contents of
+this book, or that rest upon false premises we shall ignore. For the
+rest, in the following pages all conclusions, even the extremest, will
+be drawn, which, the facts being verified, the results attained may
+warrant. Freedom from prejudice is the first condition for the
+recognition of truth. Only the unrestricted utterance of that which is,
+and must be, leads to the goal.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+WOMAN IN THE PAST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.
+
+
+Woman and the workingman have, since old, had this in
+common--_oppression_. The forms of oppression have suffered changes in
+the course of time, and in various countries. But the oppression always
+remained. Many a time and oft, in the course of the ages, did the
+oppressed become conscious of their oppression; and such conscious
+knowledge of their condition did bring on changes and reliefs.
+Nevertheless, a knowledge, that grasped the actual feature of the
+oppression by grasping its causes, is, with woman as with the
+workingman, the fruit of our own days. The actual feature of society,
+and of the laws that lie at the bottom of its development, had first to
+be known, before a general movement could take place for the removal of
+conditions, recognized as oppressive and unjust. The breadth and
+intensity of such a movement depends, however, upon the measure of the
+understanding prevalent among the suffering social layers and circles,
+and upon the measure of freedom of motion that they enjoy. In both
+respects, woman stands, through custom and education, as well as the
+freedom allowed her by law, behind the workingman. To this, another
+circumstance is added. Conditions, lasting through a long series of
+generations, finally grow into custom; heredity and education then cause
+such conditions to appear on both sides as "natural." Hence it comes
+that, even to-day, woman in particular, accepts her subordinate position
+as a matter of course. It is no easy matter to make her understand that
+that position is unworthy, and that it is her duty to endeavor to become
+a member of society, equal-righted with, and in every sense a peer of
+man.
+
+However much in common woman may be shown to have with the workingman,
+she leads him in one thing:--_Woman was the first human being to come
+into bondage: she was a slave before the male slave existed._
+
+All social dependence and oppression has its roots in the _economic
+dependence_ of the oppressed upon the oppressor. In this condition woman
+finds herself, from an early day down to our own. The history of the
+development of human society proves the fact everywhere.
+
+The knowledge of the history of this development is, however,
+comparatively new. As little as the myth of the Creation of the
+World--as taught us by the Bible--can be upheld in sight of the
+investigations of geographers and, scientists, grounded as these
+investigations are upon unquestionable and innumerable facts, just so
+untenable has its myth proved concerning the creation and evolution of
+man. True enough, as yet the veil is far from being lifted from all the
+sub-departments of this historical development of mankind; over many, on
+which already light has been shed, differences of opinion still exist
+among the investigators on the meaning and connection of this or that
+fact; nevertheless, on the whole, there is agreement and clearness. It
+is established that man did not, like the first human couple of the
+Bible, make his first appearance on earth in an advanced stage of
+civilization. He reached that plane only in the course of endlessly long
+lapses of time, after he had gradually freed himself from purely animal
+conditions, and had experienced long terms of development, in the course
+of which his social as well as his sexual relations--the relations
+between man and woman--had undergone a great variety of changes.
+
+The favorite phrase--a phrase that the ignorant or impostors daily smite
+our ears with on the subject of the relations between man and woman, and
+between the poor and the rich--"it always has been so," and the
+conclusion drawn therefrom--"it will always be so," _is in every sense
+of the word false, superficial and trumped-up_.
+
+For the purposes of this work a cursory presentation of the relations
+between the sexes, since primitive society, is of special importance. It
+is so because it can thereby be proved that, seeing that these relations
+have materially changed in the previous course of human development, and
+that the changes have taken place in even step with the existing systems
+of production, on the one hand, and of the distribution of the product
+of labor, on the other, it is natural and goes without saying that,
+along with further changes and revolutions in the system of production
+and distribution, _the relations between the sexes are bound to change
+again_. Nothing is "eternal," either in nature or in human life; eternal
+only is change and interchange.
+
+As far back as one may go in the development of human society, the horde
+is found as the first human community. True enough, Honeger mentions in
+his "General History of Civilization" that even to-day in the little
+explored interior of the island of Borneo, there are wild people, living
+separately; and Huegel likewise maintains that, in the wild mountain
+regions of India, human couples have been discovered living alone, and
+who, ape-like, fled to the trees as soon as they were met; but there is
+no further knowledge on the subject. If verified, these claims would
+only confirm the previous superstition and hypothesis concerning the
+development of the human race. The probability is that, wherever human
+beings sprang up, there were, at first, single couples. Certain it is,
+however, that so soon as a larger number of beings existed, descended
+from a common parent stock, they held together in hordes in order that,
+by their joint efforts, they might, first of all, gain their still very
+primitive conditions of life and support, as well as to protect
+themselves against their common enemies, wild animals. Growing numbers
+and increased difficulties in securing subsistence, which originally
+consisted in roots, berries and fruit, first led to the splitting up or
+segmentation of the hordes, and to the search for new habitats.
+
+This almost animal-like state, of which we have no further credible
+antiquarian proofs, undoubtedly once existed, judging from all that we
+have learned concerning the several grades of civilization of wild
+peoples still living, or known to have lived within historic times. Man
+did not, upon the call of a Creator, step ready-made into existence as a
+higher product of civilization. It was otherwise. He has had to pass
+through the most varied stages in an endlessly long and slow process of
+development. Only via ebbing and flowing periods of civilization, and in
+constant differentiation with his fellows in all parts of the world, and
+in all zones, did he gradually climb up to his present height.
+
+Indeed, while in one section of the earth's surface great peoples and
+nations belong to the most advanced stages of civilization, other
+peoples are found in different sections standing on the greatest variety
+of gradations in development. They thus present to us a picture of our
+own past history; and they point to the road which mankind traversed in
+the course of its development. If but certain common and generally
+accepted data are established, that may serve everywhere as sign-posts
+to guide investigation, a mass of facts will follow, throwing a wholly
+new light upon the relations of man in the past and the present. A
+number of social phenomena--unintelligible to us to-day, and attacked by
+superficial judges as nonsensical, not infrequently even as
+"immoral"--will become clear and natural. A material lifting of the
+veil, formerly spread over the history of the development of our race,
+has been effected through the investigations made, since Bachofen, by a
+considerable number of scientists, like Tylor, MacLennan, Lubbock and
+others. Prominently among the men who joined these was Morgan, with his
+fundamental work, that Frederick Engels further substantiated and
+supplemented with a series of historical facts, economic and political
+in their nature, and that, more recently, has been partly confirmed and
+partly rectified by Cunow.[1]
+
+By means of these expositions--especially as clearly and lucidly
+presented by Frederick Engels, in his support of Morgan's excellent and
+fundamental work,--a mass of light is shed upon hitherto unintelligible,
+partly seemingly contradictory phenomena in the life of the races and
+tribes of both high and low degree of culture. Only now do we gain an
+insight into the structure that human society raised in the course of
+time. According thereto, our former views of marriage, the family, the
+community, the State, rested upon notions that were wholly false; so
+false that they turn out to be no better than a fancy-picture, wholly
+devoid of foundation in fact.
+
+All that is said and proved about marriage, the family, the community
+and the State holds good especially with regard to woman, who, in the
+various periods of development did likewise fill a place, that differs
+materially from the "eternal," imputed to her.
+
+Morgan, whom Engels agrees with in this, divides the history of mankind
+into three main epochs:--savagery, barbarism and civilization. Each of
+the two first ones he again divides into an under, a middle and an upper
+period, each distinguishing itself from the other by certain innovations
+and improvements, predicated in each instance upon the control over
+subsistence. Morgan, accordingly, exactly in the sense of the
+materialist conception of history, as established by Karl Marx and
+Frederick Engels,--perceives the leading characteristics in the
+development of society to be the changes that, in given epochs, the
+conditions of life are molded into; and he perceives the changes to be
+due to the progress made in the process of production, that is to say,
+in the procurement of subsistence. Summed up in a few words, the lower
+period of savagery constitutes the infancy of the human race, during
+which the race, partly living in trees, is mainly nourished by fruits
+and roots, and during which articulate language takes its inception. The
+middle period of savagery commences with the acquisition of a fish
+subsistence, and the use of fire. The construction of weapons begins; at
+first the club and spear, fashioned out of wood and stone. Thereby also
+begins the chase, and probably also war with contiguous hordes for the
+sources of food, for domiciles and hunting grounds. At this stage
+appears also cannibalism, still practiced to-day by some tribes and
+peoples of Africa, Australia and Polynesia. The upper period of savagery
+is characterized by the perfection of weapons to the point of the bow
+and arrow; finger weaving, the making of baskets out of filaments of
+bark, the fashioning of sharpened stone tools have here their start, and
+thereby begins also the preparation of wood for the building of boats
+and huts. The form of life has accordingly, become many-sided. The
+existing tools and implements, needed for the control of a plentiful
+food supply, make possible the subsistance of larger communities.
+
+The lower period of barbarism Morgan starts with the invention of the
+art of pottery. The taming and domestication of animals, and, along with
+that, the production of meat and milk, and the preparation of hides,
+horns and hair for various purposes of use, have here their start. Hand
+in hand therewith begins the cultivation of plants,--in the West of
+maize, in the East of almost all known cereals, maize excepted. The
+middle period of barbarism shows us, in the East, the ever more
+extensive domestication of animals; in the West, the cultivation of
+maize and plants by irrigation. Here also begins the use of adobe-bricks
+and of stone for house-building. The domestication of animals promotes
+the rearing of herds, and leads to the pastoral life. The necessity of
+larger quantities of food for men and beasts leads to field agriculture.
+Along therewith, the people begin to be localized; food increases in
+quantity and diversity, and gradually cannibalism disappears.
+
+The upper period of barbarism begins finally with the smelting of iron
+ore, and the discovery of the phonetic alphabet. The iron plow-share is
+invented, making possible agriculture on a larger scale; the iron axe
+and spade are brought into requisition, making easy the clearing of the
+forests. With the preparation of iron, a number of fields are opened to
+activity, imparting to life a new form. Iron utensils help the building
+of houses, vessels and weapons; with the preparation of metals arises
+skilled handwork, a more perfect knowledge of weapons, and the building
+of walled cities. Architecture, as an art, then rises; mythology, poetry
+and history find support and expansion in the discovery of the phonetic
+alphabet.
+
+The Orient and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean,
+particularly Egypt, Greece and Italy, are those in which the last
+sketched stage of life principally unfolded; and it laid the foundation
+for the social transformation that in the course of time exercised a
+determining influence on the social development of Europe and of the
+whole earth.
+
+As a matter of course, the social development of the human race through
+the periods of savagery and barbarism had also its peculiar sexual and
+social relations, differing materially from those of later days.
+
+Bachofen and Morgan have traced these relations by means of thorough
+investigations. Bachofen, by studying closely all ancient and modern
+writings, so as to arrive at the nature of phenomena that appear
+singular to us in mythology, folk-lore and historic tradition, and that,
+nevertheless, seem to be re-echoed in incidents and events of later
+days, occasionally even of our own. Morgan, by spending decades of his
+life among the Iroquois Indians, located in the State of New York, and
+thereby making observations, through which he gained new and unexpected
+insight into the system of life, the family and the relationships of the
+said Indian tribe, and, based upon which, observations made elsewhere,
+first received their correct interpretation and explanation.
+
+Both of them, Bachofen and Morgan, discovered, each along his own line
+of research, the latter, however, far more clearly than the former, that
+the relations of the sexes during primitive times of human development
+were substantially different from the relations existing in historic
+days, and among the modern civilized peoples. Especially did Morgan
+discover--thanks to his many years' sojourn among the Iroquois of North
+America, and grounded upon comparative studies, which he was moved to by
+that which he there observed,--that all the existing races, that are
+still materially backward, possess systems of family and consanguinity
+that are totally different from ours, but must be similar to those once
+prevalent among all races during the previous stages of civilization.
+
+Morgan found, at the time that he lived among the Iroquois, that among
+them there existed a system of monogamy, easily dissolvable by both
+parties, and which he designated as the "pairing family." He also found
+that the terms for the degrees of consanguinity--father, mother, son,
+daughter, brother, sister--although, according to our conception, there
+can be no doubt as to their application, were there, nevertheless,
+applied in quite different sense. The Iroquois calls not only his own
+children "sons" and "daughters," but also the children of all his
+brothers; and their children call him "father." Conversely, the female
+Iroquois calls not only her own children "sons" and "daughters," but all
+those of her sisters, and likewise do their children call her "mother."
+On the other hand, she calls the children of her brothers "nephews" and
+"nieces," and these call her "aunt." The children of brothers call one
+another "brothers" and "sisters;" likewise the children of sisters.
+Finally, the children of a woman and those of her brother call one
+another "cousins." Accordingly, the singular spectacle is seen of the
+terms of relationship going, not as in our sense, by the degree of
+consanguinity, but by the sex of the relative.
+
+This system of relationship is in full force, not only among all the
+American Indians, as well as among the aborigines of India, the tribes
+of Dekan and the Gaura tribes of Hindostan, but, according to the
+investigations that have taken place since Bachofen, similar conditions
+must have existed everywhere in primitive times, as they still exist
+to-day among many peoples of Upper and Further Asia, Africa and
+Australia. When, in connection with these investigations and established
+facts, the investigation will be everywhere taken up on the sex and
+family relations of wild and barbarous nations still living, then will
+the fact transpire that, what Bachofen still confusedly found among
+numerous peoples of antiquity, and rather surmised than otherwise; what
+Morgan found among the Iroquois; what Cunow found among the
+Austral-Negros, are but social and sexual formations, that constitute
+the _groundwork of human development for all the peoples of the earth_.
+
+The investigations of Morgan bring, moreover, other interesting facts to
+light. Although the "pairing family" of the Iroquois starts in
+insolvable contradiction with the terms of consanguinity in use among
+them, it turns out that, as late as the first half of the 19th Century,
+there existed on the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) a family-form that
+actually tallied with that which, among the Iroquois, existed in name
+only. But the system of consanguinity, in force in Hawaii, failed, in
+turn, to tally with the family-form actually in existence there. It
+referred to an older family-form, one still more primitive, but no
+longer extant. There, all the children of brothers and sisters, without
+exception, were "brothers" and "sisters." Accordingly, they were not
+considered the common children of their mothers and of the sisters of
+these, or of their fathers and of the brothers of these, but of all the
+brothers and sisters of their parents, without distinction. The Hawaiian
+system of consanguinity corresponded, accordingly, with a stage of
+development that was lower than the family-form still actually in
+existence. Hence transpires the curious fact that, in Hawaii, as with
+the Indians of North America, two distinct systems of consanguinity are,
+or rather, at a time, were in vogue, which no longer tallied with actual
+conditions, but were both overtaken by a higher state. On this head
+Morgan says: "The family represents an active principle. It is never
+stationary, but advances from a lower to a higher form as society
+advances from a lower to a higher condition, and finally passes out of
+one form into another of higher grade. Systems of consanguinity, on the
+contrary, are passive; recording the progress made by the family at long
+intervals apart, and only changing radically when the family has
+radically changed."
+
+The theory,--even to-day generally considered conclusive, and which is
+stubbornly upheld as irrefutable by the representatives of the _status
+quo_--to the effect that the existing family-form has existed since time
+immemorial, and, lest the whole social fabric be put in jeopardy, must
+continue to exist forever, turned out, accordingly, after these
+discoveries of the investigators, to be wholly false and untenable. The
+form, under which the relations of the sexes appear and the situation of
+the family is raised, depends rather upon the social conditions, upon
+the manner in which man controls his subsistence. The form changes with
+the changed degree of culture at each given period.
+
+The study of primitive history leaves now no room for doubt that, at the
+lowest grades of human development, the relation of the sexes is totally
+different from that of latter times, and that a state of things resulted
+therefrom, which, looked at with modern eyes, appears as monstrous, and
+as a sink of immorality. Nevertheless, as each social stage of human
+development has its own conditions of production, so likewise has each
+its own code of morals, which is but the _reflection of the social
+condition_. That is moral which is usage; and that, in turn, is usage
+which corresponds with the innermost being, i. e., the needs of a given
+period.
+
+Morgan reaches the conclusion that, at the lower period of savagery,
+there was sexual intercourse between the several grades or generations,
+every woman belonging to every man, and every man to every woman,--in
+other words, promiscuity. All men live in polygamy and all women in
+polyandry. There is a general community of women and of men, but also a
+community of children, Strabo reports (sixty-six years before our
+reckoning) that, among the Arabians, brothers cohabited with sisters and
+with their own mother. On any route other than that of incest, the
+increase of population is nowhere possible, if, as alleged in the Bible
+also, descent from one couple is granted. The Bible itself contradicts
+itself on this delicate point. It is stated there that Cain, after he
+had murdered his brother Abel, took a wife of another people. Whence
+came that other people? The theory of promiscuity in primitive times,
+that is to say, that the horde was endogamous, that sexual intercourse
+was indiscriminate, is furthermore supported by the Hindoo myth,
+according to which Brahma married his own daughter Saravasti. The same
+myth turns up again among the Egyptians and the northern Edda. The
+Egyptian god Ammon was the spouse of his own mother, and boasted of it.
+Odin, according to the Edda, was the mate of his own daughter Frigga.[2]
+Morgan proceeds from the principle that, from the state of promiscuity,
+soon a higher form of sexual intercourse took shape. He designates this
+the consanguine family. Here the groups, that stand in sexual relation,
+are separated by grades or generations, so that grandfathers and
+grandmothers, within an age group, are husbands and wives. Their
+children, likewise, constitute a group of common couples; likewise the
+children of these, so soon as they have reached the requisite age.
+Accordingly, in contrast with the sex relations of the rawest period, in
+which promiscuity of sexes exists without distinction of age, now one
+generation is excluded from sexual intercourse with another. Sexual
+intercourse, however, exists between brothers and sisters, male and
+female cousins of the first, second and third remove. All of these
+together are brothers and sisters, but towards one another, they are all
+husbands and wives. This family-form corresponds with the system of
+consanguinity that still existed in Hawaii during the first part of the
+19th Century, in name only, but no longer in fact. On the other hand,
+according to the American Indian system of consanguinity, a brother and
+sister can never be the father and mother of the same child--a thing,
+however, permissible in the Hawaiian family system. Probably the
+consanguine family was the state that, at the time of Herodotus, existed
+among the Massagetae, on the subject of which he reports: "Each man
+received a wife, but all were allowed to use her." And he continues: "At
+any time a man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of his
+wagon, and cohabits, unconcerned, with her.... He at the same time
+sticks his staff into the ground, a symbol of his own act....
+Cohabitation is exercised in public."[3] Similar conditions Bachofen
+shows have existed among the Lycians, Etruscans, Cretans, Athenians,
+Lesbians and Egyptians.
+
+According to Morgan, the consanguine family is supervened by a third and
+higher form of family relationship, which he designates as the Punaluan
+family. _Punalua_, "dear friend," "intimate companion."
+
+Cunow, in his above named book, takes exception to Morgan's views that
+the consanguine family, which rests on the organization of marriage
+classes by generations, preceded the punaluan family as an original
+organization. Cunow does not see in the consanguine family the most
+primitive of all social forms, until now discovered. He sees in it
+merely a middle form, that takes its origin in the generation groups; a
+transition stage toward the pure gentile organization, on which, as a
+graft, the division in age classes, belonging to the consanguine family
+system, still continues for a time in altered form, along with the
+division in totem-groups.[4] Cunow explains further: The division in
+classes--every individual, man or woman, carries the name of his or her
+class and generation group totem--does not serve to exclude sexual
+intercourse between collateral, but to prevent cohabitation between
+relatives in the ascending and descending line, between parents and
+children, aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces. Terms such as "aunt,"
+"uncle," etc., he designates as grade-names.
+
+Cunow furnishes the proofs for the correctness of the views in which he
+differs from Morgan on some points. But, however he may differ from
+Morgan in single instances, he emphatically defends him against the
+attacks of Westermann and others. He says:
+
+"Although here and there a hypothesis of Morgan may have proved itself
+false, and some others may be allowed only a qualified approval, that
+merit none can gainsay him that he has been the first to establish the
+identity of the North American totem-group with the gentile organization
+of the Romans; and, secondly, to demonstrate that our modern systems of
+consanguinity and family-forms are the result of a long process of
+development. In a measure he has thereby first made recent
+investigations possible; he has first built the foundation on which we
+may build further." In the introduction also to his book he says
+expressly that his own work is partly a supplement to Morgan's book on
+primitive man.
+
+The Westermanns, the Starckes, the Zieglers--the latter of whom, in his
+book, criticized in the introduction to the twenty-fifth edition of this
+work, refers mainly to the first named, in order to attack our
+statements with theirs--will have to submit, with good grace or bad, to
+the fact that the rise and development of the family has not taken the
+course that fits in with their bourgeois prejudices. The refutation
+that, in the last part of his work, Cunow bestows upon Westermann and
+Starcke, Ziegler's authorities, are calculated to enlighten their most
+fanatic followers upon the value of their caviling criticisms of, and
+arguments against, Morgan.
+
+According to Morgan, the punaluan family has its start with the
+exclusion of consanguineous brothers and sisters, on the mother's side.
+Where a woman has several husbands, the evidence of paternity is
+impossible. Paternity becomes a fiction. Even to-day, under the rule of
+strict monogamous marriage, paternity, as Goethe, in his
+"Apprenticeship," lets Frederick say, "rests only upon faith." If with
+monogamy, paternity is often doubtful, it is impossible of proof in
+polygamy: only descent from the mother is certain and unquestionable.
+Accordingly, descent from the mother afforded the only criterion. As all
+deep-reaching transformations in the social relations of primitive man
+are accomplished only slowly, the change of the so-called consanguine
+into the punaluan family must unquestionably have engaged vast periods
+of time, and been broken through by many relapses, still noticeable in
+much later days. The proximate external inducement for the development
+of the punaluan family was, possibly, the necessity of splitting up the
+strongly swollen membership of the family, to the end that new grounds
+could be occupied for cattle ranges and agriculture. Probably, also,
+with the reaching of a higher grade of civilization, a sense gradually
+asserted itself of the harmfulness and indecorousness of sexual
+intercourse between brothers and sisters, and close relatives. In favor
+of this theory stands a pretty tradition, that, as related by Cunow,
+Gaston found among the Dieyeries, one of the South Australian tribes, on
+the rise of the "Mordu" consanguine group. He says:
+
+"After creation, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and other near
+relatives married promiscuously among one another, until the evil
+effects of such connections showed themselves clearly. A conference of
+leaders was held, and it was considered in what way this could be
+avoided. The outcome of the conference was a request to the Muramura
+(Great Spirit); and he ordered in his answer that the tribe be divided
+into several branches, and that, in order to distinguish them, they be
+called by different names, after animate or inanimate objects. For
+instance: after the dingo, the mouse, the emu, the rain, the
+iguana-lizard, etc. The members of one and the same group could not
+marry another. The son of a Dingo could not, for instance, marry the
+daughter of a Dingo; each of the two could, however, enter into
+connections with the Mouse, the Emu, the Rat, or any other family."
+
+This tradition is more sensible and natural, by a good deal, than the
+Christian tradition, taught by the Bible. It shows plainly the rise of
+the consanguine groups. Moreover, Paul Lafargue, makes in the "Neue
+Zeit" the sagacious, and, we think, felicitous point, that names, such
+as Adam and Eve, are not names of individual persons, but the names of
+gentes, in which, at the time, the Jews were joined. Lafargue solves by
+his argument a series of otherwise obscure and contradictory passages in
+the first Book of Moses. Again, M. Beer calls attention, likewise in the
+"Neue Zeit," that, to this day, it is a conjugal custom among Jews that
+the bride and the bridegroom's mother _may not carry the same name_,
+otherwise--thus runs this belief--a misfortune will befall the family:
+sickness and death will pursue them. In our opinion, this is a further
+proof for the correctness of Lafargue's theory. The gentile organization
+forbids marriage between persons that descend from the same gens stock.
+Such a common descent must be considered to exist, according to gentile
+principles, between the bride, that carries the name of "Eve," and the
+bridegroom's mother of the same name. Modern Jews, of course, have no
+longer the remotest suspicion of the real connection between their
+prejudice and their old gentile constitution, which forbade such
+marriages of relatives. The old gentile order had for its object to
+avoid the degenerating consequences of in-breeding. Although this
+gentile constitution has for thousands of years been destroyed among the
+Jews, tradition, as we see, has continued to live in superstition.
+
+Quite possible, the experience, made at an early day with the breeding
+of animals, revealed the harmfulness of in-breeding. How far this
+experience went transpires from the manner in which, according to the
+first Book of Moses, chap. 30, verse 32 and sequel, Jacob understood how
+to outwit his father-in-law Laban, by knowing how to encompass the birth
+of eanlings that were streaked and pied, and which, according to Laban's
+promises, were to be Jacob's. The old Israelites had, accordingly, long
+before Darwin, studied Darwinism.
+
+Once upon the subject of the conditions existing among the old Jews, a
+few other facts are in order, clearly proving that, among them, descent
+in the female line was actually in force of old. True enough, on the
+subject of woman, I Moses, 3, 16, runs this wise: "And thy desire shall
+be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" and the verse also
+undergoes the variation: "the woman shall leave father and mother, and
+cleave to her husband." In point of fact, however, I Moses, 2, 24, has
+it this way: "_Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and
+shall cleave unto his wife_, and they shall be one flesh." The same
+language recurs in Matthew 19, 15; Mark 10, 7, and in the Epistle to the
+Ephesians 5, 31. The command sprang, accordingly, from the system of
+descent in the female line, and the exegetists, at a loss what to do
+with it, allowed it to appear in a light that is utterly false.
+
+Descent in female line appears clearly also in IV Moses, 32, 41. It is
+there said that Jair had a father, who was of the tribe of Judah, but
+his mother was of the tribe of Manasseh, and Jair is expressly called
+the son of Manasseh, and he inherited in that tribe. Another instance of
+descent in the female line among the Jews is met in Nehemiah 7, 63.
+There the children of a priest, who took to wife one of the daughters of
+Barzillai--a Jewish clan--are called children of Barzillai; they are,
+accordingly, not called after the father, who, moreover, as a priest
+occupied a privileged position, but after the mother. For the rest,
+already in the days of the Old Testament, accordingly, in historic
+times, the father-right prevailed among the Jews, and the clan and tribe
+organization rested on descent in the male line. Accordingly, the
+daughters were shut off as heirs, as may be seen in I Moses 31, 14-15,
+where even Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, complain: "Is there
+yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father's house? Are we not
+counted of him strangers? for he has sold us, and hath quite devoured
+also our money."
+
+As happened with all peoples where descent in male replaced descent in
+female line, woman among the Jews stood wholly bereft of rights. Wedlock
+was marriage by purchase. On woman the obligation was laid of the
+strictest chastity; on the other hand, man was not bound by the same
+ordinance; he, moreover, was privileged to possess several wives. Did
+the husband, after the bridal night, believe to have found that his wife
+had, before marriage, lost her maidenhood, not only had he the right to
+cast her off, she was stoned to death. The same punishment fell upon the
+adultress; upon the husband, however, only in case he committed adultery
+with a married Jewish woman. According to V Moses 24, 1-4, the husband
+had also the right to cast off his newly-married wife, if she found no
+favor in his eyes, even if only out of dislike. He was then to write her
+a bill of divorcement, give it in her hand, and let her out of the
+house. An expression of the low position that woman took later among the
+Jews is furthermore found in the circumstances that, even to this day,
+woman attends divine service in the synagogue, in a space strictly
+separated from the men, and they are not included in the prayers.[5]
+
+The relations of the sexes in the punaluan family consisted, according
+to Morgan, in one or more sisters, belonging to one family group,
+marrying jointly one or more brothers of another group. The consanguine
+sisters, or the first, second and more remote cousins were wives in
+common with their husbands in common, who could not be their brothers.
+These consanguine brothers, or cousins of several degrees, were the
+husbands in common of their wives in common, who could not be their
+sisters. With the stopping of in-breeding, the new family-form
+undoubtedly contributed towards the rapid and vigorous development of
+the tribes, and imparted to the tribes, that had turned to this form of
+family connection, an advantage over those that still retained the old
+form of connections.
+
+In general, the physical and intellectual differences between man and
+woman were vastly less in primitive days than in our society. Among all
+the peoples, living in the state of savagery or barbarism, the
+differences in the weight and size of the brain are slighter than among
+the peoples in civilization. Likewise, in strength of body and agility,
+the women among these peoples are but little behind the men. This is
+attested not only by the testimony of the ancient writers on the peoples
+who clung to the mother-right. Further testimony is furnished by the
+armies of women among the Ashantees and of the King of Dahomey in West
+Africa, who distinguished themselves by special bravery and ferocity.
+Likewise does the opinion of Tacitus on the women of the old Germans,
+and Caesar's accounts of the women of the Iberians and Scots confirm the
+fact. Columbus had to sustain a fight before Santa Cruz with an Indian
+skiff in which the women fought as bravely as the men; and we find this
+theory further confirmed in the passages from Havelock Ellis's work,
+"Man and Woman," which Dr. Hope B. Adams-Walther deals upon in Nos. 39
+and 40 of the "Neue Zeit." He says:
+
+"About the Andombis of the Congo, Johnson relates that the women work
+hard as carriers and in other occupations. All the same, they lead a
+perfectly happy life. They are often stronger and more handsomely built
+than the men; not a few of them have positively magnificent figures.
+Parke styles the Manynema of the same neighborhood 'fine animals,' and
+he finds the women very stately. They carry burdens as heavy as the men
+and with equal ease. A North American Indian chief said to Hearne:
+'Women are created for labor; a woman can carry or drag as much as two
+men.' Schellong, who published a painstaking study on the Papuans of New
+Guinea in the Ethnologic Journal, issued in 1891, is of the opinion that
+the women are more strongly built than the men. In the interior of
+Australia, women are sometimes beaten by men out of jealousy; but it
+happens not infrequently that it is the man, who, on such occasions,
+receives the stronger dose. In Cuba the women fought shoulder to
+shoulder with the men. Among some tribes in India, as well as the
+Pueblos of North and the Patagonians of South America, the women are as
+tall as the men. Even among the Arabians and Druses the difference in
+size is slight; and yet nearer home, among the Russians, the sexes are
+more alike than is the case among the western Europeans. Accordingly, in
+all parts of the earth there are instances of equal or approximately
+equal physical development."
+
+The family relations that flow from the Punaluan family were these: The
+children of my mother's sisters are her children, and the children of my
+father's brothers are his children, and all together are my brothers and
+sisters. Conversely, the children of my mother's brothers are her
+nephews and nieces, and the children of my father's sisters are his
+nephews and nieces, and they, all together, are my cousins. Again, the
+husbands of my mother's sisters are her husbands also, and the wives of
+my father's brothers are also his wives; but my father's sisters and my
+mother's brothers are excluded from family relationship, and their
+children are my cousins.[6]
+
+Along with arising civilization, sexual intercourse is proscribed
+between brothers and sisters, and the proscription gradually extends to
+the remotest collateral relatives on the mother's side. A new group of
+consanguinity arises, the gens, which, in its first form, is made up of
+a series of consanguine and more remote sisters, together with their
+children and their consanguine and more remote brothers on their
+mother's side. The gens has a common female ancestor, from whom the
+female successors descend in generations. The husbands of these women
+are not of the consanguine group, the gens, of their wives; they are of
+the gens of their sisters. Conversely, the children of these men belong
+to the family group of their, the children's mother, descent being in
+the female line. The mother is the head of the family; and thus arises
+the "mother-right," which for a long time constitutes the basis of the
+family and of inheritance. In keeping therewith--so long as descent was
+recognized in the female line--woman had a seat and voice in the
+councils of the gens; they voted in the election of the sachems and of
+the military chiefs, and deposed them.
+
+About the Lycians, who abided by the mother-right, Herodotus says;
+"Their customs are partly Cretan, partly Carian. They have, however, a
+custom that distinguishes them from all other nations in the world. Ask
+a Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving you his own name, the name
+of his mother, and so on in the female line. Aye, if a free-born woman
+marries a slave, her children are citizens, but if a free man marries a
+stranger, or takes a concubine, even if he be the highest person in the
+State, his children forfeit all citizen rights."
+
+In those days, "matrimonium" and not "patrimonium," "mater familias"
+and not "pater familias" were the terms used; and the native land is
+called the "dear motherland." As with the previous family-forms, so did
+the gens rest upon the community of property, and had a communistic
+system of household. The woman is the real guide and leader of this
+family community; hence she enjoys a high degree of respect, in the
+house as well as in the affairs of the family community concerning the
+tribe. She is judge and adjuster of disputes, and frequently performs
+the ceremonies of religion as priestess. The frequent appearance of
+Queens and Princesses in antiquity, their controlling influence, even
+there where their sons reigned, for instance, in the history of old
+Egypt, are results of the mother-right. Mythology, at that epoch,
+assumes predominantly female characters: Astarte, Ceres, Demeter,
+Latona, Isis, Frigga, Freia, Gerdha, etc. Woman is considered
+inviolable; matricide is the blackest of all crimes: it summons all men
+to retribution. The blood-feud is the common concern of all the men of
+the tribe; each is obliged to avenge the wrong done to a member of the
+family community by the members of another tribe. In defence of the
+women the men are spurred to highest valor. Thus did the effects of the
+mother-right, gyneocracy, manifest themselves in all the relations of
+life among the peoples of antiquity--among the Babylonians, the
+Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, before the time of the Heroes;
+among the peoples of Italy, before the founding of Rome; among the
+Scythians, the Gauls, the Iberians and Cantabrians, the Germans of
+Tacitus, etc. Woman, at that time, takes in the family and in public
+life a position such as she has never since taken. Along these lines,
+says Tacitus in his "Germania": "They (the Germans) even suppose
+somewhat of sanctity and prescience to be inherent in the female sex;
+and, therefore, neither despise their counsels, nor disregard their
+responses;" and Diodorus, who lived at the time of Caesar, feels highly
+indignant over the position of women in Egypt, having learned that
+there, not the sons, but the daughters, supported their aging parents.
+He contemptuously shrugs his shoulders at the poltroons of the Nile, who
+relinquish household and public rights to the members of the weaker sex,
+and allow them privileges that must sound unheard-of to a Greek or a
+Roman.
+
+Under the gyneocracy, a state of comparative peace prevailed in general.
+The horizon was narrow and small, life primitive. The different tribes
+separated themselves from one another, as best they could, and respected
+their mutual boundaries. Was, however, one tribe attacked by another,
+then the men were obliged to rush to its defence, and in this they were
+supported by the women in the most vigorous fashion. According to
+Herodotus, the women joined in battle among the Scythians: as he claims,
+the maid could not marry before she had slain an enemy. What _role_
+women played in battle among the Germans, Iberians, Scots, etc., has
+already been stated. But in the gens also did they, under given
+circumstances, command a strong regiment:--woe to the man who was either
+too lazy or too unskilled to contribute his share to the common support.
+He was shown the door, and, either he returned to his own gens, where it
+was with difficulty he was again received with friendliness, or he
+joined another gens that was more tolerant toward him.[7]
+
+That conjugal life still bears this character in the interior of Africa,
+Livingstone learned to his great surprise, as he narrates in his
+"Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa," London, 1857. On
+the Zambesi he ran across the Valonda--a handsome, vigorous negro tribe,
+devoted to agriculture--where he found confirmed the informations
+received from the Portuguese, and which at first seemed incredible to
+him, with regard to the privileged position enjoyed by women. They sit
+in council; the young man who marries must move from his own, to the
+village of his wife: he thereby pledges himself to furnish the mother of
+his wife for life with kindling wood: if he divorces, the children
+remain the property of the mother. On the other hand, the wife must see
+to the sustenance of the husband. Although, occasionally, slight
+disagreements break out between man and wife, Livingstone found that the
+men did not retaliate, but he discovered that the men, who offended
+their wives, were punished in the most sensitive manner--through their
+stomachs. The husband, he says, comes home to eat, but one woman sends
+him off to another, and he gets nothing. Tired and hungry he climbs a
+tree in the most populous part of the village, and announces in woeful
+tones: "Hear! Hear! I thought I had married women, but they are witches
+to me! I am a bachelor; I have not a single wife! Is that right towards
+a man like me?" If a woman gives physical expression to her anger at a
+man, she is sentenced to carry him on her back from the court of the
+chieftain to her own house. While she is carrying him home, the other
+men scoff at and jeer her; the women, on the contrary, encourage her
+with all their might, calling out to her: "Treat him as he deserves; do
+it again!"
+
+Similar conditions still exist in the German colony of Cameroon in West
+Africa. A German ship's doctor, who studied the country and its people
+by personal observation, writes us thus:
+
+"With a large number of tribes, inheritance is based on maternity.
+Paternity is immaterial. Brothers and sisters are only the children of
+one mother. A man does not bequeath his property to his children, but to
+the children of his sister, that is to say, to his nephews and nieces,
+as his nearest demonstrable blood relatives. A chief of the Way people
+explained to me in horrible English: "My sister and I are certainly
+blood relatives, consequently her son is my heir; when I die, he will
+be the king of my town." "And your father?" I inquired. "I don't know
+what that means, 'my father,'" answered he. Upon my putting to him the
+question whether he had no children, rolling on the ground with
+laughter, he answered that, with them, men have no children, only women.
+
+"I can assure you," our informant goes on to write, "that even the heir
+of King Bell in Cameroon _is the King's nephew, and not one of his
+sons_. The so-called children of King Bell, several of whom are now
+going through training in German cities, are merely children of his
+wives, _whose fathers are unknown_; one of them I might, possibly, claim
+for myself."
+
+What say the adversaries of the theory of descent in the female line to
+this sketch drawn from the immediate present? Our informant is a man
+with eyes open, who probed things to the very bottom. How many of those
+who live among these semi-savage races, do as much? Hence the wild
+accounts about the "immorality" of the natives.
+
+Furthermore, there come to our notice the memorials of the Imperial
+Government, submitted to the Reichstag on the German colonies (Session
+of 1894-95). In the memorial on the Southwestern territory of Africa
+there occurs this passage, p. 239: "Without their advice--the oldest and
+wealthiest--he (chief of the tribe in principal village) can not render
+the slightest decision, and not the men only, _but quite often the women
+also_, even the servants, _express their opinion_."
+
+In the report of the Marshall Islands, p. 254 of the memorial, it runs
+thus: "The ruling power over all the islands of the Marshall group never
+rested in the hands of a single chieftain.... _Seeing, however, that no
+female member of this class (the Irody) is alive, and only the mother
+conveys nobility and rank to the child, the Irodies dies out with their
+chieftain._" The expression used, and the descriptions made, by
+reporters betray what an utter blank are to them the conditions that
+they refer to: they can not find their bearings among them.
+
+With an increasing population, there arise a number of sisters, which,
+in turn, produce daughter gentes. Over and against these, the mother
+gens appears as phratry. A number of phratries constitute a tribe. This
+social organization is so firm that it still constituted the foundation
+for the military organization in the old States, after the old gentile
+constitution had fallen to pieces. The tribe splits up into several
+tribes, all of which have the same constitution, and in each of which
+the old gentes are reproduced. However, seeing that the gentile
+constitution forbids the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, and of
+relatives on the mother's side to the furthest degree, it undermines its
+own foundation. Due to the evermore complicated relations of the
+separate gentes with one another--a condition of things that the social
+and economic progress promotes--the inhibition of marriage between the
+several gentes, that descend from the mother's side, becomes in the
+long run impracticable: it breaks down of itself, or is burst asunder.
+So long as the production of the means of subsistence was still at the
+lowest stages, and satisfied only simple wants, the activity of man and
+woman was essentially the same. Along with an increasing division of
+labor, there came about, not merely a division of functions, but also a
+division of occupations. Fishing, the hunt, cattle-raising,--demanded
+separate knowledge; and, to a still higher degree, the construction of
+tools and utensils, which became mainly the property of the men. Field
+agriculture expanded materially the circle of activities, and it created
+a supply of subsistence that satisfied the highest demands of the time.
+Man, whose activity stood in the foreground in the course of this
+development, became the real lord and owner of these sources of wealth,
+which, in turn, furnished the basis for commerce; and this created new
+relations, and social changes.
+
+Not only did ever fresh causes of friction and conflicts arise for the
+possession of the best lands, due to the increase of population, and the
+need of wider domains for cattle-raising and agriculture, but, along
+with such increase of population, there arose the need of labor power to
+cultivate the ground. The more numerous these powers, all the greater
+was the wealth in products and herds. These struggles led, first, to the
+rape of women, later to the enslaving of conquered men. The women became
+laborers and objects of pleasure for the conqueror; their males became
+slaves. Two elements were thereby simultaneously introduced into the old
+gentile constitution. The two and the gentile constitution could not, in
+the long run, get along together.
+
+Furthermore, hand in hand with the increasing differentiation of
+occupations, owing to the growing need of tools, utensils, weapons,
+etc., handicraft rises into existence. It follows its own course of
+development and separates itself from agriculture. As a consequence, a
+distinct population, one that plies the trades, is called into life; and
+it splits off from the agricultural population with entirely different
+interests.
+
+According to the mother-right, i. e., so long as descent followed only
+in female line, the custom was that the gentile relatives inherited from
+the deceased gentile fellow-members on the mother's side. The property
+remained in the gens. The children of the deceased father did not belong
+to his gens, but to that of the mother: accordingly, they did not
+inherit from the father; at his death his property fell back to his own
+gens. Under the new conditions, where the father was the
+property-holder, i. e., the owner of herds and slaves, of weapons and
+utensils, and where he had become a handicraftsman, or merchant, his
+property, so long as he was still considered of the gens of his mother,
+fell after his death, not to his own children, but to his brothers and
+sisters, and to the children of his sisters, or to the successors of
+his sisters. His own children went away empty-handed. The pressure to
+change such a state of things was, accordingly, powerful;--and it was
+changed. Thereupon a condition arose that was not yet monogamy, but that
+approximated it; there arose the "pairing family." A certain man lived
+with a certain woman, and the children, born of that relation, were that
+couple's own children. These pairing families increased in the measure
+in which the marriage inhibitions, that flowed from the gentile
+constitution, hampered marriage, and in which the above mentioned
+economic grounds rendered desirable this new form of family life.
+Personal property accorded ill with the old condition of things, which
+rested upon the community of goods. Both _rank_ and _occupation_ now
+decidedly favored the necessity for the choice of a domicile. The
+production of merchandise begot commerce with neighboring and foreign
+nations; and that necessitated money. It was man who led and controlled
+this development. His private interests had, accordingly, no longer any
+real points of contact with the old gentile organization, whose
+interests often stood in opposition to his own. Accordingly, the
+importance of the gentile organization sank ever more. The gens finally
+became little more than the center of the religious functions for the
+family, its economic significance was gone. The complete dissolution of
+gentile organization became only a question of time.
+
+With the dissolution of the old gentile organization, the influence and
+position of woman sank rapidly. The mother-right vanished; the
+father-right stepped into its shoes. Man now became a private
+property-holder: he had an interest in children, whom he could look upon
+as legitimate, and whom he made the heirs of his property: hence _he
+forced upon woman the command of abstinence from intercourse with other
+men_.
+
+At the same time man assumed the right of taking unto himself, beside
+his own wife, or several of them, as many concubines as his condition
+allowed; and the children of these concubines were likewise treated as
+legitimate. On this head we find two valuable illustrations in the
+Bible. In I Book of Moses, chapter 16, verses 1 and 2, we read: "Now
+Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children: and she had a hand-maid, an
+Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now,
+the Lord has restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my
+maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened
+to the voice of Sarai." The second remarkable illustration is found in I
+Book of Moses 30, 1 and sequel: "And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob
+no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me
+children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel;
+and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit
+of the womb? and she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and
+she shall bear upon my knees that I may also have children by her. And
+she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her."
+
+Jacob, accordingly, had not only the daughters of Laban, two sisters,
+simultaneously for wives, they also helped him to their maids, all of
+which, according to the usage of the times, was wholly free from taint
+of impropriety. The two principal wives he had bought, as is well known,
+by serving Laban seven years for each. The purchase of a wife was at the
+time common among the Jews, but, along with the purchase of wives, whom
+they were compelled to take from among their own people, they practiced
+on an extensive scale the rape of women from among the peoples that they
+conquered. The Benjaminites raped the daughters of Silos.[8] In such
+wars, it was originally customary that all the men who fell into the
+hands of the vanquisher were killed. The captured woman became a slave,
+a concubine. Nevertheless, she could be raised to the dignity of a
+legitimate wife so soon as she had fulfilled certain conditions of the
+Jews: she had to cut her hair and nails; to lay off the dress she was
+captured in, and exchange it for another that was given her; thereupon
+she had to mourn a whole month for her father and mother: she was, in a
+manner to be dead to her own people, become estranged from them: then
+could she climb into the conjugal bed. The largest number of wives had
+King Solomon, as is known. According to Kings 1, 11, not less than 700
+wives and 300 concubines are ascribed to him.
+
+With the rule of the father-right and descent in the male line in the
+Jewish gentile organization, the daughters were excluded from
+inheritance. Later this was, however, changed, at least when a father
+left no sons. This appears from IV Book of Moses 27, 2-8, where it is
+reported that, as Zelaphehad died without sons, and his daughter
+complained bitterly that she was to be excluded from her father's
+inheritance, which was to fall back to the tribe of Joseph, Moses
+decided that, in that case, the daughters should inherit. But seeing
+that she contemplated marrying, according to custom, in another tribe,
+the tribe of Joseph complained that thereby the inheritance would be
+lost to it. Thereupon Moses decided further (4, 36) that heiresses,
+though free in the choice of a husband, were bound to marry in the tribe
+of their own father. For the sake of property, the old ordinance was
+overthrown. Similarly, in Athens, did Solon decree that an heiress had
+to marry her nearest male agnate, even though both belonged to the same
+gens, and, according to former law, such a marriage was forbidden. Solon
+ordered also that a property-holder was not compelled as thitherto, to
+leave his property to his own gens in case he died childless; but that
+he could by testament constitute any one else his heir. From all this it
+is obvious:--man does not rule property, property rules him, and becomes
+his master.
+
+With the rule of private property, the subjection of woman to man, her
+bondage was sealed. Then came the time of disregard, even of contempt
+for woman.
+
+_The reign of the mother-right implied communism; equality for all; the
+rise of the father-right implied the reign of private property, and,
+with it, the oppression and enslavement of woman._
+
+It is difficult to trace in detail the manner in which the change was
+achieved. A knowledge of the events is lacking. Neither did this _first
+great revolution_ in the lap of mankind come into force simultaneously
+among the ancient nations; nor yet is it probable that it was
+accomplished everywhere in the same manner. Among the peoples of old
+Greece, it was Athens where the new order of things first prevailed.
+
+Frederick Engels is of the opinion that this great revolution was
+accomplished peacefully, and that, after all the conditions for the new
+rights were at hand, it only required a simple vote in the gens in order
+to rear the father in the place of the mother-right. Bachofen, on the
+contrary, grounding his opinion upon more or less reliable information
+from the old writers, holds that the women offered strong resistance to
+this social transformation. He, for instance, sees in the legends of the
+Amazonian Kingdoms, which re-appear under manifold variations in the old
+history of Asia and the Orient, and also have turned up in South America
+and in China, proofs for the struggle and resistance which the women
+offered to the new order. We leave that as it may be.
+
+With the rule of man, women lost their position in the community; they
+were excluded from the councils and from all leading influence. Man
+exacts conjugal fidelity from her, but claims exemption for himself. If
+she violates that, she is guilty of the most serious deception that can
+afflict the new citizen; she thereby introduces into his house
+stranger's children as heirs of his property. Hence, among all ancient
+nations, the breach of conjugal fidelity on the part of woman is
+punished with death or slavery.
+
+Notwithstanding women were thus removed from their position as leaders,
+the customs connected with the old system of morals continued for
+centuries to sway the public mind, although the meaning of the surviving
+customs was gradually lost to the people. It is only in modern times
+that pains are being taken to inquire into the original meaning of these
+old customs. In Greece, for instance, it remained a religious practice
+that Greek women prayed only to goddesses for advice, help and favors.
+Likewise, the yearly recurring celebration of the Thesmophoria owed its
+origin to the days of mother-right. Even in later days, the women of
+Greece celebrated this festival for five days in honor of Demeter; and
+no man was allowed to be present. It was similarly in old Rome with a
+festival in honor of Ceres. Both Demeter and Ceres were considered
+goddesses of fertility. In Germany also such festivals, once customary
+in the heathen days of Frigga, were held, deep into the Middle Ages,
+Frigga being considered the goddess of fertility among the old Germans.
+According to the narratives, women gave a free reign to their
+frolicsomeness on the occasions of these festivals. Also here men were
+excluded from participation in the festival.
+
+In Athens, where, as already stated, the mother-right made earliest room
+for the father-right, but, as it seems, under strong opposition from the
+women, the transition is portrayed touchingly and in all the fullness of
+its tragic import, in the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The story is this:
+Agamemnon, King of Mycene, and husband of Clytemnestra, sacrifices his
+daughter, Iphigenia, upon the command of the oracle on his expedition
+against Troy. The mother, indignant at the sacrifice of her daughter,
+takes, during her husband's absence, Aegysthos for her consort. Upon
+Agamemnon's return to Mycene, after an absence of many years, he is
+murdered by Aegysthos with the connivance of Clytemnestra. Orestes, the
+son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges the murder of his father, at
+the instigation of Apollo and Athene, by slaying his mother and
+Aegysthos. The Erinnyes, as representatives of the old law, pursue
+Orestes on account of the murder of his mother. Apollo and Athene, the
+latter of whom, according to mythology, is motherless--she leaped
+full-armed out of the head of Jupiter--represent the new law, and defend
+Orestes. The issue is carried to the Areopagus, before which the
+following dialogue ensues. The two hostile principles come here into
+dramatic vividness of expression:
+
+
+    Erinnyes--The prophet bade thee be a matricide?
+
+    Orestes--And to this hour I am well content withal.
+
+    Erinnyes--Thoul't change that tune, when judgment seizes thee.
+
+    Orestes--My father from his tomb will take my part; I fear not.
+
+    Erinnyes--Ay, rely on dead men's aid,
+    When guilty of matricide!
+
+    Orestes--She, that is slain,
+    Was doubly tainted.
+
+    Erinnyes--How? Inform the court.
+
+    Orestes--She slew her wedded lord, and slew my sire.
+
+    Erinnyes--Death gave her quittance, then. But thou yet livest.
+
+    Orestes--And while she lived, why did you not pursue her?
+
+    Erinnyes--No tie of blood bound her to whom she slew.
+
+    Orestes--But I was tied by blood-affinity
+    To her who bare me?
+
+    Erinnyes--Else, thou accursed one,
+    How nourished she thy life within her womb?
+    Wouldst thou renounce the holiest bond of all?
+
+
+The Erinnyes, it will be noticed, recognize no rights on the part of
+the father and the husband; to them there exists only the right of the
+mother. That Clytemnestra slew her husband is indifferent to them; on
+the other hand, they demand punishment for the matricide, committed by
+Orestes: in killing his mother he had committed the worst crime
+imaginable under the old gentile order. Apollo, on the contrary, stands
+on the opposite principle. Commissioned by Zeus to avenge the murder of
+his father, he had led Orestes to the murder of his own mother. Apollo
+now defends Orestes' action before the judges, saying:
+
+
+    That scruple likewise I can satisfy.
+    She who is called the mother of the child
+    Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed
+    Implanted in begetting. He that sows
+    Is author of the shoot, which she, if Heaven
+    Prevent not, keeps as in a garden-ground.
+    In proof whereof, to show that fatherhood
+    May be without the mother, I appeal
+    To Pallas, daughter of Olympian Zeus,
+    In present witness here. Behold a plant,
+    Not moulded in the darkness of the womb,
+    Yet nobler than all scions of Heaven's stock.
+
+
+According to Apollo, the act of begetting confers the superior right;
+whereas, according to the views in force until then, the mother, who
+gives to the child her blood and its life, was esteemed the sole
+possessor of the child, while the man, the father of her child, was
+regarded a stranger. Hence the Erinnyes reply to the strange notions of
+Apollo:
+
+
+                         Thou didst lead astray
+    Those primal goddesses with draughts of wine,
+    O'erturning ordinance.
+    Young, thou wouldst override our ancient right.
+
+
+The judges, thereupon, make ready for the sentence. One half stand by
+the old, one half by the new right; a tie is threatened; thereupon
+Athene seizes the ballot from the altar and dropping it in the urn,
+says:
+
+
+    To me it falls to give my judgment last.
+    Here openly I give it for Orestes.
+    No mother bore me. To the masculine side
+    For all save marriage my whole heart is given,--
+    In all and everything the father's child.
+    So little care I for a woman's death,
+    That slew her lord, the guardian of her home.
+    Now though the votes be even, Orestes wins.
+
+
+The new right won. Marriage with the father as head, had overpowered the
+gyneocracy.
+
+Another legend represents the downfall of the mother-right in Athens
+this way: "Under the reign of Kekrops, a double miracle happened. There
+broke forth simultaneously out of the earth an oil-tree, and at another
+place water. The frightened king sent to Delphi to interrogate the
+Oracle upon the meaning of these happenings. The answer was: 'The
+oil-tree stands for Minerva, the water for Neptune; it is now with the
+citizens after which of the two deities they wish to name their city.'
+Kekrops called together the assembly of the people in which men and
+women enjoyed the right of suffrage. The men voted for Neptune, the
+women for Minerva; and as the women had a majority of one, Minerva won.
+Thereupon Neptune was angered and he caused the sea to wash over the
+territory of the Athenians. In order to soothe the wrath of the god, the
+Athenians placed a threefold punishment upon their women:--_they were to
+forfeit the suffrage, children were no longer to carry their mother's
+name, and they themselves were no longer to be called Athenian
+women_."[9]
+
+As in Athens, the transition from the mother to the father-right was
+everywhere achieved so soon as a certain height was reached in social
+development. Woman is crowded into the house; she is isolated; she is
+assigned special quarters--the gynekonitis--, in which she lives; she is
+even excluded from intercourse with the male visitors of the house.
+That, in fact, was the principal object of her isolation.
+
+This change finds its expression as early as the Odyssey. Telemachus
+forbids Penelope's, his mother's, presence among the suitors. He, the
+son, orders his mother:
+
+
+    But come now, go to thy bower, and deal with such things as ye can;
+    With the sock and the loom be busy, and thine handmaids order and
+             teach,
+    That they speed the work and the wearing; but for men is the word
+             and the speech;
+    For all, but for me the chiefest, for here am I the might and the
+             power.
+
+
+Such was the doctrine already common in Greece at that time. It went
+even further. Woman, even if a widow, stands so completely under the
+rule of the nearest male relative, that she no longer has even the
+choice of a husband. The suitors, tired of long waiting, due to the
+cunning of Penelope, address themselves to Telemachus through the mouth
+of Antinous, saying:
+
+
+    But for thee, do we the suitors this answer to thee show,
+    That thou in thy soul may'st know it, and that all the folk may know,
+    _Send thou thy mother away, and bid her a wedding to gain_
+    _With whomso her father willeth, of whomso her heart may be fain_.
+
+
+It is at an end with the freedom of woman. If she leaves the house, she
+must veil herself not to awaken the desires of another man. In the
+Orient, where, due to the warm climate, sexual passion is strongest,
+this method of seclusion is carried even to-day to extreme lengths.
+Athens becomes in this a pattern for the ancient nations. Woman shares,
+indeed, her husband's bed, but not his table; she does not address him
+by name, but "Sir;" she is his maid-servant; she was allowed to appear
+nowhere openly; on the street she was ever veiled and clad with greatest
+simplicity. If she committed adultery, she paid for the trespass,
+according to the laws of Solon, with her life, or with her freedom. The
+husband could sell her for a slave.
+
+The position of the Greek woman at the time when Greece was rushing to
+the zenith of her development comes into plastic expression in the
+"Medea" of Euripedes. She complains:
+
+
+    Ay, of all living and of all reasoning things
+    Are women the most miserable race:
+    Who first needs buy a husband at great price,
+    To take him then for owner of our lives:
+    For this ill is more keen than common ills.
+    And of essays most perilous is this,
+    Whether one good or evil do we take.
+    For evil-famed to women is divorce,
+    Nor can one spurn a husband. She, so brought
+    Beneath new rule and wont, had surely need
+    To be a prophetess, unless at home
+    She learned the likeliest prospect with her spouse.
+    And if, we having aptly searched out this,
+    A husband house with us not savagely
+    Drawing in the yoke, ours is an envied life;
+    But if not, most to be desired is death.
+    And if a man grow sick to herd indoors,
+    He, going forth, stays his heart's weariness,
+    Turning him to some friend or natural peer;
+    But we perforce to one sole being look.
+    But, say they, we, while they fight with the spear,
+    Lead in our homes a life undangerous:
+    Judging amiss; for I would liefer thrice
+    Bear brunt of arms than once bring forth a child.
+
+
+Wholly otherwise stood matters for the men. Although with an eye to the
+begetting of legitimate heirs for his property, he imposed upon woman
+strict abstinence from other men, he was, nevertheless, not inclined to
+lay a corresponding abstinence upon himself.
+
+Hetairism sprang up. Women distinguished for their beauty and intellect,
+and who, as a rule, were aliens, preferred a free life in intimate
+intercourse with men, to the slavery of marriage. Nothing objectionable
+was seen in that. The names and fame of these hetairae, who held
+intimate intercourse with the leading men of Greece, and participated in
+their learned discourses, as well as in their revels, has come down to
+our own days; whereas the names of the legitimate wives are mostly
+forgotten and lost. Thus the handsome Aspasia was the intimate friend of
+the celebrated Pericles, who later made her his legitimate wife; the
+name of Phryne became in later days the generic designation of those
+women that were to be had for money. Phryne held intimate relations with
+Hyperides, and she stood for Praxiteles, one of the first sculptors of
+Greece, as the model for his Aphrodite. Danae was the sweetheart of
+Epicurus, Archeanassa that of Plato. Other celebrated hetairae, whose
+names have reached our days, were Lais of Corinth, Gnathanea, etc. There
+is no celebrated Greek, who had no intercourse with hetairae. It
+belonged to the style of life of distinguished Greeks. Demosthenes, the
+great orator, described in his oration against Neara, the sexual life of
+the rich men of Athens in these words: "_We marry a woman in order to
+obtain legitimate children, and to have a faithful warder in the house;
+we keep concubines for our service and daily care; and hetairae for the
+enjoyment of love._" The wife was, accordingly, only an apparatus for
+the production of children; a faithful dog, that watched the house. The
+master of the house, on the contrary, lived according to his _bon
+plaisir_, as he willed.
+
+In order to satisfy the demand for venal women, particularly with
+younger males, there arose that which was unknown under the rule of the
+mother-right,--_prostitution_. Prostitution distinguishes itself from
+the free sexual intercourse that customs and social institutions
+rendered a matter of course under primitive conditions, and,
+accordingly, freed from objectionableness, in that the woman sells her
+body, either to one man or to several, for material benefit.
+Prostitution, therefore, exists so soon as woman makes a trade of her
+charms. Solon, who formulated the new law for Athens, and is,
+consequently, esteemed the founder of the new legal status, was also the
+founder of the public houses for women, the "deikterion,"--official
+houses of prostitution--, and the price to all the customers was the
+same. According to Philemon it amounted to one obolus, about four cents
+of our money. Like the temples with the Greeks and Romans, and the
+Christian churches in Middle Ages, the deikterion was inviolable: it
+stood under the protection of the Government. Until about a hundred and
+fifty years before our reckoning, the Temple of Jerusalem also was the
+usual place of gathering for the _filles de joie_.
+
+For the benefit that Solon bestowed upon the Athenian male population,
+in founding the deikterion, he was praised in song by one of his
+contemporaries in these words: "Hail to you, Solon! You bought public
+women for the benefit of the city, for the benefit of the morality of a
+city that is full of vigorous young men, who, in the absence of your
+wise institution, would give themselves over to the disturbing annoyance
+of the better women." We shall see that, at the close of the nineteenth
+century, justification is sought for the regulation of houses of
+prostitution by Government, and for the necessity of prostitution
+itself, upon the identical grounds. Thus, actions, committed by men,
+were recognized by legislation as a natural right, while, committed by
+women, were held to be shameful, and a serious crime. As is well known,
+even to-day not few are the men who prefer the company of a pretty
+female sinner to that of their own wives, and who not infrequently
+belong to the "Props of the State," the "Pillars of Order," and are
+"guardians of the sanctity of marriage and the family."
+
+True enough, it seems, that the Greek women often revenged themselves
+upon their marital-lords for the yoke placed upon them. If prostitution
+is the supplement of monogamy, on the one side, adultery among women and
+the cuckoldry of men is its supplement, on the other. Among the Greek
+dramatic poets, Euripides is the woman-hater: he loved to make women the
+object of attacks in his dramas. What all he twitted them with appears
+best from the speech that a Greek woman flings at him in the
+"Thesmophoria" of Aristophanes. She says among other things:
+
+
+    With what slanderous dirt does not he (Euripides) besmirch us?
+    When does the slanderer's tongue hold its peace? In short:
+    Wherever there is an audience, tragedies or choruses,
+    There we are called corner-loafers, anglers for men,
+    Fond of the wine-cup, treasonable arch-gossips,
+    Not a good hair is left us; we are the plague of men.
+    Therefore, soon as our husbands return to us home from the
+        benches,[10]
+    Eyes of suspicion upon us they cast, and look about
+    Whether a place of concealment conceal not a rival.
+    Whereupon, none of the things, at first by us done,
+    Now is allowed us: Such stuff against us
+    Does he in the men's heads stick, that, if a woman
+    Is weaving a garland, she is held to be in love; or when,
+    While hustling the household to keep, something drops,
+    Forthwith the husband inquires: "Whom are those fragments meant for?
+    Plainly, they are meant for the guest from Corinthos."
+
+
+We can understand that this ready-tongued Greek woman should serve the
+assailer of her sex in such manner; nevertheless, Euripides could not
+very well have made these accusations, nor could he have found credence
+with the men, if they knew not but too well that the accusations were
+justified. To judge by the concluding sentences of this address, the
+custom--met later in Germany and many other countries--had not yet been
+naturalized in Greece, that the host placed his own wife or daughter at
+the disposal of his guest for the night. Murner writes on this custom,
+prevalent in Holland as late as the fifteenth century, in these words:
+"It is the custom in the Netherlands, when the host has a dear guest,
+that he lets his wife sleep with him on faith."[11]
+
+The increasing struggles between the classes in the several states of
+Greece, and the sad state of many of the smaller communities, gave
+occasion for Plato to inquire into the best constitution and the best
+institutions for the State. In his "Republic," set up by him as ideal,
+he demands, at least for the first class of his citizens, the watchers,
+the complete equality of woman. Women are to participate in the
+exercises of arms, the same as the men, and are to fill the same duties
+as these, only they are to attend to the lighter ones, "owing to the
+weakness of the sex." He maintains that the natural inclinations are
+equally distributed among the two sexes, only that woman is in all
+matters weaker than man. Furthermore, the women are to be common to the
+men, and vice versa; likewise are the children to be common, "so that
+neither the father may know his child, nor the child his father."[12]
+
+Aristotle, in his "Politics," is satisfied with less. Woman should have
+a free hand in the selection of her husband, but she is to be
+subordinate to him; nevertheless, she should have the right "to give
+good advice." Thucydides expresses an opinion that meets with the
+applause of all modern Philistines. He says: "That wife deserves the
+highest praise of whom, outside of her home, neither good nor bad is
+heard."
+
+With such views, respect for woman was bound to sink to a low level;
+fear of over-population even led to the avoidance of intimate
+intercourse with her. Unnatural means of satisfying sexual desires were
+resorted to. The Greek states were cities with small territories, unable
+to supply the usual sustenance to a population in excess of a given
+number. Hence the fear of over-population caused Aristotle to recommend
+to the men abstinence from their wives, and pederasty, instead. Before
+him, Socrates had praised pederasty as the sign of a higher culture. In
+the end, the most promising men of Greece became adherents of this
+unnatural passion. Regard for women sank all the deeper. There were now
+houses for male prostitutes, as there were for female. In such a social
+atmosphere, it was natural for Thucydides to utter the saying that woman
+was worse than the storm-lashed ocean's wave, than the fire's glow, than
+the cascade of the wild mountain torrent. "If it is a God that invented
+woman, wherever, he may be, let him know, that he is the unhallowed
+cause of the greatest evil."[13]
+
+The male population of Greece having become addicted to pederasty, the
+female population fell into the opposite extreme: it took to the love of
+members of its own sex. This happened especially with the women of the
+island of Lesbos, whence this aberration was, and still continues to be
+named, "Lesbian love," for it has not yet died out: it survives among
+us. The poetess Sappho, "the Lesbian nightingale," who lived about six
+hundred years before our reckoning, is considered the leading
+representative of this form of love. Her passion is glowingly expressed
+in her hymn to Aphrodite, whom she implores:
+
+
+    "Glittering-throned, undying Aphrodite,
+    Wile-weaving daughter of high Zeus, I pray thee,
+    Tame not my soul with heavy woe, dread mistress,
+    Nay, nor with anguish."
+
+
+A still more passionate sensuousness is attested in her hymn to the
+handsome Atthis.
+
+While in Athens, along with the rest of Greece, the father-right ruled,
+Sparta, the rival for supremacy with Athens, still continued under the
+mother-right, a condition that had become wholly foreign to most Greeks.
+The story runs that one day a Greek asked a Spartan what punishment was
+meted out in Sparta to the adulterer. He answered: "Stranger, among us
+there are no adulterers." "But if there should be any?" "For
+punishment," the Spartan replied, sarcastically, "he must donate an ox,
+so large as to be able to reach over Taygetus with his head, and drink
+out of Eurotas." Upon the startled question, put by the stranger, "How
+can an ox be so large?" the Spartan answered laughing: "How is it
+possible that there could be an adulterer in Sparta?" At the same time
+the self-consciousness of the Spartan woman appears in the proud answer
+given a stranger by the wife of Leonidas. On his saying to her: "You
+female Lacedaemonians are the only women who rule over your men," she
+answered: "So are we the only women who bring men into the world."
+
+The free condition of women under the mother-right promoted her beauty,
+raised her pride, her dignity and her self-reliance. The judgment of all
+ancient writers is to the effect that, during the period of the
+gyneocracy, these qualities were highly developed among women. The
+constrained condition that later supervened, necessarily had its evil
+effect upon them. The difference appears even in the garb of the two
+periods. The garb of the Doric woman hung loose from her shoulders; it
+left the arms free, and thighs exposed: it is the garb of Diana, who is
+represented as free and bold in our museums. The Ionian garb, on the
+contrary, concealed the body and hampered its motion. The garb of woman
+to-day is, far more than usually realized, a sign of her dependence and
+helplessness. The style of woman's dress amongst most peoples, down to
+our own days, renders her awkward, forces on her a sense of weakness,
+and makes her timid; and this, finally, finds its expression in her
+attitude and character. The custom among the Spartans of letting the
+girls go naked until marriageable age--a custom that the climate
+allowed--contributed considerably, in the opinion of an ancient writer,
+to impart to them a taste for simplicity and for attention to decency.
+Nor was there in the custom, according to the views of those days, aught
+offensive to decorum, or inciting to lust. Furthermore, the girls
+participated in all the bodily exercises, just as the boys, and thus
+there was reared a vigorous, proud, self-conscious race, a race that was
+conscious of its own merit, as proved by the answer of Leonidas' wife to
+the stranger.
+
+In intimate connection with the mother-right, after it had ceased to be
+a ruling social principle, stood certain customs, which modern writers,
+ignorant of their meaning, designate as "prostitution." In Babylon, it
+was a religious duty with the maid, who had reached puberty, to appear
+once in the temple of Mylitta in order to offer her maidenhood as a
+sacrifice, by surrendering herself to some man. Similarly happened in
+the Serapeum of Memphis; in Armenia, in honor of the goddess Anaitis; in
+Cyprus; in Tyrus and Sidon, in honor of Astarte or Aphrodite. The
+festivals of Isis among the Egyptians served similar customs. This
+sacrifice of virginity was demanded in order to atone with the goddess
+for the exclusive surrender of woman to one man in marriage:--"Not that
+she may wilt in the arms of a single man is woman arrayed by nature with
+all the charms at its command."[14] The continued favor of the goddess
+had to be purchased by the sacrifice of virginity to a stranger. It was
+likewise in line with the old idea that the Lybian maids earned their
+dower by prostituting their bodies. In accord with the mother-right,
+these women were sexually free during their unmarried status; and the
+men saw so little objection in these pickings, that those were taken by
+them for wives who had been most in demand. It was thus also among the
+Thracians, in the days of Herodotus: "They do not watch the maidens, but
+leave them full freedom to associate with whom they please. The women,
+however, they watch strictly. They buy them from their parents for large
+sums." Celebrated were the Hierodulae of the temple of Aphrodite at
+Corinth, where always more than one thousand maidens were gathered, and
+constituted a chief point of attraction for the men of Greece. Of the
+daughter of King Cheops of Egypt, the legend relates that she had a
+pyramid built out of the proceeds of prostitution of her charms.
+
+Conditions, similar to these, prevail down to now, on the Mariana, the
+Philippine and the Polynesian islands; according to Waitz, also among
+several African tribes. Another custom, prevalent till late on the
+Balearic islands, and indicative of the right of all men to a woman, was
+that, on the wedding night, the male kin had access to the bride in
+order of seniority. The bridegroom came last; he then took her as wife
+into his own possession. This custom has been changed among other people
+so that the priest or the tribal chiefs (kings) exercise the privilege
+over the bride, as representatives of the men of the tribe. On Malabar,
+the Caimars hire patamars (priests) to deflower their wives.... The
+chief priest (Namburi) is in duty bound to render this service to the
+king (Zamorin) at his wedding, and the king rewards him with fifty gold
+pieces.[15] In Further India, and on several islands of the great ocean,
+it is sometimes the priests and sometimes the tribal chiefs who
+undertake the function.[16] The same happens in Senegambia, where the
+tribal chief exercises, as a duty of his office, the deflowering of
+maids, and receives therefor a present. Again, with other peoples, the
+custom was, and continues here and yonder, that the deflowering of a
+maid, sometimes even of a child only a few months old, is done by means
+of images of deities, fashioned expressly for this purpose. It may also
+be accepted as certain that the "jus primae noctis" (the right of the
+first night), prevalent in Germany and all Europe until late in the
+Middle Ages, owes its origin to the same tradition, as Frederick Engels
+observes. The landlord, who, as master of his dependents and serfs,
+looked upon himself as their chief, exercised the right of the head of
+the tribe, a right that he considered had passed over to himself as the
+arbiter of their lives and existence.
+
+Echoes of the mother-right are further detected in the singular custom
+among some South American tribes, that, instead of the lying-in woman,
+the man goes to bed, there acts like a woman in labor, and is tended by
+the wife. The custom implies that the father recognizes the new born
+child as his own. By imitating the pains of child-birth, the man fills
+the fiction that the birth is also his work; that he, therefore, has a
+right to the child, who, according to the former custom, belonged to the
+mother and the mother's gens, respectively. The custom is said to have
+also maintained itself among the Basques, who must be looked upon as a
+people of primitive usages and customs. Likewise is the custom said to
+prevail among several mountain tribes in China. It prevailed until not
+long since in Corsica.
+
+In Greece likewise did woman become an article of purchase. So soon as
+she stepped into the house of her marital lord, she ceased to exist for
+her family. This was symbolically expressed by burning before the door
+the handsomely decked wagon which took her to the house of her husband.
+Among the Ostiaks of Siberia, to this day, the father sells his
+daughter: he chaffers with the representative of the bridegroom about
+the price to be paid. Likewise among several African tribes, the same as
+in the days of Jacob, the custom is that a man who courts a maid, enters
+in the service of his future mother-in-law. Even with us, marriage by
+purchase has not died out: it prevails in bourgeois society worse than
+ever. Marriage for money, almost everywhere customary among the ruling
+classes, is nothing other than marriage by purchase. Indeed, the
+marriage gift, which in all civilized countries the bridegroom makes to
+the bride, is but a symbol of the purchase of the wife as property.
+
+Along with marriage by purchase, there was the custom of marriage by
+rape. The rape of women was a customary practice, not alone among the
+ancient Jews, but everywhere in antiquity. It is met with among almost
+all nations. The best known historic instance is the rape of the Sabine
+women by the Romans. The rape of women was an easy remedy where women
+ran short, as, according to the legend, happened to the early Romans; or
+where polygamy was the custom, as everywhere in the Orient. There it
+assumed large proportions during the supremacy of the Arabs, from the
+seventh to the twelfth century.
+
+Symbolically, the rape of woman still occurs, for instance among the
+Araucans of South Chile. While the friends of the bridegroom are
+negotiating with the father of the bride, the bridegroom steals with his
+horse into the neighborhood of the house, and seeks to capture the
+bride. So soon as he catches her, he throws her upon his horse, and
+makes off with her to the woods. The men, women and children thereupon
+raise a great hue and cry, and seek to prevent the escape. But when the
+bridegroom has reached the thick of the woods, the marriage is
+considered consummated. This holds good also when the abduction takes
+place against the will of the parents. Similar customs prevail among the
+peoples of Australia.
+
+Among ourselves, the custom of "wedding trips" still reminds us of the
+former rape of the wife: the bride is carried off from her domestic
+flock. On the other hand, the exchange of rings is a reminiscence of the
+subjection and enchainment of the woman to the man. The custom
+originated in Rome. The bride received an iron ring from her husband as
+a sign of her bondage to him. Later the ring was made of gold; much
+later the exchange of rings was introduced, as a sign of mutual union.
+
+The old family ties of the gens had, accordingly, lost their foundation
+through the development of the conditions of production, and through
+the rule of private property. Upon the abolition of the gens, grounded
+on mother-right, the gens, grounded on the father-right first took its
+place, although not for long, and with materially weakened functions.
+Its task was mainly to attend to the common religious affairs and to the
+ceremonial of funerals: to safeguard the mutual obligation of protection
+and of help against violence: to enforce the right, and, in certain
+cases, the duty of marrying in the gens, in cases when rich heiresses or
+female orphans were concerned. The gens, furthermore, administered the
+still existing common property. But the segmentation of handicraft from
+agriculture; the ever wider expansion of commerce; the founding of
+cities, rendered necessary by both of these; the conquest of booty and
+prisoners of war, the latter of which directly affected the
+household,--all of these tore to shreds the conditions and bonds of eld.
+Handicraft had gradually subdivided itself into a larger number of
+separate trades--weaving, pottery, iron-forging, the preparation of
+arms, house and shipbuilding, etc. Accordingly, it pushed toward another
+organization. The ever further introduction of slavery, the admittance
+of strangers into the community,--these were all so many new and
+additional elements that rendered the old constitution of society ever
+more impossible.
+
+Along with private property and the personal right of inheritance, class
+distinctions and class contrasts came into existence. Rich
+property-owners drew together against those who owned less, or nothing.
+The former sought to get into their own hands the public offices of the
+new commonwealth, and to make them hereditary. Money, now become
+necessary, created thitherto unknown forms of indebtedness. Wars against
+enemies from without, and conflicting interests within, as well as the
+various interests and relations which agriculture, handicraft and
+commerce mutually produced rendered necessary complicated rules of
+right, they demanded special organs to guard the orderly movement of the
+social machinery, and to settle disputes. The same held good for the
+relations of master and slave, creditor and debtor. A power,
+accordingly, became necessary to supervise, lead, regulate and harmonize
+all these relations, with authority to protect, and, when needed, to
+punish. _Thus rose the State, the product, accordingly of the
+conflicting interests that sprang up in the new social order._ Its
+administration naturally fell into the hands of those who had the
+liveliest interest in its establishment, and who, in virtue of their
+social power, possessed the greatest influence,--the rich. Aristocracy
+of property and democracy confronted each other, accordingly, even there
+where externally complete equality of political rights existed.
+
+Under the mother-right, there was no written law. The relations were
+simple, and custom was held sacred. Under the new, and much more
+complicated order, written law was one of the most important
+requirements; and special organs became necessary to administer it. In
+the measure that the legal relations and legal conditions gained in
+intricacy, a special class of people gathered shape, who made the study
+of the law their special vocation, and who finally had a special
+interest in rendering the law ever more complicated. Then arose the men
+learned in the laws, the jurists, who, due to the importance of the
+statutory law to the whole of society, rose to influential social rank.
+The new system of rights found in the course of time its classic
+expression in the Roman State, whence the influence that Roman law
+exercises down to the present.
+
+The institution of the State is, accordingly, the necessary result of a
+social order, that, standing upon the higher plane of the subdivision of
+labor, is broken up into a large number of occupations, animated by
+different, frequently conflicting, interests, and hence has the
+oppression of the weaker for a consequence. This fact was recognized
+even by an Arabian tribe, the Nabateans, who, according to Diodorus,
+established the regulation not to sow, not to plant, to drink no wine,
+and to build no houses, but to live in tents, because if those things
+were done, _they could be easily compelled to obey by a superior power_
+(the power of the State). Likewise among the Rachebites, the descendants
+of the father-in-law of Moses, there existed similar prescriptions.[17]
+Aye, the whole Mosaic system of laws is aimed at _preventing the Jews
+from moving out of an agricultural state, because otherwise, so the
+legislators feared, their democratic-communistic society would go
+under_. Hence the selection of the "Promised Land" in a region bounded,
+on one side, by a not very accessible mountain range, the Lebanon; on
+the other side, South and East, by but slightly fertile stretches of
+land, partly by deserts;--a region, accordingly, that rendered isolation
+possible. Hence came the keeping of the Jews away from the sea, which
+favored commerce, colonization and the accumulation of wealth; hence the
+rigid laws concerning seclusion from other peoples, the severe
+regulations against foreign marriages, the poor laws, the agrarian laws,
+the jubileum,--all of them provisions calculated to prevent the
+accumulation of great wealth by the individual. The Jewish people were
+to be kept in permanent disability ever to become the builders of a real
+State. Hence it happens that the tribal organization, which rested upon
+the gentile order, remained in force with them till its complete
+dissolution, and continues to affect them even now.
+
+It seems that the Latin tribes, which took a hand in the founding of
+Rome, had long passed beyond the stage of the mother-right. Hence Rome
+was built from the start as a State. The women that they needed they
+captured, as the legend tells us, from the tribe of the Sabines, and
+they called themselves after their Sabine wives,--Quirites. Even in
+later years, the Roman citizens were addressed in the Forum as Quirites.
+"Populus Romanus" stood for the free population of Rome in general; but
+"Populus Romanus quiritium" expressed the ancestry and quality of the
+Roman citizen. The Roman gens was of father-right stamp. The children
+inherited as consanguineous heirs; if there were no children, the
+relatives of the male line inherited; were none of these in existence,
+then the property reverted to the gens. By marriage, woman lost her
+right to inherit her father's property and that of his brothers. She had
+stepped out of her gens: neither she nor her children could inherit from
+her father or his brothers: otherwise the inheritance would be lost to
+the paternal gens. The division in gentes, phratries and tribes
+constituted in Rome for centuries the foundation of the military
+organization, and also of the exercise of the rights of citizenship. But
+with the decay of the paternal gentes and the decline of their
+significance, conditions shaped themselves more favorably for woman. She
+could not only inherit, but had the right to administer her own fortune.
+She was, accordingly, far more favorably situated than her Greek sister.
+The freer position that, despite all legal impediments, she gradually
+knew how to conquer, caused the elder Cato, born 234 before our
+reckoning, to complain: "If, after the example of his ancestors, every
+head of a family kept his wife in proper subjection, we would not have
+so much public bother with the whole sex."[18]
+
+So long as the father lived, he held in Rome the guardianship over his
+daughter, even if she were married, unless he appointed another guardian
+himself. When the father died, the nearest male of kin, even though
+declared unqualified as an agnate, came in as guardian. The guardian had
+the right at any time to transfer the guardianship to any third person
+that he pleased. Accordingly, before the law, the Roman woman had no
+will of her own.
+
+The nuptial forms were various, and in the course of centuries underwent
+manifold alterations. The most solemn nuptials were celebrated before
+the High Priest, in the presence of at least ten witnesses. At the
+occasion, the bridal pair, in token of their union, partook together
+from a cake made of flour, salt and water. As will be noticed, a
+ceremony is here celebrated, that bears great resemblance to the
+breaking of the sacramental wafer at the Christian communion. A second
+form of nuptials consisted in possession. The marriage was considered
+accomplished if, with the consent of her father or guardian, a woman
+lived with the chosen man a whole year under one roof. A third form of
+nuptials was a sort of mutual purchase, both sides exchanging coins, and
+the promise to be man and wife. Already at the time of Cicero[19] free
+divorce for both sides was generally established; it was even debated
+whether the announcement of the divorce was necessary. The "lex Julia de
+adulteriis," however, prescribed that the divorce was to be solemnly
+proclaimed. This decree was made for the reason that women, who
+committed adultery, and were summoned to answer the charge, often
+claimed to have been divorced. Justinian, the Christian[20] forbade free
+divorce, unless both sides desired to retire to a monastery. His
+successor, Justinian II, however, found himself obliged to allow it
+again.
+
+With the growing power and rising wealth of Rome, mad-brained vices and
+excesses took the place of the former severity of manners. Rome became
+the center from which debauchery, riotous luxury and sensuous
+refinements radiated over the whole of the then civilized world. The
+excesses took--especially during the time of the Emperors, and, to a
+great extent, through the Emperors themselves--forms that only insanity
+could suggest. Men and women vied with one another in vice. The number
+of houses of prostitution became ever larger, and, hand in hand with
+these, the "Greek love" (pederasty) spread itself ever more among the
+male population. At times, the number of young men in Rome who
+prostituted themselves was larger than that of the female prostitutes.
+
+"The hetairae appeared, surrounded by their admirers, in great pomp on
+the streets, promenades, the circus and theatres, often carried by
+negroes upon litters, where, holding a mirror in their hands, and
+sparkling with ornaments and precious stones, they lay outstretched,
+nude, fan-carrying slaves standing by them, and surrounded by a swarm of
+boys, eunuchs and flute-players; grotesque dwarfs closed the
+procession."
+
+These excesses assumed such proportions in the Roman Empire that they
+became a danger to the Empire itself. The example of the men was
+followed by the women. There were women, Seneca reports, who counted the
+years, not as was the usage, after the consuls, but after the number of
+their husbands. Adultery was general; and, in order that the women might
+escape the severe punishments prescribed for the offense, they, and
+among them the leading dames of Rome, caused themselves to be entered in
+the registers of the Aediles as prostitutes.
+
+Hand in hand with these excesses, civil wars and the latifundia system,
+celibacy and childlessness increased in such measure that the number of
+Roman citizens and of patricians ran down considerably. Hence in the
+year 16 B. C., Augustus issued the so-called Julian Law,[21] which
+offered prizes for the birth of children, and imposed penalties for
+celibacy upon the Roman citizens and patricians. He who had children
+had precedence in rank over the childless and unmarried. Bachelors could
+accept no inheritance, except from their own nearest kin. The childless
+could only inherit one-half; the rest fell to the State. Women, who
+could be taxed with adultery, had to surrender one-half of their dower
+to the abused husband. Thereupon there were men who married out of
+speculation on the adultery of their wives. This caused Plutarch to
+observe: "The Romans marry, not to obtain heirs, but to inherit."
+
+Still later the Julian Law was made severer. Tiberius decreed that no
+woman, whose grandfather, father or husband had been or still was a
+Roman Knight, could prostitute herself for money. Married women, who
+caused themselves to be entered in the registers of prostitutes, were
+condemned to banishment from Italy as adulteresses. Of course, there
+were no such punishments for the men. Moreover, as Juvenal reports, even
+the murder of husbands by poison was a frequent occurrence in the Rome
+of his day--the first half of the first century before Christ.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Bachofen's book appeared in 1861 under the title, "Das Mutterrecht"
+(Mother-right) "Eine Untersuchung ueber die Gynaekokratie der Alten Welt
+nach ihrer religioesen und rechtlichen Natur," Stuttgart, Krais &
+Hoffmann. Morgan's fundamental work, "Ancient Society," appeared in a
+German translation in 1891, J. H. W. Dietz, Stuttgart. From the same
+publisher there appeared in German: "The Origin of the Family, of
+Private Property and the State, in support of Lewis H. Morgan's
+Investigations," by Frederick Engels. Fourth enlarged edition, 1892.
+Also "Die Verwandtschafts-Organisationen der Australneger. Ein Beitrag
+zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Familie," by Heinrich Cunow, 1894.
+
+[The perspective into which the Pleiades of distinguished names are
+thrown in the text just above is apt to convey an incorrect impression,
+and the impression is not materially corrected in the subsequent
+references to them. Neither Bachofen, nor yet Tylor, McLennan or Lubbock
+contributed to the principles that now are canons in ethnology. They
+were not even path-finders, valuable though their works are.
+
+Bachofen collected, in his work entitled "Das Mutterrecht," the
+gleanings of vast and tireless researches among the writings of the
+ancients, with an eye to female authority. Subsequently, and helping
+themselves more particularly to the more recent contributions to
+archeology, that partly dealt with living aborigines, Tylor, McLennan
+and Lubbock produced respectively, "Early History of Mankind;"
+"Primitive Marriage;" and "Pre-Historic Times" and "Origin of
+Civilization." These works, though partly theoretic, yet are mainly
+descriptive. By an effort of genius--like the wood-pecker, whose
+instinct tells it the desired worm is beneath the bark and who pecks at
+and round about it--all these men, Bachofen foremost, scented sense in
+the seeming nonsense of ancient traditions, or surmised significance in
+the more recently ascertained customs of living aborigines. But again,
+like the wood-pecker, that has struck a bark too thick for its bill,
+these men could not solve the problem they were at. They lacked the
+information to pick, and they had not, nor were they so situated as to
+furnish themselves with, the key to open the lock. Morgan furnished the
+key.
+
+Lewis Henry Morgan, born In Aurora, N. Y., November 21, 1818, and
+equipped with vast scholarship and archeological information, took up
+his residence among the Iroquois Indians, by whom, the Hawk gens of the
+Seneca tribe, he was eventually adopted. The fruit of his observations
+there and among other Indian tribes that he visited even west of the
+Mississippi, together with simultaneous information sent him by the
+American missionaries in the Sandwich Islands, was a series of
+epoch-making works, "The League of the Iroquois," "Systems of
+Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family," and "Ancient Society,"
+which appeared in 1877. A last and not least valuable work was his
+"Houses and Houselife of the American Aborigines." A solid foundation
+was now laid for the science of ethnology and anthropology. The problem
+was substantially solved.
+
+The robust scientific mind of Karl Marx promptly absorbed the
+revelations made by Morgan, and he recast his own views accordingly. A
+serious ethnological error had crept into his great work, "Capital," two
+editions of which had been previously published in German between
+1863-1873. A footnote by Frederick Engels (p. 344, Swan, Sonnenschein &
+Co., English edition, 1886) testifies to the revolution Morgan's works
+had wrought on the ethnological conceptions of the founder of Socialist
+economics and sociology.
+
+Subsequently, Frederick Engels, planted squarely on the principles
+established by Morgan, issued a series of brilliant monographs, in
+which, equipped with the key furnished by Morgan and which Engels'
+extensive economic and sociologic knowledge enabled him to wield with
+deftness, he explained interesting social phenomena among the ancients,
+and thereby greatly enriched the literature of social science.
+
+Finally, Heinrich Cunow, though imagining to perceive some minor flaws
+in some secondary parts of Morgan's theory, placed himself in absolute
+accord with the body of Morgan's real work, as stated later in the text
+in a quotation from Cunow; and, following closely in Morgan's footsteps,
+made and published interesting independent researches on the system of
+consanguinity among the Austral-Negros.--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[2] In his book against us, Ziegler ridicules the idea of attributing to
+myths any significance whatever in the history of civilization. In that
+notion stands betrayed the superficial nature of so-called scientists.
+They do not recognize what they do not see. A deep significance lies at
+the bottom of myths. They have grown out of the people's soul; out of
+olden morals and customs that have gradually disappeared, and now
+continue to live only in the myth. When we strike facts that explain a
+myth we are in possession of solid ground for its interpretation.
+
+[3] Bachofen: "Das Mutterrecht."
+
+[4] Totem-group means generation-group. Each grade or generation has its
+own totem-animal. For instance: Opossum, emu, wolf, bear, etc., after
+which the group is named. The totem-animal frequently enjoys great
+honor. It is held sacred with the respective group, and its members may
+neither kill the animal, nor eat its flesh. The totem-animal has a
+similar significance to the patron saint of the guild in the Middle
+Ages.
+
+[5] In the oldest ward of the city of Prague, there is a small synagogue
+that comes down from the sixth century of our reckoning, and is said to
+be the oldest synagogue in Germany. If the visitor steps down about
+seven steps into the half-dark space, he discovers in the opposite wall
+several target-like openings that lead into a completely dark room. To
+the question, where these openings lead to our leader answered: "To the
+woman's compartment, whence they witness the service." The modern
+synagogues are much more cheerfully arranged, but the separation of the
+women from the men is preserved.
+
+[6] Frederick Engels, "The Origin of the Family."
+
+[7] Frederick Engels, _ubi supra_.
+
+[8] Book of Judges, 20, 21 and sequel.
+
+[9] Bachofen: "Das Mutterrecht."
+
+[10] Of the theater, to which women had no access.
+
+[11] Johann Scherr, "Deutsche Kultur-und Sittengeschichte:" Leipsic,
+1887. Otto Wigand. As is known, Suderman deals with the same subject in
+his play, "Die Ehre."
+
+[12] Plato, "The Republic," Book V.
+
+[13] Leon Bichter, "La Femme Libre."
+
+[14] Bachofen. "Das Mutterrecht."
+
+[15] K. Kautsky, "Die Entstehung der Ehe und der Familie," Kosmos, 1883.
+
+[16] Montegazza, "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."
+
+[17] Joh. David Michaelis, "Mosaisches Recht," Reutlingen, 1793.
+
+[18] Karl Heinzen, "Ueber die Rechte und Stellung der Frauen."
+
+[19] Born 106 before our reckoning.
+
+[20] He lived from 527 to 565 of our reckoning.
+
+[21] Augustus, the son of Caesar by adoption, was of the Julian gens,
+hence the title "Julian" law.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+UNDER CHRISTIANITY.
+
+
+The opposite of polygamy,--as we have learned to know it among Oriental
+peoples, and as it still exists among them, but owing to the number of
+available women and the cost of their support, can be indulged in only
+by the privileged and the rich--is polyandry. The latter exists mainly
+among the highland people of Thibet, among the Garras on the
+Hindoo-Chinese frontier, among the Baigas in Godwana, the Nairs in the
+southern extremity of India; it is said to be found also among the
+Eskimos and Aleutians. Heredity is determined in the only way
+possible,--after the mother: the children belong to her. The husbands of
+a woman are usually brothers. When the elder brother marries, the other
+brothers likewise become the husbands of the woman; the woman, however,
+preserves the right to take other men besides. Conversely, the men also
+are said to have the right of taking a second, third, fourth, or more
+wives. To what circumstances polyandry owes its origin is not yet clear.
+Seeing that the polyandrous nations, without exception, live either on
+high mountain regions, or in the cold zone, polyandry probably owes its
+existence to a phenomenon that Tarnowsky comments on.[22] He learned
+from reliable travelers that a long sojourn at high elevations lowers
+the sensuous pleasures, and weakens erection, both of which return with
+new vigor by re-descension to lower altitudes. This lowering of the
+sexual powers, Tarnowsky is of the opinion, might partly account for the
+comparative slight increase of population on highland regions; and he is
+of the opinion that, when the debility is transmitted, it may become a
+source of degeneration that operates upon the perversity of the sexual
+sense.
+
+We may also add that a protracted domicile, together with the habits of
+life contracted on very high or cold regions, may have for a further
+result that polyandry lays no excessive demands upon a woman. The women
+themselves are correspondingly affected in their nature. That they are
+so is rendered probable by the circumstance that, among the Eskimo
+girls, menstruation sets in only with the nineteenth year, whereas in
+the warm zones it sets in as early as the tenth or eleventh, and in the
+temperate latitudes between the fourteenth and the sixteenth year. In
+view of the fact that warm climates, as universally recognized, exercise
+a strongly stimulating influence upon the sexual instinct,--whence
+polygamy finds its widest diffusion in warm countries--it is quite
+likely that cold regions--to which high mountains and plateaus belong,
+and where the thinner air may also contribute its share--may exercise
+materially a restringent effect upon the sexual instinct. It must,
+moreover, be noted that experience shows conception occurs rarer with
+women who cohabit with several men. The increase of population is,
+accordingly, slight under polyandry; and it fits in with the difficulty
+of securing subsistence, encountered in cold lands and mountain
+regions;--whereby additional proof is furnished that also, in this, to
+us so seemingly strange phenomenon of polyandry, production has its
+determining influence upon the relations of the sexes. Finally, it is to
+be ascertained whether among these peoples, who live on high mountains
+or in cold zones, the killing of girl babies is not a frequent practice,
+as is oft reported of the Mongolian tribes, on the highlands of China.
+
+Exactly the reverse of the custom among the Romans during the Empire, of
+allowing celibacy and childlessness to gain the upper hand, was the
+custom prevalent among the Jews. True enough, the Jewish woman had no
+right to choose; her father fixed upon the husband she was to wed; but
+marriage was a duty, that they religiously followed. The Talmud advises:
+"When your daughter is of marriageable age, give his freedom to one of
+your slaves and engage her to him." In the same sense the Jews followed
+strictly the command of their God: "Increase and multiply." Due to this,
+and despite all persecutions and oppression, they have diligently
+increased their numbers. The Jew is the sworn enemy of Malthusianism.
+
+Already Tacitus says of them: "Among themselves there is a stubborn
+holding together, and ready open-handedness; but, for all others,
+hostile hatred. Never do they eat, never do they sleep with foes; and,
+although greatly inclined to sensuousness, they abstain from procreation
+with foreign women. Nevertheless they strive to increase their people.
+Infanticide is held a sin with them; and the souls of those who die in
+battle or by execution they consider immortal. Hence the love of
+procreation beside their contempt of death." Tacitus hated and abhorred
+the Jews, because, in contempt of the religion of their fathers, they
+heaped up wealth and treasures. He called them the "worst set of
+people," an "ugly race."[23]
+
+Under the over-lordship of the Romans, the Jews drew ever closer
+together. Under the long period of sufferings, which, from that time on,
+they had to endure, almost throughout the whole of the Christian Middle
+Ages, grew that intimate family life that is to-day considered a sort of
+pattern by the modern bourgeois _regime_. On the other side, Roman
+society underwent the process of disintegration and dissolution, which
+led the Empire to its destruction. Upon the excesses, bordering on
+insanity, followed the other extreme,--the most rigid abstinence. As
+excess, in former days, now asceticism assumed religious forms. A
+dream-land-fanaticism made propaganda for it. The unbounded gluttony and
+luxury of the ruling classes stood in glaring contrast with the want and
+misery of the millions upon millions that conquering Rome dragged, from
+all the then known countries of the world, into Italy and slavery. Among
+these were also numberless women, who, separated from their domestic
+hearths, from their parents or their husbands, and torn from their
+children, felt their misery most keenly, and yearned for deliverance. A
+large number of Roman women, disgusted at that which happened all around
+them, found themselves in similar frame of mind; any change in their
+condition seemed to them a relief. A deep longing for a change, for
+deliverance, took possession of extensive social layers;--and the
+deliverer seemed to approach. The conquest of Jerusalem and of the
+Jewish kingdom by the Romans had for its consequence the destruction of
+all national independence, and begot among the ascetic sects of that
+country, dreamers, who announced the birth of a new kingdom, that was to
+bring freedom and happiness to all.
+
+Christ came, and Christianity arose. It embodied the opposition to the
+bestial materialism that reigned among the great and the rich of the
+Roman Empire; it represented the revolt against the contempt for and
+oppression of the masses. But originating in Judaism, which knew woman
+only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical
+conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity
+preached contempt for woman. It also preached abstinence, the
+mortification of the flesh, then so sinful, and it pointed with its
+ambiguous phrases to a prospective kingdom, which some interpreted as of
+heaven, others as of earth, and which was to bring freedom and justice
+to all. With these doctrines it found fertile ground in the submerged
+bottom of the Roman Empire. Woman, hoping, along with all the miserable,
+for freedom and deliverance from her condition, joined readily and
+zealously. Down to our own days, never yet was a great and important
+movement achieved in the world without women also having been
+conspicuously active as combatants and martyrs. Those who praise
+Christianity as a great achievement of civilization should not forget
+that it was woman in particular to whom Christianity owes a great part
+of its success. Her proselyting zeal played a weighty _role_ in the
+Roman Empire, as well as among the barbarous peoples of the Middle Ages.
+The mightiest were by her converted to Christianity. It was Clotilde,
+for instance, who moved Clovis, the King of the Franks, to accept
+Christianity; it was, again, Bertha, Queen of Kent, and Gisela, Queen of
+Hungary, who introduced Christianity in their countries. To the
+influence of the women is due the conversion of many of the great. But
+Christianity requited woman ill. Its tenets breathe the same contempt
+for woman that is breathed in all the religions of the East. It orders
+her to be the obedient servant of her husband, and the vow of obedience
+she must, to this day, make to him at the altar.
+
+Let us hear the Bible and Christianity speak of woman and marriage. The
+ten commandments are addressed only to the men; in the tenth commandment
+woman is bracketed with servants and domestic animals. Man is warned not
+to covet his neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant,
+nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his. Woman, accordingly,
+appears as an object, as a piece of property, that the man may not
+hanker after, if in another's possession. Jesus, who belonged to a
+sect--the sect which imposed upon itself strict asceticism and even
+self-emasculation[24]--being asked by his disciples whether it is good
+to marry, answers: "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to
+whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from
+their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs
+of men; and there be eunuchs, _which have made themselves eunuchs for
+the kingdom of heaven's sake_."[25] Emasculation is, according hereto,
+an act hallowed by God, and the renunciation of love and marriage a good
+deed.
+
+Paul, who, in a higher degree than even Jesus himself, may be called the
+founder of the Christian religion; Paul, who first impressed an
+international character upon this creed, and tore it away from the
+narrow sectarianism of the Jews, writes to the Corinthians: "Now
+concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: "It is good for a man
+not to touch a woman;" "he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but
+he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better."[26] "Walk in the
+Spirit and fulfil not the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth
+against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh;" "they that are
+Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."" He
+followed his own precepts, and did not marry. This hatred of the flesh
+_is the hatred of woman, but also the fear of woman_, who--see the scene
+in Paradise--is represented as the seducer of man. In this spirit did
+the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church preach; in this spirit did
+the Church work throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, when it reared
+its cloisters, and introduced celibacy among the priesthood;--and to
+this day it works in the same spirit.
+
+According to Christianity, woman is the _unclean being_; the seducer,
+who introduced sin into the world and ruined man. Hence Apostles, and
+Fathers of the Church alike, have ever looked upon marriage as a
+necessary evil,--the same as is said to-day of prostitution. Tertulian
+exclaims: "Woman, thou should ever walk in mourning and rags, thy eyes
+full of tears, present the aspect of repentance to induce forgetfulness
+of your having ruined the human race. Woman, thou art the Gate of Hell!"
+Hieronymus says: "Marriage always is a vice; all that we can do is to
+excuse and cleanse it," hence it was made a sacrament of the Church.
+Origen declares: "Marriage is something unholy and unclean, a means for
+sensuality," and, in order to resist the temptation, he emasculated
+himself. Tertulian declares: "Celibacy is preferable, even if the human
+race goes to ground." Augustine teaches: "The celibates will shine in
+heaven like brilliant stars, while their parents (who brought them
+forth) are like dark stars." Eusebius and Hieronymus agree that the
+Biblical command, "Increase and multiply," no longer fits the times, and
+does not concern the Christians. Hundreds of other quotations from the
+most influential Fathers of the Church could be cited, all of which tend
+in the same direction. By means of their continuous teaching and
+preaching, they have spread those unnatural views touching sexual
+matters, and the intercourse of the sexes, _the latter of which,
+nevertheless, remains a commandment of nature, and obedience to which is
+one of the most important duties in the mission of life_. Modern society
+is still severely ailing from these teachings, and it is recovering but
+slowly.
+
+Peter calls out emphatically to women: "Ye wives, be in subjection to
+your own husbands."[27] Paul writes to the Ephesians: "The husband is
+the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church;"[28] and
+in Corinthians: "Man is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the
+glory of the man."[29] According to which every sot of a man may hold
+himself better than the most distinguished woman;--indeed, it is so in
+practice to-day. Also against the higher education of women does Paul
+raise his weighty voice: "Let the woman learn in silence with all
+_subjection_. _But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
+over the man, out to be in silence_;"[30] and again: "Let your women
+_keep silence_ in the churches; _for it is not permitted unto them to
+speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience_, as also saith the
+law. And if they will learn anything, _let them ask their husbands at
+home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church_."[31]
+
+Such doctrines are not peculiar to Christianity only. Christianity being
+a mixture of Judaism and Greek philosophy, and seeing that these, in
+turn, have their roots in the older civilization of the Egyptians,
+Babylonians, and Hindoos, the subordinate position that Christianity
+assigned to woman was one common in antiquity. In the Hindoo laws of
+Manu it is said regarding woman: "The source of dishonor is woman; the
+source of strife is woman; the source of earthly existence is woman;
+therefore avoid woman." Beside this degradation of woman, fear of her
+ever and anon reappears naively. Manu further sets forth: "Woman is by
+nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a
+secluded place even with his nearest female relative." Woman,
+accordingly, is, according to the Hindoo as well as the Old Testament
+and Christian view, everywhere the tempter. All masterhood implies the
+degradation of the mastered. The subordinate position of woman
+continues, to this day, even more in force in the backward civilization
+of the East than among the nations that enjoy a so-called Christian
+view-point. That which, in the so-called Christian world, gradually
+improved the situation of woman was, not Christianity, but _the advanced
+culture of the West struggling against the Christian doctrine_.
+
+Christianity is guiltless of woman's present improved position to what
+it was at the start of the era. Only reluctantly, and forced thereto,
+did Christianity become untrue to its true spirit with regard to woman.
+Those who rave about "the mission of Christianity to emancipate
+mankind," differ from us in this, as in other respects. They claim that
+Christianity freed woman from her previous low position, and they ground
+themselves upon the worship of Mary, the "mother of God,"--a cult,
+however, that sprang up only later in Christendom, but which they point
+to as a sign of regard for the whole sex. The Roman Catholic Church,
+which celebrates this cult, should be the last to lay claim to such a
+doctrine. The Saints and Fathers of the Church, cited above, and whose
+utterances could be easily multiplied--and they are the leading Church
+authorities--express themselves separately and collectively hostile to
+woman and to marriage. The Council of Macon, which, in the sixteenth
+century, discussed the question whether woman had a soul, and which
+decided with a majority of but one vote, that she had, likewise argues
+against the theory of such a friendly posture towards woman. The
+introduction of celibacy by Gregory VII[32]--although resorted to first
+of all and mainly with the end in view of holding in the unmarried
+priesthood a power that could not be alienated from the service of the
+Church through any family interests--was, nevertheless, possible only
+with such fundamental doctrines as the Church held touching the
+sinfulness of the lusts of the flesh; and it goes to confirm our theory.
+
+Neither did the Reformers, especially Calvin and the Scotch ministers,
+with their wrath at the "lusts of the flesh," entertain any doubt
+touching the hostile posture of Christianity towards woman.[33]
+
+By the introduction of the cult of Mary, the Roman Catholic Church
+shrewdly placed the worship of Mary in the place of that of the heathen
+goddesses, in vogue among _all_ the people over whom Christianity was
+then extending itself. _Mary_ took the place of the Cybele, the Mylitta,
+the Aphrodite, the Venus, the Ceres, etc., of the southern races; of the
+Freia, the Frigga, etc., of the Germanian tribes. She was a mere
+spiritually-Christian idealization.
+
+The primeval, physically robust, though rude yet uncorrupted races,
+that, during the first centuries of our reckoning, crowded down from the
+North and East like a gigantic ocean wave, and swamped the worn-out
+universal Empire of Rome, where Christianity had gradually been
+superimposing itself as master, resisted with all their might the
+ascetic doctrines of the Christian preachers. With good grace or bad,
+the latter were forced to reckon with these robust natures. With
+astonishment did the Romans perceive that the customs of those peoples
+were quite different from their own. Tacitus rendered to this fact the
+tribute of his acknowledgment, which, with regard to the Germans, he
+expressed in these words: "The matrimonial bond is, nevertheless, strict
+and severe among them; nor is there anything in their manners more
+commendable than this. Almost singly among the barbarians, they content
+themselves with one wife. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a
+people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband.
+He cuts off the hair of the offender, strips her, and in the presence of
+her relations expels her from his house, and pursues her with stripes
+through the whole village. Nor is any indulgence shown to a prostitute.
+Neither beauty, youth, nor riches can procure her a husband; for none
+there looks on vice with a smile, or calls mutual seduction the way of
+the world. The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence
+pass the age of puberty unexhausted; nor are the virgins hurried into
+marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required; the sexes
+unite equally matched, and robust; and the children inherit the vigor of
+their parents."
+
+With the object in view of holding up a pattern to the Romans, Tacitus
+painted the conjugal conditions of the old Germans with rather too rosy
+a hue. No doubt, the adulteress was severely punished among them; but
+the same did not hold good with regard to the adulterer. At the time of
+Tacitus, the gens was still in bloom among the Germans. He, to whom,
+living under the advanced Roman conditions, the old gentile
+constitution, together with its principles, was bound to seem strange
+and incomprehensible, narrates with astonishment that, with the Germans,
+the mother's brother, considered his nephew as an own son; aye, some
+looked upon the bond of consanguinity between the uncle on the mother's
+side and his nephew as more sacred and closer than that between father
+and son. So that, when hostages were demanded, the sister's son was
+considered a better guarantee than an own son. Engels adds hereto: "If
+an own son was given by the members of such a gens as a pledge for a
+treaty, and he fell a sacrifice through his own father's violation of
+the treaty, the latter had to settle accounts for himself. If, however,
+it was a sister's son who was sacrificed, then the old gentile right was
+violated. The nearest gentile relative, held before all others to
+safeguard the boy or lad, had caused his death; he either had no right
+to offer him as a pledge, or he was bound to observe the treaty."[34]
+
+For the rest, as Engels shows, the mother-right had already yielded to
+the father-right among the Germans, at the time of Tacitus. The children
+inherited from their father; in the absence of these, then the brothers
+and the uncle of the father on the mother's side. The admission of the
+mother's brother as an heir, although descent from the father determined
+the line of inheritance, is explained with the theory that the old right
+had only recently died away. It was only reminiscences of the old right
+that furnished the conditions, which enabled Tacitus to find a, to the
+Romans, incomprehensible regard for the female sex among the Germans. He
+also found that their courage was pricked to the utmost by the women.
+The thought that their women might fall into captivity or slavery was
+the most horrible that the old German could conceive of; it spurred him
+to utmost resistance. But the women also were animated by the spirit
+that possessed the men. When Marius refused the captured women of the
+Teutons to dedicate themselves as priestesses to Vesta (the goddess of
+maidenly chastity) they committed suicide.
+
+In the time of Tacitus, the Germans already acquired settled
+habitations. Yearly the division of land by lots took place. Besides
+that, there was common property in the woods, water and pasture grounds.
+Their lives were yet simple; their wealth principally cattle; their
+dress consisted of coarse woolen mantles, or skins of animals. Neither
+women nor chiefs wore under-clothing. The working of metals was in
+practice only among those tribes located too far away for the
+introduction of Roman products of industry. Justice was administered in
+minor affairs by the council of elders; on more important matters, by
+the assembly of the people. The chiefs were elected, generally out of
+the same family, but the transition of the father-right favored the
+heredity of office, and led finally to the establishment of a hereditary
+nobility, from which later sprang the kingdom. As in Greece and Rome,
+the German gens went to pieces with the rise of private property and the
+development of industries and trade, and through the commingling with
+members of strange tribes and peoples. The place of the gens was taken
+by the community, the mark, the democratic organization of free
+peasants, the latter of which, in the course of many centuries,
+constituted a firm bulwark in the struggles against the nobility, the
+Church and the Princes,--a bulwark that broke down by little and little,
+but that did not wholly crumble even after the feudal State had come to
+power, and the one-time free peasants were in droves reduced to the
+condition of serfs and dependents.
+
+The confederation of marks was represented by the heads of the families.
+Married women, daughters, daughters-in-law were excluded from council
+and administration. The time when women were conspicuous in the conduct
+of the affairs of the tribe--a circumstance that likewise astonished
+Tacitus in the highest degree, and which he reports in terms of
+contempt--were gone. The Salic law abolished in the fifth century of our
+reckoning the succession of the female sex to hereditary domains.
+
+Soon as he married, every member of a mark was entitled to a share in
+the common lands. As a rule, grand-parents, parents and children lived
+under one roof, in communal household. Hence, with a view of being
+allotted a further share, under-aged or unripe sons were not
+infrequently married by their father to some marriageable maiden; the
+father then filled the duties of husband, in the stead of his son.[35]
+Young married couples received a cart-load of beechwood, and timber for
+a block-house. If a daughter was born to the couple, they received one
+load of wood; if a son, two loads.[36] The female sex was considered
+worth only one-half.
+
+_Marriage was simple. A religious formality was unknown. Mutual
+declarations sufficed. As soon as a couple mounted the nuptial bed, the
+marriage was consummated._ The custom that marriage needs an act of the
+Church for its validity, came in only in the ninth century. Only in the
+sixteenth century, on decree of the Council of Trent, was marriage
+declared a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+With the rise of feudalism, the condition of a large number of the
+members of the free communities declined. The victorious army-commanders
+utilized their power to appropriate large territories unto themselves;
+they considered themselves masters of the common property, which they
+distributed among their devoted retinue--slaves, serfs, freedmen,
+generally of foreign descent,--for a term of years, or with the right of
+inheritance. They thus furnished themselves with a court and military
+nobility, in all things devoted to their will. The establishment of the
+large Empire of the Franks finally put an end to the last vestiges of
+the old gentile constitution. In the place of the former councils of
+chiefs, now stood the lieutenants of the army and of the newly formed
+nobility.
+
+Gradually, the mass of the freemen, members of the once free
+communities, lapsed into exhaustion and poverty, due to the continuous
+wars of conquest and the strifes among the great, whose burdens they had
+to bear. They could no longer meet the obligation of furnishing the army
+requisitions. In lieu thereof, Princes and high nobility secured
+servants, while the peasants placed themselves and their property under
+the protection of some temporal or spiritual lord--the Church had
+managed, within but few centuries, to become a great power--wherefor
+they paid rent and tribute. Thus the thitherto free peasant's estate was
+transformed into hired property; and this, with time, was burdened with
+ever more obligations. Once landed in this state of dependence, it was
+not long before the peasant lost his personal freedom also. In this way
+dependence and serfdom spread ever more.
+
+The landlord possessed the almost absolute right of disposal over his
+serfs and dependents. He had the right, as soon as a male reached his
+eighteenth year, or the female her fourteenth, to compel their marriage.
+He could assign a woman to a man, and a man to a woman. He enjoyed the
+same right over widows and widowers. In his attribute of lord over his
+subjects, he also considered the sexual use of his female serfs and
+dependents to be at his own disposal,--a power that finds its expression
+in the "jus primae noctis" (the right of the first night). This right
+also belonged to his representative, the stewart, unless, upon the
+payment of a tribute, the exercise of the right was renounced. The very
+names of the tribute betray its nature.[37]
+
+It is extensively disputed that this "right of the first night" ever
+existed. The "right of the first night" is quite a thorn in the side of
+certain folks, for the reason that the right was still exercised at an
+age, that they love to hold up as a model,--a genuine model of morality
+and piety. It has been pointed out how this "right of the first night"
+was the rudiment of a custom, that hung together with the age of the
+mother-right, when all the women were the wives of all the men of a
+class. With the disappearance of the old family organization, the custom
+survived in the surrender of the bride, on the wedding night, to the men
+of her own community. But, in the course of time, the right is ever more
+restricted, and finally falls to the chief of the tribe, or to the
+priest, as a religious act, to be exercised by them alone. The feudal
+lord assumes the right as a consequence of his power over the person who
+belongs to the land, and which is his property; and he exercises the
+right if he wills, or relinquishes it in lieu of a tribute in products
+or money. How real was the "right of the first night" appears from Jacob
+Grimm's "Weisthumer."[38]
+
+Sugenheim[39] says the "jus primae noctis," as a right appertaining to
+the landlords, originates in that his consent to marriage was necessary.
+Out of this right there arose in Bearn the usage that all the first-born
+of marriages, in which the "jus primae noctis" was exercised, were of
+free rank. Later, the right was generally redeemable by a tribute.
+According to Sugenheim, those who held most stubbornly to the right were
+the Bishops of Amiens; it lasted with them till the beginning of the
+fifteenth century. In Scotland the right was declared redeemable by King
+Malcolm III, towards the end of the eleventh century; in Germany,
+however, it continued in force much longer. According to the archives of
+a Swabian cloister, Adelberg, for the year 1496, the serfs, located at
+Boertlingen, had to redeem the right by the bridegroom's giving a cake
+of salt, and the bride paying one pound seven shillings, or with a pan,
+"in which she can sit with her buttocks." In other places the
+bridegrooms had to deliver to the landlord for ransom as much cheese or
+butter "as their buttocks were thick and heavy." In still other places
+they had to give a handsome cordovan tarbouret "that they could just
+fill."[40] According to the accounts given by the Bavarian Judge of the
+Supreme Court of Appeals, Welsch, the obligation to redeem the "jus
+primae noctis" existed in Bavaria as late as the eighteenth
+century.[41] Furthermore, Engels reports that, among the Welsh and the
+Scots, the "right of the first night" prevailed throughout the whole of
+the Middle Ages, with the difference only that, due to the continuance
+of the gentile organization, it was not the landlord, or his
+representative, but the chief of the clan, as the last representative of
+the one-time husbands in common, who exercised the right, in so far as
+it was not redeemed.
+
+There is, accordingly, no doubt whatever that the so-called "right of
+the first night" existed, not only during the whole of the Middle Ages,
+but continued even down to modern days, and played its _role_ under the
+code of feudalism. In Poland, the noblemen arrogated the right to
+deflower any maid they pleased, and a hundred lashes were given him who
+complained. That the sacrifice of maidenly honor seems even to-day a
+matter of course to landlords and their officials in the country,
+transpires, not only in Germany, oftener than one imagines, but it is a
+frequent occurrence all over the East and South of Europe, as is
+asserted by experts in countries and the peoples.
+
+In the days of feudalism, marriage was a matter of interest to the
+landlord. The children that sprang therefrom entered into the same
+relation of subjection to him as their parents; the labor-power at his
+disposal increased in numbers, his income rose. Hence _spiritual_ and
+_temporal_ landlords favored marriage among their vassals. The matter
+lay otherwise, particularly for the Church, if, by the prevention of
+marriage, the prospect existed of bringing land into the possession of
+the Church by testamentary bequests. This, however, occurred only with
+the lower ranks of freemen, whose condition, due to the circumstances
+already mentioned, became ever more precarious, and who, listening to
+religious suggestions and superstition, relinquished their property to
+the Church in order to find protection and peace behind the walls of a
+cloister. Others, again, placed themselves under the protection of the
+Church, in consideration of the payment of duties, and the rendering of
+services. Frequently their descendants fell on this route a prey to the
+very fate which their ancestors had sought to escape. They either
+gradually became Church dependents, or were turned into novices for the
+cloisters.
+
+The towns, which, since the eleventh century were springing up, then had
+at that time a lively interest in promoting the increase of population;
+settlement in them and marriage were made as easy as possible. The towns
+became especially asylums for countrymen, fleeing from unbearable
+oppression, and for fugitive serfs and dependents. Later, however,
+matters changed. So soon as the towns had acquired power, and contained
+a well-organized body of the trades, hostility arose against new
+immigrants, mostly propertyless peasants, who wanted to settle as
+handicraftsmen. Inconvenient competitors were scented in these. The
+barriers raised against immigration were multiplied. High settlement
+fees, expensive examinations, limitations of a trade to a certain number
+of masters and apprentices,--all this condemned thousands to pauperism,
+to a life of celibacy, and to vagabondage. When, in the course of the
+sixteenth century, and for reasons to be mentioned later, the
+flower-time of the towns was passing away, and their decline had set in,
+the narrow horizon of the time caused the impediments to settlement and
+independence to increase still more. Other circumstances also
+contributed their demoralizing effect.
+
+The tyranny of the landlords increased so mightily from decade to decade
+that many of the vassals preferred to exchange their sorrowful life for
+the trade of the tramp or the highwayman,--an occupation that was
+greatly aided by the thick woods and the poor condition of the roads.
+Or, invited by the many violent disturbances of the time, they became
+soldiers, who sold themselves where the price was highest, or the booty
+seemed most promising. An extensive male and female slum-proletariat
+came into existence, and became a plague to the land. The Church
+contributed faithfully to the general depravity. Already, in the
+celibatic state of the priesthood there was a main-spring for the
+fostering of sexual excesses; these were still further promoted through
+the continuous intercourse kept up with Italy and Rome.
+
+Rome was not merely the capital of Christendom, as the residence of the
+Papacy. True to its antecedents during the heathen days of the Empire,
+Rome had become the new Babel, the European High School of immorality;
+and the Papal court was its principal seat. With its downfall, the Roman
+Empire had bequeathed all its vices to Christian Europe. These vices
+were particularly nursed in Italy, whence, materially aided by the
+intercourse of the priesthood with Rome, they crowded into Germany. The
+uncommonly large number of priests, to a great extent vigorous men,
+whose sexual wants were intensified by a lazy and luxurious life, and
+who, through compulsory celibacy, were left to illegitimate or unnatural
+means of gratification, carried immorality into all circles of society.
+This priesthood became a sort of pest-like danger to the morals of the
+female sex in the towns and villages. Monasteries and nunneries--and
+their number was legion--were not infrequently distinguishable from
+public houses only in that the life led in them was more unbridled and
+lascivious, and in that numerous crimes, especially infanticide, could
+be more easily concealed, seeing that in the cloisters only they
+exercised the administration of justice who led in the wrong-doing.
+Often did peasants seek to safeguard wife and daughter from priestly
+seduction by accepting none as a spiritual shepherd who did not bind
+himself to keep a concubine;--a circumstance that led a Bishop of
+Constance to impose a "concubine tax" upon the priests of his diocese.
+Such a condition of things explains the historically attested fact, that
+during the Middle Ages--pictured to us by silly romanticists as so pious
+and moral--not less than 1500 strolling women turned up in 1414, at the
+Council of Constance.
+
+But these conditions came in by no means with the decline of the Middle
+Ages. They began early, and gave continuous occasion for complaints and
+decrees. In 802 Charles the Great issued one of these, which ran this
+wise: "The cloisters of nuns shall be strictly watched; the nuns may not
+roam about; they shall be kept with great diligence; neither shall they
+live in strife and quarrel with one another; they shall in no wise be
+disobedient to their Superiors or Abbesses, or cross the will of these.
+Wherever they are placed under the rules of a cloister they are to
+observe them throughout. Not whoring, not drunkenness, not covetousness
+shall they be the ministrants of, but in all ways lead just and sober
+lives. Neither shall any man enter their cloisters, except to attend
+mass, and he shall immediately depart." A regulation of the year 869
+provided: "If priests keep several women, or shed the blood of
+Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be
+deprived of their priesthood, because they are worse than laymen." The
+fact that the possession of several women was forbidden in those days
+only to the priests, indicates that marriage with several wives was no
+rare occurrence in the ninth century. In fact, there were no laws
+forbidding it.
+
+Aye, and even later, at the time of the Minnesaenger, during the twelfth
+and thirteenth centuries, the possession of several wives was considered
+in order.[42]
+
+The position of woman was aggravated still more by the circumstance
+that, along with all the impediments which gradually made marriage and
+settlement harder, their number materially exceeded that of the men. As
+special reasons herefor are to be considered the numerous wars and
+feuds, together with the perilousness of commercial voyages of those
+days. Furthermore, mortality among men was higher, as the result of
+habitual excesses and drunkenness. The predisposition to sickness and
+death that flowed from such habits of life, manifested itself strongly
+in the numerous pest-like diseases that raged during the Middle Ages. In
+the interval between 1326 to 1400, there were thirty-two; from 1400 to
+1500, forty-one; and from 1500 to 1600, thirty years of pestilence.[43]
+
+Swarms of women roamed along the highways as jugglers, singers and
+players in the company of strolling students and clericals; they flooded
+the fairs and markets; they were to be found wherever large crowds
+gathered, or festivals were celebrated. In the regiments of
+foot-soldiers they constituted separate divisions, with their own
+sergeants. There, and quite in keeping with the guild character of the
+age, they were assigned to different duties, according to looks and age;
+and, under severe penalties, were not allowed to prostitute themselves
+to any man outside of their own branch. In the camps, they had to fetch
+hay, straw and wood; fill up trenches and ponds; and attend to the
+cleaning of the place along with the baggage lads. In sieges, they had
+to fill up the ditches with brushwood, lumber and faggots in order to
+help the storming of the place. They assisted in placing the field
+pieces in position; and when these stuck in the bottomless roads, they
+had to give a hand in pulling them out again.[44]
+
+In order to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless
+women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and
+placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments,
+the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither
+these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive
+all that applied for succor.
+
+The difficulties in the way of marriage; the tours undertaken by
+Princes, and by temporal and spiritual magnates, who with their retinues
+of knights and bondmen, visited the cities; even the male youth of the
+cities themselves, the married men not excluded, who, buoyant with life
+and unaffected by scruples, sought change in pleasures;--all this
+produced as early as in the Middle Ages the demand for prostitution. As
+every trade was in those days organized and regulated, and could not
+exist without a guild, it so was with prostitution also. In all large
+cities there were "houses of women"--municipal, prince or Church
+regalities--the net profits of which flowed into the corresponding
+treasuries. The women in these houses had a "head-mistress," elected by
+themselves, who was to keep discipline and order, and whose special
+duty it was to diligently watch that non-guild competitors, the
+"interlopers," did not injure the legitimate trade. When caught, these
+were condignly punished. The inmates of one of these houses for women,
+located in Nuerenberg, complained with the Magistrate, that "other
+inn-keepers also kept women, who walked the streets at night, and took
+in married and other men, and that these plied (the trade) to such an
+extent, and so much more brazenly, than they did themselves in the
+municipal (guild) girls-house, that it was a pity and a shame to see
+such things happen in this worthy city."[45] These "houses for women"
+enjoyed special protection; disturbances of the peace in their
+neighborhood were fined twice as heavily. The female guild members also
+had the right to take their place in the processions and festivals, at
+which, as is known, the guilds always assisted. Not infrequently were
+they also drawn in as guests at the tables of Princes and Municipal
+Councilmen. The "houses of women" were considered serviceable for the
+"protection of marriage and of the honor of the maidens,"--the identical
+reasoning with which State brothels were justified in Athens, and even
+to-day prostitution is excused. All the same, there were not wanting
+violent persecutions of the _filles de joie_, proceeding from the
+identical male circles who supported them with their custom and their
+money. The Emperor Charlemagne decreed that prostitutes shall be dragged
+naked to the market place and there whipped; and yet, he himself, "the
+Most Christian King and Emperor," had not less than six wives at a time;
+and neither were his daughters, who followed their father's example, by
+any means paragons of virtue. They prepared for him in the course of
+their lives many an unpleasant hour, and brought him home several
+illegitimate children. Alkuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne,
+warned his pupils against "the crowned doves, who flew at night over the
+palatinate," and he meant thereby the daughters of the Emperor.
+
+The identical communities, that officially organized the brothel system,
+that took it under their protection, and that granted all manner of
+privileges to the "priestesses of Venus," had the hardest and most cruel
+punishment in reserve for the poor and forsaken Magdalen. The female
+infanticide, who, driven by desperation, killed the fruit of her womb,
+was, as a rule, sentenced to suffer the most cruel death penalty; nobody
+bothered about the unconscionable seducer himself. Perchance he even sat
+on the Judge's bench, which decreed the sentence of death upon the poor
+victim. The same happens to-day.[46] Likewise was adultery by the wife
+punished most severely; she was certain of the pillory, at least; but
+over the adultery of the husband the mantle of Christian charity was
+thrown.
+
+In Wuerzburg, during the Middle Ages, the keeper of women swore before
+the Magistrate: "To be true and good to the city, and to procure women."
+Similarly in Nuerenberg, Ulm, Leipsic, Cologne, Frankfurt and elsewhere.
+In Ulm, where the "houses of women" were abolished in 1537, the guilds
+moved in 1551 that they be restored "in order to avoid worse disorders."
+Distinguished foreigners were provided with _filles de joie_ at the
+expense of the city. When King Ladislaus entered Vienna in 1452, the
+Magistrate sent to meet him a deputation of public girls, who, clad only
+in light gauze, revealed the handsomest shapes. At his entry into
+Brugges, the Emperor Charles V was likewise greeted by a deputation of
+naked girls. Such occurrences met not with objection in those days.
+
+Imaginative romancers, together with calculating people, have endeavored
+to represent the Middle Ages as particularly "moral," and animated with
+a veritable worship for woman. The period of the Minnesangers--from the
+twelfth to the fourteenth century--contributed in giving a color to the
+pretence. The knightly "Minnedienst" (service of love) which the French,
+Italian and German knights first became acquainted with among the
+Moriscos of Spain, is cited as evidence concerning the high degree of
+respect in which woman was held at that time. But there are several
+things to be kept in mind. In the first place, the knights constituted
+but a trifling percentage of the population, and, proportionately, the
+knights' women of the women in general; in the second place, only a very
+small portion of the knights exercised the so-called "Minnedienst;"
+thirdly, the true nature of this service is grossly misunderstood, or
+has been intentionally misrepresented. The age in which the
+"Minnedienst" flourished was at the same time the age of the grossest
+right-of-the-fist in Germany,--an age when all bonds of order were
+dissolved; and the knights indulged themselves without restraint in
+waylaying of travelers, robbery and incendiarism. Such days of brutal
+force are not the days in which mild and poetic sentiments are likely to
+prevail to any perceptible extent. The contrary is true. This period
+contributed to destroy whatever regard possibly existed for the female
+sex. The knights, both of country and town, consisted mainly of rough,
+dissolute fellows, whose principal passion, besides feuds and guzzling,
+was the unbridled gratification of sexual cravings. The chronicles of
+the time do not tire of telling about the deeds of rapine and violence,
+that the nobility was guilty of, particularly in the country, but in the
+cities also, where, appearing in patrician _role_, the nobility held in
+its hands the city regiment, down to the thirteenth, and partly even in
+the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor did the wronged have any
+means of redress; in the city, the squires (yunker) controlled the
+judges' bench; in the country, the landlord, invested with criminal
+jurisdiction, was the knight, the Abbot or the Bishop. Accordingly, it
+is a violent exaggeration that, amid such morals and customs, the
+nobility and rulers had a particular respect for their wives and
+daughters, and carried them on their hands as a sort of higher beings,
+let alone that they cultivated such respect for the wives and daughters
+of the townsmen and peasants, for whom both the temporal and the
+spiritual masters entertained and proclaimed contempt only.
+
+A very small minority of knights consisted of sincere worshippers of
+female beauty, but their worship was by no means Platonic; it pursued
+quite material ends. And these material ends were pursued by those also
+with whom Christian mysticism, coupled with natural sensuousness, made a
+unique combination. Even that harlequin among the worshippers of "lovely
+women," Ulrich von Lichtenstein, of laughable memory, remained Platonic
+only so long as he had to. At bottom the "Minnedienst" was the
+apotheosis of the best beloved--at the expense of the own wife; _a sort
+of hetairism, carried over into Middle Age Christianity_, as it existed
+in Greece at the time of Pericles. In point of fact, during the Middle
+Ages, the mutual seduction of one another's wives was a "Minnedienst"
+strongly in vogue among the knights, just the same as, in certain
+circles of our own bourgeoisie, similar performances are now repeated.
+That much for the romanticism of the Middle Ages and their regard for
+women.
+
+There can be no doubt that, in the open recognition of the pleasures of
+the senses, there lay in that age the acknowledgment that the natural
+impulses, implanted in every healthy and ripe human being, are entitled
+to be satisfied. In so far there lay in the demonstration a victory of
+vigorous nature over the asceticism of Christianity. On the other hand,
+it must be noted that the recognition and satisfaction fell to the share
+of only one sex, while the other sex, on the contrary, was treated as if
+it could not and should not have the same impulses; the slightest
+transgression of the laws of morality prescribed by man, was severely
+punished. The narrow and limited horizon, within which moved the citizen
+of the Middle Ages, caused him to adopt narrow and limited measures also
+with respect to the position of woman. And, as a consequence of
+continued oppression and peculiar education, woman herself has so
+completely adapted herself to her master's habits and system of thought,
+that she finds her condition natural and proper.
+
+Do we not know that there have been millions of slaves who found
+slavery natural, and never would have freed themselves, had their
+liberators not risen from the midst of the class of the slave-holders?
+Did not Prussian peasants, when, as a result of the Stein laws, they
+were to be freed from serfdom, petition to be left as they were,
+"because who was to take care of them when they fell sick?" And is it
+not similarly with the modern Labor Movement? How many workingmen do not
+allow themselves to be influenced and led without a will of their own?
+
+The oppressed needs the stimulator and firer, because he lacks the
+independence and faculty for initiative. It was so with the modern
+proletarian movement; it is so also in the struggle for the emancipation
+of woman, which is intimately connected with that of the proletariat.
+Even in the instance of the comparatively favorably situated bourgeois
+of old, noble and clerical advocates broke the way open for him to
+conduct his battle for freedom.
+
+However numerous the shortcomings of the Middle Ages, there was then a
+healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native
+disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to
+suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret
+lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling
+things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a
+natural way;--all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that
+age familiar with the piquant double sense, in which, out of defective
+naturalness and out of a prudery that has become morality, things that
+may not be clearly uttered, are veiled, and are thereby rendered all the
+more harmful; such a language incites but does not satisfy; it suggests
+but does not speak out. Our social conversation, our novels and our
+theatres are full of these piquant equivoques,--and their effect is
+visible. This spiritualism, which is not the spiritualism of the
+transcendental philosopher, but that of the _roue_, and that hides
+itself behind the spiritualism of religion, has great power to-day.
+
+The healthy sensualism of the Middle Ages found in Luther its classic
+interpreter. We have here to do, not so much with the religious
+reformer, as with Luther the man. On the human side, Luther's robust
+primeval nature stepped forward unadulterated; it compelled him to
+express his appetite for love and enjoyment forcibly and without
+reserve. His position, as former Roman Catholic clergyman, had opened
+his eyes. By personal practice, so to speak, had he learned the
+unnaturalness of the life led by the monks and nuns. Hence the warmth
+with which he warred against clerical and monastic celibacy. His words
+hold good to this day, for all those who believe they may sin against
+nature, and imagine they can reconcile with their conceptions of
+morality and propriety, governmental and social institutions that
+prevent millions from fulfilling their natural mission. Luther says:
+"Woman, except as high and rare grace, can dispense with man as little
+as she can with food, sleep, water and other natural wants. Conversely,
+also, neither can man dispense with woman. The reason is this: It is as
+deeply implanted in nature to beget children as to eat and drink.
+Therefore did God furnish the body with members, veins, discharges and
+all that is needed therefor. He who will resist this, and prevent its
+going as Nature wills, what else does he but endeavor to resist Nature's
+being Nature, that fire burn, water wet, that man eat, drink or sleep?"
+And in his sermon on married life he says: "As little as it is in my
+power that I be not a man, just so little is it in your power to be
+without a man. For it is not a matter of free will or deliberation, but
+a necessary, natural matter that all that is male must have a wife, and
+what is female must have a husband." Luther did not speak in this
+energetic manner in behalf of married life and the necessity of sexual
+intercourse only; he also turns against the idea that marriage and
+Church have anything in common. In this he stood squarely on the ground
+of the olden days, which considered marriage an act of free will on the
+part of those who engaged in it, and that did not concern the Church. On
+this head he said: "Know, therefore, that marriage is an outside affair,
+as any other earthly act. The same as I am free to eat, drink, sleep,
+walk, ride, deal, speak and trade with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk or a
+heretic, _likewise am I free to enter into and remain in wedlock with
+one of them. Turn your back upon the fool laws that forbid such a
+thing_.... A heathen is a man and woman, created by God in perfect form,
+as well as St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Luke; be then silent for a
+loose and false Christian that you are." Luther, like other Reformers,
+pronounced himself against all limitation of marriage, and he was for
+also allowing the re-union of divorced couples, against which the Church
+was up in arms. He said: "As to the manner in which marriage and divorce
+are to be conducted among us, I claim that it should be made the
+business of the jurists, and placed under the jurisdiction of earthly
+concerns, because marriage is but an earthly and outside matter." It was
+in keeping with this view that, not until the close of the seventeenth
+century, was marriage by the Church made obligatory under Protestantism.
+Until then so-called "conscience marriage" held good, i. e., the simple
+mutual obligation to consider each other man and wife, and to mean to
+live in wedlock. Such a marriage was considered by German law to be
+legally entered into. Luther even went so far that he conceded to the
+unsatisfied party--even if that be the woman--the right to seek
+satisfaction outside of the marriage bonds "in order to satisfy nature,
+which cannot be crossed."[47] This conception of marriage is the same
+that prevailed in antiquity, and that came up later during the French
+Revolution. Luther here set up maxims that will arouse the strongest
+indignation of a large portion of our "respectable men and women," who,
+in their religious zeal, are so fond of appealing to him. In his
+treatise "On Married Life,"[48] he says: "If an impotent man falls to
+the lot of a hearty woman, and she still cannot openly take another, and
+does not wish to marry again, she shall say unto her husband: 'Lo, dear
+husband, thou shalt not be wronged by me. Thou hast deceived me and my
+young body, and hast therefore brought my honor and salvation into
+danger. There is no glory to God between us two. Grant me to cohabit
+secretly with thy brother or nearest friend, and thou shalt have the
+name, _so that thy property come not to strange heirs; and allow thyself
+to be, in turn, willingly deceived by me, as thou did deceive me without
+thy will_." The husband, Luther goes on to show, is in duty bound to
+grant the request. "If he declines, then has she the right to run away
+from him to another, and to woo elsewhere. Conversely, if a woman
+declines to exercise the conjugal duty, her husband has the right to
+cohabit with another, only he should tell her so beforehand."[49] It
+will be seen that these are wonderfully radical, and, in the eyes of our
+days, so rich in hypocritical prudery, even downright "immoral" views,
+that the great Reformer develops. Luther, however, expressed only that
+which, at the time, was the popular view.[50]
+
+The passages quoted from the writings and addresses of Luther on
+marriage, are of special importance for the reason that these views are
+in strong contradiction with those that prevail to-day in the Church. In
+the struggle that it latterly has had to conduct with the clerical
+fraternity, the Social Democracy can appeal with full right to Luther,
+who takes on the question of marriage a stand free from all prejudice.
+
+Luther and all the Reformers went even further in the marriage question,
+true enough, only for opportunist reasons, and out of complaisance
+towards the Princes whose strong support and permanent friendship they
+sought to secure and keep to the Reformation. The friendly Duke of
+Hessen, Philip I, had, besides his legitimate wife, a sweetheart,
+willing to yield to his wishes, but only under the condition that he
+marry her. It was a thorny problem. A divorce from the wife, in the
+absence of convincing reasons, would give great scandal; on the other
+hand, a marriage with two women at a time was an unheard of thing with a
+Christian Prince of modern days; it would give rise to no less a
+scandal. All this notwithstanding, Philip, in his passion, decided in
+favor of the latter step. The point was now to establish that the act
+did no violence to the Bible, and to secure the approval of the
+Reformers, especially of Luther and Melanchthon. The negotiations, set
+on foot by the Duke, began first with Butzer, who declared himself in
+favor of the plan, and promised to win over Luther and Melanchthon.
+Butzer justified his opinion with the argument: To possess several wives
+at once was not against the evangelium. St. Paul, who said much upon the
+subject of who was not to inherit the kingdom of God, made no mention of
+those who had two wives. St. Paul, on the contrary, said "that a Bishop
+was to have but one wife, the same with his servants; hence, if it had
+been compulsory that every man have but one wife he would have so
+ordered, and forbidden a plurality of wives." Luther and Melanchthon
+joined this reasoning, and gave their assent to double marriages, after
+the Duke's wife herself had consented to the marriage with the second
+wife under the condition "that he was to fulfil his marital duties
+towards her more than ever before."[51] The question of the
+justification of bigamy had before then--at the time when the issue was
+the consenting to the double marriage of Henry VIII of England--caused
+many a headache to Luther, as appears from a letter to the Chancellor of
+Saxony, Brink, dated January, 1524. Luther wrote to him that, _in point
+of principle, he could not reject bigamy_ because it ran not counter to
+Holy Writ;[52] but that he held it scandalous when the same happened
+among Christians, "who should leave alone even things that are
+permissible." After the wedding of the Duke, which actually took place
+in March, 1540, and in answer to a letter of acknowledgment from him,
+Luther wrote (April 10): "That your Grace is happy on the score of our
+opinion, _which we fain would see kept secret; else, even the rude
+peasants_ (in imitation of the Duke's example) might finally produce as
+strong, if not stronger, reasons, whereby we might then have much
+trouble on our hands."
+
+Upon Melanchthon, the consent to the double marriage of the Duke must
+have been less hard. Before that, he had written to Henry VIII "every
+Prince has the right to introduce polygamy in his domains." But the
+double marriage of the Duke made such a great and unpleasant sensation,
+that, in 1541, he circulated a treatise in which polygamy is defended as
+no transgression against Holy Writ.[53] People were not then living in
+the ninth or twelfth century, when polygamy was tolerated without
+shocking society. Social conditions had very materially changed in the
+meantime; in a great measure the mark had had to yield to the power of
+the nobility and the clergy; it had even extensively disappeared, and
+was further uprooted after the unhappy issue of the Peasant Wars.
+Private property had become the general foundation of society. Beside
+the rural population, that cultivated the soil, a strong, self-conscious
+handicraft element had arisen, and was dominated by the interests of its
+own station. Commerce had assumed large dimensions, and had produced a
+merchant class, which, what with the splendor of its outward position
+and its wealth, awoke the envy and hostility of a nobility that was
+sinking ever deeper into poverty and licentiousness. The burghers'
+system of private property had triumphed everywhere, as was evidenced by
+the then universal introduction of the Roman law; the contrasts between
+the classes were palpable, and everywhere did they bump against one
+another. Monogamy became, under such conditions, the natural basis for
+the sexual relations; a step such as taken by the Duke of Hessen now did
+violence to the ruling morals and customs, which, after all, are but the
+form of expression of the economic conditions that happen at the time to
+prevail. On the other hand, society came to terms with prostitution, as
+a necessary accompaniment of monogamy, and an institution supplemental
+thereto;--and tolerated it.
+
+In recognizing the gratification of the sexual impulses as a law of
+Nature, Luther but uttered what the whole male population thought, and
+openly claimed for itself. He, however, also contributed--through the
+Reformation, which carried through the abolition of celibacy among the
+clergy, and the removal of the cloisters from Protestant
+territories--that to hundreds of thousands the opportunity was offered
+to do justice to nature's impulses under legitimate forms. True
+again,--due to the existing order of property, and to the legislation
+that flowed therefrom,--hundreds of thousands of others continued to
+remain excluded. The Reformation was the first protest of the
+large-propertied bourgeois or capitalist class, then rising into being,
+against the restrictions imposed by feudalism in Church, State and
+society. It strove after freedom from the narrow bonds of the guild, the
+court and the judiciary; it strove after the centralization of the
+State, after the abolition of the numerous seats of idlers, the
+monasteries; and it demanded their use for practical production. The
+movement aimed at the abolition of the feudal form of property and
+production; it aimed at placing in its stead the free property of the
+capitalist, i. e., in the stead of the existing system of mutual
+protection in small and disconnected circles, there was to be unchained
+the free individual struggle of individual efforts in the competition
+for property.
+
+On the religious field, Luther was the representative of these bourgeois
+aspirations. When he took a stand for the freedom of marriage, the
+question could not be simply about civic marriage, which was realized in
+Germany only in our own age through the civil laws and the legislation
+therewith connected,--freedom to move, freedom of pursuit, and freedom
+of domicile. In how far the position of woman was thereby improved will
+be shown later. Meanwhile things had not matured so far at the time of
+the Reformation. If, through the regulations of the Reformation many
+were afforded the possibility to marry, the severe persecutions that
+followed later hampered the freedom of sexual intercourse. The Roman
+Catholic clergy having in its time displayed a certain degree of
+tolerance, and even laxity, towards sexual excesses, now the Protestant
+clergy, once itself was provided for, raged all the more violently
+against the practice. War was declared upon the public "houses of
+women;" they were closed as "Holes of Satan;" the prostitutes were
+persecuted as "daughters of the devil;" and every woman who slipped was
+placed on the pillory as a specimen of all sinfulness.
+
+Out of the once hearty small property-holding bourgeois of the Middle
+Ages, who lived and let live, now became a bigoted, straight-laced,
+dark-browed maw-worm, who "saved-up," to the end that his large
+property-holding bourgeois successor might live all the more lustily in
+the nineteenth century, and might be able to dissipate all the more. The
+respectable citizen, with his stiff necktie, his narrow horizon and his
+severe code of morals, was the prototype of society. The legitimate
+wife, who had not been particularly edified by the sensuality of the
+Middle Ages, tolerated in Roman Catholic days, was quite at one with the
+Puritanical spirit of Protestantism. But other circumstances supervened,
+that, affecting, as they did, unfavorably the general condition of
+things in Germany, joined in exercising in general an unfavorable
+influence upon the position of woman.
+
+The revolution--effected in production, money and trade, particularly as
+regarded Germany,--due to the discovery of America and the sea-route to
+the East Indies, produced, first of all, a great reaction on the social
+domain. Germany ceased to be the center of European traffic and
+commerce. Spain, Portugal, Holland, England, took successively the
+leadership, the latter keeping it until our own days. German industry
+and German commerce began to decline. At the same time, the religious
+Reformation had destroyed the political unity of the nation. The
+Reformation became the cloak under which the German principalities
+sought to emancipate themselves from the Imperial power. In their turn,
+the Princes brought the power of the nobility under their own control,
+and, in order to reach this end all the more easily, favored the cities,
+not a few of which, in sight of the ever more troubled times, placed
+themselves, of their own free will, under the rule of the Princes. The
+final effect was that the bourgeois or capitalist class, alarmed at the
+financial decline of its trade, raised ever higher barriers to protect
+itself against unpleasant competition. The ossification of conditions
+gained ground; and with it the impoverishment of the masses.
+
+Later, the Reformation had for a consequence the calling forth of the
+religious wars and persecutions--always, of course, as cloaks for the
+political and economic purposes of the Princes--that, with short
+interruptions, raged throughout Germany for over a century, and ended
+with the country's complete exhaustion, at the close of the Thirty
+Years' War in 1648. Germany had become an immense field of corpses and
+ruins; whole territories and provinces lay waste; hundreds of cities,
+thousands of villages had been partially or wholly burnt down; many of
+them have since disappeared forever from the face of the earth. In other
+places the population had sunk to a third, a fourth, a fifth, even to an
+eighth and tenth part. Such was the case, for instance, with cities like
+Neurenberg, and with the whole of Franconia. And now, at the hour of
+extreme need, and with the end in view of providing the depopulated
+cities and villages as quickly as possible with an increased number of
+people, the drastic measure was resorted to of "raising the law," and
+_allowing a man two wives_. The wars had carried off the men; of women
+there was an excess. On February 14, 1650, the Congress of Franconia,
+held in Nuerenberg, adopted the resolution that "men under sixty years
+of age shall not be admitted to the monasteries;" furthermore, it
+ordered "the priests and curates, if not ordained, and the canons of
+religious establishments, shall marry;" "moreover every male shall be
+allowed to marry two wives; and all and each males are earnestly
+reminded, and shall be often warned, _from the pulpit_ also, to so
+comport themselves in this matter; and care shall be taken that he shall
+fully and with becoming discretion diligently endeavor, so that, as a
+married man, to whom is granted that he take two wives, he not only take
+proper care of both wives, but avoid all misunderstanding among them."
+At that time, we see, matters that are to-day kept under strictest
+secrecy, were often discussed as of course from the pulpit itself.
+
+But not commerce alone was at a standstill. Traffic and industry had
+been extensively ruined during this protracted period; they could
+recover only by little and little. A large part of the population had
+become wild and demoralized, disused to all orderly occupations. During
+the wars, it was the robbing, plundering, despoiling and murdering
+armies of mercenaries, which crossed Germany from one end to the other,
+that burned and knocked down friend and foe alike; after the wars, it
+was countless robbers, beggars and swarms of vagabonds that threw the
+population into fear and terror, and impeded and destroyed commerce and
+traffic. For the female sex, in particular, a period of deep suffering
+had broken. Contempt for woman had made great progress during the times
+of license. The general lack of work weighed heaviest on their
+shoulders; by the thousands did these women, like the male vagabonds,
+infest the roads and woods, and filled the poorhouses and prisons of the
+Princes and the cities. On top of all these sufferings came the forcible
+ejectment of numerous peasant families by a land-hungry nobility.
+
+Compelled, since the Reformation, ever more to bend before the might of
+the Princes, and rendered ever more dependent upon these through court
+offices and military posts, the nobility now sought to recoup itself
+double and threefold with the robbery of peasant estates for the injury
+it had sustained at the hand of the Princes. The Reformation offered the
+Princes the desired pretext to appropriate the rich Church estates,
+which they swallowed in innumerable acres of land. The Elector August of
+Saxony, for instance, had turned not less than three hundred clergy
+estates from their original purpose, up to the close of the sixteenth
+century.[54] Similarly did his brothers and cousins, the other
+Protestant Princes, and, above all, the Princes of Brandenburg. The
+nobility only imitated the example by bagging peasant estates, that had
+lost their owners, by ejecting free as well as serf peasants from house
+and home, and enriching themselves with the goods of these. To this
+particular end, the miscarried peasant revolts of the sixteenth century
+furnished the best pretext. After the first attempts had succeeded,
+never after were reasons wanting to proceed further in equally violent
+style. With the aid of all manner of chicaneries, vexations and
+twistings of the law--whereto the in-the-meantime naturalized Roman law
+lent a convenient handle--the peasants were bought out at the lowest
+prices, or they were driven from their property in order to round up the
+estates of noblemen. Whole villages, the peasant homes of as much as
+half a province, were in this way wiped out. Thus--so as to give a few
+illustrations--out of 12,543 peasant homestead appanages of knightly
+houses, which Mecklenburg still possessed at the time of the Thirty
+Years' War, there were, in 1848, only 1,213 left. In Pommerania, since
+1628, not less than 12,000 peasant homesteads disappeared. The change in
+peasant economy, that took place in the course of the seventeenth
+century, was a further incentive for the expropriation of the peasant
+homesteads, especially to turn the last rests of the commons into the
+property of the nobility. The system of rotation of crops was
+introduced. It provided for a rotation in cultivation within given
+spaces of time. Corn lands were periodically turned into meadows. This
+favored the raising of cattle, and made possible the reduction of the
+number of farm-hands. The crowd of beggars and tramps grew ever larger,
+and thus one decree followed close upon the heels of another to reduce,
+by the application of the severest punishments, the number of beggars
+and vagabonds.
+
+In the cities matters lay no better than in the country districts.
+Before then, women were active in very many trades in the capacity of
+working women as well as of employers. There were, for instance, female
+furriers in Frankfurt and in the cities of Sleswig; bakers, in the
+cities of the middle Rhine; embroiderers of coats of arms and
+beltmakers, in Cologne and Strassburg; strap-cutters, in Bremen;
+clothing-cutters in Frankfurt; tanners in Nuerenberg; gold spinners and
+beaters in Cologne.[55] Women were now crowded back. The abandonment of
+the pompous Roman Catholic worship alone, due to the Protestantizing of
+a large portion of Germany, either injured severely a number of trades,
+especially the artistic ones, or destroyed them altogether; and it was
+in just these trades that many working women were occupied. As,
+moreover, it ever happens when a social state of things is moving to its
+downfall, the wrongest methods are resorted to, and the evil is thereby
+aggravated. The sad economic condition of most of the German nations
+caused the decimated population to appear as _overpopulation_, and
+contributed greatly towards rendering a livelihood harder to earn, and
+towards prohibitions of marriage.
+
+Not until the eighteenth century did a slow improvement of matters set
+in. The absolute Princes had the liveliest interest, with the view of
+raising the standard abroad of their rule, to increase the population of
+their territories. They needed this, partly in order to obtain soldiers
+for their wars, partly also to gain taxpayers, who were to raise the
+sums needed either for the army, or for the extravagant indulgences of
+the court, or for both. Following the example of Louis XIV of France,
+the majority of the then extraordinarily numerous princely courts of
+Germany displayed great lavishness in all manner of show and tinsel.
+This was especially the case in the matter of the keeping of
+mistresses, which stood in inverse ratio to the size and capabilities of
+the realms and realmlets. The history of these courts during the
+eighteenth century belongs to the ugliest chapters of history. Libraries
+are filled with the chronicles of the scandals of that era. One
+potentate sought to surpass the other in hollow pretentiousness, insane
+lavishness and expensive military fooleries. Above all, the most
+incredible was achieved in the way of female excesses. It is hard to
+determine which of the many German courts the palm should be assigned to
+for extravagance and for a life that vitiated public morals. To-day it
+was this, to-morrow that court; no German State escaped the plague. The
+nobility aped the Princes, and the citizens in the residence cities aped
+the nobility. If the daughter of a citizen's family had the luck to
+please a gentleman high at court, perchance the Serenissimus himself, in
+nineteen cases out of twenty she felt highly blessed by such favor, and
+her family was ready to hand her over for a mistress to the nobleman or
+the Prince. The same was the case with most of the noble families if one
+of their daughters found favor with the Prince. Characterlessness and
+shamelessness ruled over wide circles. As bad as the worst stood matters
+in the two German capitals, Vienna and Berlin. In the Capua of Germany,
+Vienna, true enough, the strict Maria Theresa reigned through a large
+portion of the century, but she was impotent against the doings of a
+rich nobility, steeped in sensuous pleasures, and of the citizen circles
+that emulated the nobility. With the Chastity Commissions that she
+established, and in the aid of which an extensive spy-system was
+organized, she partly provoked bitterness, and partly made herself
+laughable. The success was zero. In frivolous Vienna, sayings like these
+made the rounds during the second half of the eighteenth century: "You
+must love your neighbor like yourself, that is to say, you must love
+your neighbor's wife as much as your own;" or "If the wife goes to the
+right, the husband may go to the left: if she takes an attendant, he
+takes a lady friend." In how frivolous a vein marriage and adultery were
+then taken, transpires from a letter of the poet Ew. Chr. von Kleist,
+addressed in 1751 to his friend Gleim. Among other things he there says:
+"You are already informed on the adventure of the Mark-Graf Heinrich. He
+sent his wife to his country seat and intends to divorce her because he
+found the Prince of Holstein in bed with her.... The Mark-Graf might
+have done better had he kept quiet about the affair, instead of now
+causing half Berlin and all the world to talk about him. Moreover, _such
+a natural thing should not be taken so ill_, all the more when, like the
+Mark-Graf, one is not so waterproof himself. Mutual repulsion, we all
+know, is unavoidable in married life: all husbands and wives are
+perforce unfaithful, due to _their illusions concerning other estimable
+persons. How can that be punished that one is forced to?_" On Berlin
+conditions, the English Ambassador, Lord Malmsbury, wrote in 1772:
+"Total corruption of morals pervades both sexes of all classes, whereto
+must be added the indigence, caused, partly through the taxes imposed by
+the present King, partly through the love of luxury that they took from
+his grandfather. The men lead a life of excesses with limited means,
+while the women are harpies, wholly bereft of shame. They yield
+themselves to him who pays best. Tenderness and true love are things
+unknown to them."[56]
+
+Things were at their worst in Berlin under Frederick II, who reigned
+from 1786 to 1796. He led with the worst example; and his court
+chaplain, Zoellner, even lowered himself to the point of marrying the
+King to the latter's mistress, Julie von Boss, as a second wife, and as
+she soon thereupon died in childbed, Zoellner again consented to marry
+the King to the Duchess Sophie of Doenhoff as a second wife by the side
+of the Queen.
+
+More soldiers and more taxpayers was the leading desire of the Princes.
+Louis XIV, after whose death France was entirely impoverished in money
+and men, set up pensions for parents who had ten children, and the
+pension was raised when they reached twelve children. His General, the
+Marshal of Saxony, even made to him the proposition to _allow marriages
+only for the term of five years_. Fifty years later, in 1741, Frederick
+the Great wrote, "I look upon men as a herd of deer in the zoological
+garden of a great lord, their only duty is to populate and fill the
+park."[57]
+
+Later, he extensively depopulated his "deer park" with his wars, and
+then took pains to "populate" it again with foreign immigration.
+
+The German multiplicity of States, that was in fullest bloom in the
+eighteenth century, presented a piebald map of the most different social
+conditions and legislative codes. While in the minority of the States
+efforts were made to improve the economic situation by promoting new
+industries, by making settlement easier and by changing the marriage
+laws in the direction of facilitating wedlock, the majority of the
+States and statelets remained true to their backward views, and
+intensified the unfavorable conditions of marriage and settlement for
+both men and women. Seeing, however, that human nature will not allow
+itself to be suppressed, all impediments and vexations notwithstanding,
+concubinage sprang up in large quantity, and the number of illegitimate
+children was at no time as large as in these days when the "paternal
+regiment" of the absolute Princes reigned in "Christian simplicity."
+
+The married woman of citizen rank lived in strict seclusion. The number
+of her tasks and occupations was so large that, as a conscientious
+housewife, she had to be at her post early and late in order to fulfil
+her duties, and even that was possible to her only with the aid of her
+daughters. Not only were there to be filled those daily household duties
+which to-day, too, the small middle class housewife has to attend to,
+but a number of others also, which the housewife of to-day is freed from
+through modern development. She had to spin, weave, bleach and sew the
+linen and clothes, prepare soap and candles, brew beer,--in short, she
+was the veriest Cinderella: her only recreation was Sunday's church.
+Marriage was contracted only within the same social circles; the
+strongest and most ludicrous spirit of caste dominated all relations,
+and tolerated no transgression. The daughters were brought up in the
+same spirit; they were held under strict home seclusion; their mental
+education did not go beyond the bounds of the narrowest home relations.
+On top of this, an empty and hollow formality, meant as a substitute for
+education and culture, turned existence, that of woman in particular,
+into a veritable treadmill. Thus the spirit of the Reformation
+degenerated into the worst pedantry, that sought to smother the natural
+desires of man, together with his pleasures in life under a confused
+mass of rules and usages that affected to be "worthy," but that benumbed
+the soul.
+
+Gradually, however, an economic change took place, that first seized
+Western Europe and then reached into Germany also. The discovery of
+America, the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, the opening of the sea
+route of the East Indies, the further discoveries that hinged on these,
+and finally, the circumnavigation of the earth, revolutionized the life
+and views of the most advanced nations of Europe. The unthought-of rapid
+expansion of the world's commerce, called to life through the opening of
+ever newer markets for European industry and products, revolutionized
+the old system of handicraft. Manufacture arose, and thence flowed large
+production. Germany--so long held back in her material development by
+her religious wars and her political disintegration, which religious
+differences promoted,--was finally dragged into the stream of the
+general progress. In several quarters, large production developed under
+the form of manufacture: flax and wool-spinning and weaving, the
+manufacture of cloth, mining, the manufacture of iron, glass and
+porcelain, transportation, etc. Fresh labor power, female included, came
+into demand. But this newly rising form of industry met with the most
+violent opposition on the part of the craftsmen, ossified in the guild
+and medieval corporation system, who furiously fought every change in
+the method of production, and saw therein a mortal enemy. The French
+Revolution supervened. While casting aside the older order in France,
+the Revolution also carried into Germany a fresh current of air, which
+the old order could not for long resist. The French invasion hastened
+the downfall,--this side of the Rhine also--of the old, worn-out
+system. Whatever attempt was made, during the period of re-action after
+1815, to turn back the wheels of time, the New had grown too strong, it
+finally remained victorious.
+
+The rise of machinery, the application of the natural sciences to the
+process of production, the new roads of commerce and traffic burst
+asunder the last vestiges of the old system. The guild privileges, the
+personal restrictions, the mark and jurisdictional rights, together with
+all that thereby hung, walked into the lumber room. The strongly
+increased need of labor-power did not rest content with the men, it
+demanded woman also as a cheaper article. The conditions that had become
+untenable, had to fall; and they fell. The time thereto,--long
+wished-for by the newly risen class, the bourgeoisie or capitalist
+class--arrived the moment Germany gained her political unity. The
+capitalist class demanded imperiously the unhampered development of all
+the social forces; it demanded this for the benefit of its own
+capitalist interests, that, at that time, and, to a certain degree, were
+also the interests of the large majority. Thus came about the liberty of
+trade, the liberty of emigration, the removal of the barriers to
+marriage,--in short, that whole system of legislation that designates
+itself "liberal." The old-time reactionists expected from these measures
+the smash-up of morality. The late Adolph Ketteler of Mainz moaned,
+already in 1865, accordingly, before the new social legislation had
+become general, "that the tearing down of the existing barriers to
+matrimony meant the dissolution of wedlock, it being now possible for
+the married to run away from each other at will." A pretty admission
+that the moral bonds of modern marriage are so weak, that only
+_compulsion_ can be relied on to hold the couple together.
+
+The circumstance, on the one hand, that the now naturally more numerous
+marriages effected a rapid increase of population, and, on the other,
+that the gigantically developing industry of the new era brought on many
+ills, never known of before, caused the spectre of "overpopulation" to
+rise anew. Conservative and liberal economists pull since then the same
+string. We shall show what this fear of so-called overpopulation means;
+we shall trace the feared phenomenon back to its legitimate source.
+Among those who suffer of the overpopulation fear, and who demand the
+restriction of freedom to marry, especially for workingmen, belong
+particularly Prof. Ad. Wagner. According to him, workingmen marry too
+early, in comparison with the middle class. He, along with others of
+this opinion, forget that the male members of the higher class, marry
+later only in order to wed "according to their station in life," a thing
+they can not do before they have obtained a certain position. For this
+abstinence, the males of the higher classes indemnify themselves with
+prostitution. Accordingly, it is to prostitution that the working class
+are referred, the moment marriage is made difficult for, or, under
+certain circumstances, is wholly forbidden to, them. But, then, let
+none wonder at the results, and let him not raise an outcry at the
+"decline of morality," if the women also, who have the same desires as
+the men, seek to satisfy in illegitimate relations the promptings of the
+strongest impulse of nature. Moreover, the views of Wagner are at
+fisticuffs with the interests of the capitalist class, which, oddly
+enough, shares his views: it needs many "hands," so as to own cheap
+labor-power that may fit it out for competition in the world's market.
+With such petty notions and measures, born of a near-sighted
+philistinism, the gigantic growing ills of the day are not to be healed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] Tarnowsky. "Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtsinnes."
+Berlin, August Hirschwald.
+
+[23] Tacitus, "Histories," Book I.
+
+[24] Montegazza "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."
+
+[25] Matthew, ch. 19; 11 and 12.
+
+[26] I. Corinthians, ch. 7; 1 and 38.
+
+[27] Peter I., ch. 3; 1.
+
+[28] Paul: Ephesians, ch. 5; 23.
+
+[29] Paul: I. Corinthians, ch. 11; 7.
+
+[30] I. Timothy, ch. 2; 11 and 12.
+
+[31] I. Corinthians, ch. 14; 34 and 35.
+
+[32] This was a move that the parish priests of the diocese of Mainz,
+among others, complained against, expressing themselves this wise: "You
+Bishops and Abbots possess great wealth, a kingly table, and rich
+hunting equipages; we, poor, plain priests have for our comfort only a
+wife. Abstinence may be a handsome virtue, but, in point of fact, it is
+hard and difficult."--Yves-Guyot: "Les Theories Sociales du
+Christianisme."
+
+[33] Buckle, in his "History of Civilization in England," furnishes a
+large number of illustrations on this head.
+
+[34] Engels' "Der Ursprung der Familie."
+
+[35] The same thing happened under the rule of the muir in Russia. See
+Lavelaye: "Original Property."
+
+[36] "Eyn iglich gefurster man, der ein kindbette hat, ist sin kint eyn
+dochter, so mag eer eyn wagen vol bornholzes von urholz verkaufen of den
+samstag. Ist iz eyn sone, so mag he iz tun of den dinstag und of den
+samstag von ligenden holz oder von urholz und sal der frauwen davon
+kaufen, win und schon brod dyeweile sie kintes june lit,"--G. L. v.
+Maurer; "Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland."
+
+[37] "Bettmund," "Jungfernzins," "Hemdschilling," "Schuerzenzins,"
+"Bunzengroschen."
+
+[38] "Aber sprechend die Holfluet, weller hie zu der helgen see kumbt,
+der sol einen meyer (Gutsverwalter) laden und ouch sin frowen, da sol
+der meyer lien dem bruetigan ein haffen, da er wol mag ein schaff in
+geseyden, ouch sol der meyer bringen ein fuder holtz an das hochtzit,
+ouch sol ein meyer und sin frow bringen ein viertenteyl eines
+schwynsbachen, und so die hochtzit vergat, so sol der bruetigan den meyer
+by sim wib lassen ligen die ersten nacht, oder er sol sy loesen mit 5
+schilling 4 pfenning."--I., p. 43.
+
+[39] "History of the Abolition of Serfdom in Europe to the Middle of the
+19th Century." St. Petersburg, 1861.
+
+[40] Memminger, Staelin and others. "Beschreibung der Wuertembergischen
+Aemter." Hormayr. "Die Bayern im Morgenlande." Also Sugenheim.
+
+[41] "Ueber Stetigung und Abloesung der baeuerlichen Grundlasten mit
+besonderer Ruecksicht auf Bayern, Wuertemberg, Baden, Hessen, Preussen
+und Oesterreich." Landshut, 1848.
+
+[42] A poem of Albrecht von Johansdorf, in the collection of
+"Minnesang-Fruehling" (Collection of Lachman and Moritz Haupt; Leipsic,
+1857; S. Hirtel), has this passage:
+
+
+    "waere ez niht unstaete
+    der Zwein wiben wolte sin fur eigen jehen,
+    bei diu tougenliche? sprechet, herre, wurre ez iht?
+    (man sol ez den man erlouben und den vrouwen nicht.)"
+
+
+The openness, with which two distinct rights, according to sex, are here
+considered a matter of course, corresponds with views that are found in
+force even to this day.
+
+[43] Dr. Karl Buecher, "Die Frauenfrage im Mittelalter," Tuebingen.
+
+[44] Dr. Karl Buecher.
+
+[45] Joh. Scherr, "Geschichte der Deutschen Frauenwelt," Leipsic, 1879.
+
+[46] Leon Richter reports in "La Femme Libre" the case of a servant girl
+in Paris who was convicted of infanticide _by the father of the child
+himself_, a respected and religious lawyer, who sat on the jury. Aye,
+worse: _the lawyer in question was himself the murderer, and the mother
+was entirely guiltless, as, after her conviction, she herself declared
+in court_.
+
+[47] Dr. Karl Hagen, "Deutschlands Literarische und Religioese
+Verhaeltnisse im Reformationszeitalter." Frankfurt-on-the-Main, 1868.
+
+[48] II., 146, Jena, 1522.
+
+[49] Dr. Karl Hagen.
+
+[50] Jacob Grimm informs us ("Deutsche Rechtsalterthuemer. Weisthum aus
+dem Amte Blankenburg"):
+
+
+     "Daer ein Man were, der sinen echten wive ver frowelik recht niet
+     gedoin konde, der sall si sachtelik op sinen ruggen setten und
+     draegen sie over negen erstnine und setten sie sachtelik neder
+     sonder stoeten, slaen und werpen und sonder enig quaed woerd of
+     oevel sehen, und roipen dae sine naebur aen, dat sie inne sines
+     wives lives noet helpen weren, und of sine naebur dat niet doen
+     wolden of kunden, so sall be si senden up die neiste kermisse
+     daerbl gelegen und dat sie sik sueverlik toe make und verzere und
+     hangen oer einen buidel wail mit golde bestikt up die side, dat sie
+     selft wat gewerven kunde: kumpt sie dannoch wider ungeholpen, so
+     help oer dar der duifel."
+
+
+As appears from Grimm, the German peasant of the Middle Ages looked in
+marriage, first of all, for _heirs_. If he was unable himself to beget
+these, he then, as a practical man, left the pleasure, without special
+scruples, to some one else. The main thing was to gain his object. We
+repeat it: Man does not rule property, property rules him.
+
+[51] Johann Janssen, "Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes," 1525-1555,
+Freiburg.
+
+[52] Which is perfectly correct, and also explainable, seeing that the
+Bible appeared at a time when polygamy extended far and wide among the
+peoples of the Orient and the Occident. In the sixteenth century,
+however, it was in strong contradiction with the standard of morality.
+
+[53] Johann Janssen.
+
+[54] Johann Janssen. Vol. III.
+
+[55] Dr. Karl Buecher, "Die Frauenfrage im Mittelalter."
+
+[56] Johann Scherr: "Geschichte der Deutschen Frauenwelt."
+
+[57] Karl Kautsky, "Ueber den Einfluss der Volksvermehrung auf den
+Fortschritt der Gesellschaft." Vienna, 1880.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+WOMAN IN THE PRESENT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SEXUAL INSTINCTS, WEDLOCK, CHECKS AND OBSTRUCTIONS TO MARRIAGE.
+
+
+Plato thanked the gods for eight favors bestowed upon him. As the first,
+he took it that they had granted him to be born a freeman, and not a
+slave; the second was that he was created a man, and not a woman. A
+similar thought finds utterance in the morning prayer of the Jews. They
+pray: "Blessed be Thou, our God and Lord of Hosts, _who hast not created
+me a woman_;" the Jewish women, on the other hand, pray at the
+corresponding place: "_who hast created me after thy will_." The
+contrast in the position of the sexes can find no more forcible
+expression than it does in the saying of Plato, and in the different
+wording of the prayer among the Jews. The male is the real being, the
+master of the female. With the views of Plato and the Jews, the larger
+part of men agree, and many a woman also wishes that she had been born a
+man and not a woman. In this view lies reflected the condition of the
+female sex.
+
+Wholly irrespective of the question whether woman is oppressed as a
+female proletarian, as sex she is oppressed in the modern world of
+private property. A number of checks and obstructions, unknown to man,
+exist for her, and hem her in at every step. Much that is allowed to man
+is forbidden to her; a number of social rights and privileges, enjoyed
+by the former, are, if exercised by her, a blot or a crime. She suffers
+both as a social and a sex entity, and it is hard to say in which of the
+two respects she suffers more.
+
+Of all the natural impulses human beings are instinct with, along with
+that of eating and drinking, the sexual impulse is the strongest. The
+impulse to procreate the species is the most powerful expression of the
+"Will to Live." It is implanted most strongly in every normally
+developed human being. Upon maturity, its satisfaction is an actual
+necessity for man's physical and mental health. Luther was perfectly
+right when he said: "He who would resist the promptings of Nature, and
+prevent their going as Nature wills and must, _what else does he but
+endeavor to resist Nature's being Nature, that fire burn, water wet,
+that man eat, drink or sleep_?" These are words that should be graven in
+granite over the doors of our churches, in which the "sinful flesh" is
+so diligently preached against. More strikingly no physician or
+physiologist can describe the necessity for the satisfaction of the
+craving for love on the part of a healthy being,--a craving that finds
+its expression in sexual intercourse.
+
+It is a commandment of the human being to itself--a commandment that it
+must obey if it wishes to develop normally and in health--that it
+neglect the exercise of no member of its body, deny gratification to no
+natural impulse. Each member must fill the function, that it is intended
+for by Nature, on penalty of atrophy and disease. The laws of the
+physical development of man must be studied and observed, the same as
+those of mental development. The mental activity of the human being is
+the expression of the physiologic composition of its organs. The
+complete health of the former is intimately connected with the health of
+the latter. A disturbance of the one inevitably has a disturbing effect
+upon the other. Nor do the so-called animal desires take lower rank than
+the so-called mental ones. One set and the other are effects of the
+identical combined organism: the influence of the two upon each other is
+mutual and continuous. This holds good for man as for woman.
+
+It follows that, the knowledge of the properties of the sexual organs is
+just as needful as that of the organs which generate mental activity;
+and that man should bestow upon the cultivation of both an equal share
+of care. He should realize that organs and impulses, found implanted in
+every human being, and that constitute a very essential part of his
+nature, aye, that, at certain periods of his life control him
+absolutely, must not be objects of secrecy, of false shame and utter
+ignorance. It follows, furthermore, that a knowledge of the physiology
+and anatomy of the sexual organs, together with their functions, should
+be as general among men and women as any other branch of knowledge.
+Equipped with an accurate knowledge of our physical make-up, we would
+look upon many a condition in life with eyes different from those we now
+do. The question of removing existing evils would then, of itself, force
+itself upon those before whom society, to-day, passes by in silence and
+solemn bashfulness, notwithstanding these evils command attention within
+the precincts of every family. In all other matters, knowledge is held a
+virtue, the worthiest and most beautiful aim of human endeavor--only not
+knowledge in such matters that are in closest relation with the essence
+and health of our own _Ego_, as well as the basis of all social
+development.
+
+Kant says: "Man and woman only jointly constitute the complete being:
+one sex supplements the other." Schopenhauer declares: "The sexual
+impulse is the fullest utterance of the will to live, hence it is the
+concentration of all will-power;" again: "The affirmative declaration of
+the will in favor of life is concentrated in the act of generation, and
+that is its most decisive expression." In accord therewith says
+Mainlaender: "The center of gravity of human life lies in the sexual
+instinct: it alone secures life to the individual, which is that which
+above all else it wants.... To nothing else does man devote greater
+earnestness than to the work of procreation, and for the care of none
+other does he compress and concentrate the intensity of his will so
+demonstratively as for the act of procreation." Finally, and before all
+of these, Buddha said: "The sexual instinct is sharper than the hook
+wild elephants are tamed with; it is hotter than flames; it is like an
+arrow, shot into the spirit of man."[58]
+
+Such being the intensity of the sexual impulse, it is no wonder that
+sexual abstinence at the age of maturity affects the nervous system and
+the whole organism of man, with one sex as well as the other, in such a
+manner that it often leads to serious disturbances and manias; under
+certain conditions even to insanity and death. True enough, the sexual
+instinct does not assert itself with equal violence in all natures, and
+much can be done towards curbing it by education and self-control,
+especially by avoiding the excitation resulting upon certain
+conversations and reading. It is thought that, in general, the impulse
+manifests itself lighter with women than with men, and that the
+irritation is less potent with the former. It is even claimed that, with
+woman, there is a certain repugnance for the sexual act. The minority is
+small of those with whom physiologic and psychologic dispositions and
+conditions engender such a difference. "The union of the sexes is one of
+the great laws of living Nature; man and woman are subject to it the
+same as all other creatures, and can not transgress it, especially at a
+ripe age, without their organism suffering more or less in
+consequence."[59] Debay quotes among the diseases, caused by the
+inactivity of the sexual organs, satyriasis, nymphomania and hysteria;
+and he adds that celibacy exercises upon the intellectual powers,
+especially with woman, a highly injurious effect. On the subject of the
+harmfulness of sexual abstinence by woman, Busch says:[60] "Abstinence
+has in all ages been considered particularly harmful to woman; indeed it
+is a fact that excess, as well as abstinence, affects the female
+organism equally harmfully, and the effects show themselves more
+pronouncedly and intensively than with the male organism."
+
+It may, accordingly, be said that man--be the being male or female--is
+complete in the measure in which, both as to organic and spiritual
+culture, the impulses and manifestations of life utter themselves in the
+sexes, and in the measure that they assume character and expression.
+Each sex of itself reached its highest development. "With civilized
+man," says Klenke in his work "Woman as Wife," "the compulsion of
+procreation is placed under the direction of the moral principle, and
+that is guided by reason." This is true. Nevertheless, it were an
+impossible task, even with the highest degree of freedom, wholly to
+silence the imperative command for the preservation of the species,--a
+command that Nature planted in the normal, organic expression of the
+both sexes. Where healthy individuals, male or female, have failed in
+their life-time to honor this duty towards Nature, _it is not with them
+an instance of the free exercise of the will_, even when so given out,
+or when, in self-deception, it is believed to be such. _It is the result
+of social obstacles, together with the consequences which follow in
+their wake; they restricted the right of Nature_; they allowed the
+organs to wilt; allowed the stamp of decay and of sexual vexation--both
+in point of appearance and of character--to be placed upon the whole
+organism; and, finally, brought on--through nervous distempers--diseased
+inclinations and conditions both of body and of mind. The man becomes
+feminine, the woman masculine in shape and character. The sexual
+contrast not having reached realization in the plan of Nature, each
+human being _remained one-sided, never reached its supplement, never
+touched the acme of its existence_. In her work, "The Moral Education of
+the Young in Relation to Sex," Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says: "The sexual
+impulse exists as an indispensable condition of life, and as the basis
+of society. It is the greatest force in human nature. Often undeveloped,
+not even an object of thought, but none the less the _central fire of
+life_, this inevitable instinct is the natural protector against any
+possibility of extinction."
+
+Science agrees, accordingly, with the opinion of the philosophers, and
+with Luther's healthy common sense. It follows that every human being
+has, not merely the right, but also the duty to satisfy the instincts,
+that are intimately connected with its inmost being, that, in fact,
+imply existence itself. Hindered therein, rendered impossible to him
+through social institutions or prejudices, the consequence is that man
+is checked in the development of his being, is left to a stunted life
+and retrogression. What the consequences thereof are, our physicians,
+hospitals, insane asylums and prisons can tell,--to say nothing of the
+thousands of tortured family lives. In a book that appeared in Leipsic,
+the author is of the opinion: "The sexual impulse is neither moral nor
+immoral; it is merely natural, like hunger and thirst: Nature knows
+nothing of morals;"[61] nevertheless bourgeois society is far from a
+general acceptance of this maxim.
+
+The opinion finds wide acceptance among physicians and physiologists
+that even a defectively equipped marriage is better than celibacy.
+Experience agrees therewith. In Bavaria there were, in 1858, not less
+than 4,899 lunatics, 2,576 (53 per cent.) of them men, 2,323 (47 per
+cent.) women. The men were, accordingly, more strongly represented than
+the women. Of the whole number, however, the _unmarried_ of both sexes
+ran up to 81 per cent., the married only to 17 per cent., while of 2 per
+cent. the conjugal status was unknown. As a mitigation of the shocking
+disproportion between the unmarried and the married, the circumstance
+may be taken into consideration that a not small number of the unmarried
+were insane from early childhood. In Hanover, in the year 1856, there
+was one lunatic to every 457 unmarried, 564 widowed, 1,316 married
+people. Most strikingly is the effect of unsatisfied sexual relations
+shown in the number of suicides among men and women. In general, the
+number of suicides is in all countries considerably higher among men
+than among women. To every 1,000 female suicides there were in:[62]
+
+
+    England from 1872-76  2,861 men
+    Sweden    "  1870-74  3,310  "
+    France    "  1871-76  3,695  "
+    Italy     "  1872-77  4,000  "
+    Prussia   "  1871-78  4,239  "
+    Austria   "  1873-78  4,586  "
+
+
+But between the ages of 21 and 30, the figures for _female suicides is
+in all European countries higher than for males_, due, as Oettingen
+assumes, to sexual causes. In Prussia the percentages of suicides
+between the ages of 21 to 30 were on an average:
+
+
+     Years.    Males.   Females.
+    1869-72     15.8      21.4
+    1873-78     15.7      21.5
+
+
+In Saxony there were to every 1,000 suicides between the ages of 21 to
+30 these averages:
+
+
+    Years.     Males.   Females.
+    1854       14.95     18.64
+    1868       14.71     18.79
+
+
+For widowed and divorced people also the percentage of suicides is
+larger than the average. In Saxony there are seven times as many
+suicides among divorced males, and three times as many among divorced
+females, as the average of suicides for males and females respectively.
+Again, suicide is more frequent among divorced and widowed men and women
+when they are childless. Of 491 widowed suicides in Prussia (119 males
+and 372 females) 353 were childless.
+
+Taking into further consideration that, among the unmarried women, who
+are driven to suicide between the ages of 21 and 30, many a one is to be
+found, who takes her life by reason of being betrayed, or because she
+can not bear the consequences of a "slip," the fact remains that sexual
+reasons play a decided _role_ in suicide at this age. Among female
+suicides, the figure is large also for those between the ages of 16 to
+20, and the fact is probably likewise traceable to unsatisfied sexual
+instinct, disappointment in love, secret pregnancy, or betrayal. On the
+subject of the women of our days as sexual beings, Professor V.
+Krafft-Ebing expresses himself: "A not-to-be-underrated source of
+insanity with woman lies in her social position. Woman, by nature more
+prone than man to sexual needs, at least in the ideal sense of the term,
+knows no honorable means of gratifying the need other than marriage. At
+the same time marriage offers her the only support. Through unnumbered
+generations her character has been built in this direction. Already the
+little girl plays mother with her doll. Modern life, with its demands
+upon culture, offers ever slighter prospects of gratification through
+marriage. This holds especially with the upper classes, among whom
+marriage is contracted later and more rarely. While man--as the
+stronger, and thanks to his greater intellectual and physical powers,
+together with his social position--supplies himself easily with sexual
+gratification, or, taken up with some occupation, that engages all his
+energies, easily finds an equivalent, these paths are closed to single
+women. This leads, in the first place, consciously or unconsciously, to
+dissatisfaction with herself and the world, to morbid brooding. For a
+while, perhaps, relief is sought in religion; but in vain. Out of
+religious enthusiasm, there spring with or without masturbation, a host
+of nervous diseases, among which hysteria and insanity are not rare.
+Only thus is the fact explainable that insanity among single women
+occurs with greatest frequency between the ages of 25 and 35, that is to
+say, the time when the bloom of youth, and, along therewith, hope
+vanishes; while with men, insanity occurs generally between the ages of
+35 and 50, the season of the strongest efforts in the struggle for
+existence.
+
+"It certainly is no accident that, hand in hand with increasing
+celibacy, the question of the emancipation of woman has come ever more
+on the order of the day. I would have the question looked upon as a
+danger signal, set up by the social position of woman in modern
+society--a position that grows ever more unbearable, due to increasing
+celibacy; I would have it looked upon as the danger signal of a
+justified demand, made upon modern society, to furnish woman some
+equivalent for that to which she is assigned by Nature, and which modern
+social conditions partly deny her."[63]
+
+And Dr. H. Plotz, in his work, "Woman in Nature and Ethnography,"[64]
+says in the course of his explanation of the results of ungratified
+sexual instincts upon unmarried women: "It is in the highest degree
+noteworthy, not for the physician only, but also for the anthropologist,
+that there is an effective and never-failing means to check this process
+of decay (with old maids), but even to cause the lost bloom to return,
+if not in all its former splendor yet in a not insignificant
+degree,--_pity only that our social conditions allow, or make its
+application possible only in rare instances_. The means consist in
+regular and systematic sexual intercourse. The sight is not infrequent
+with girls, who lost their bloom, or were not far from the withering
+point, yet, the opportunity to marry having been offered them, that,
+shortly after marriage, their shape began to round up again, the roses
+to return to their cheeks, and their eyes to recover their one-time
+brightness. _Marriage is, accordingly, the true fountain of youth for
+the female sex._ Thus Nature has her firm laws, that implacably demand
+their dues. No 'vita praeter naturam,' no unnatural life, no attempt at
+accommodation to incompatible conditions of life, passes without leaving
+noticeable traces of degeneration, upon the animal, as well as upon the
+human organism."
+
+As to the effect that marriage and celibacy exercise upon the mind, the
+following figures furnish testimony. In 1882, there were in Prussia, per
+10,000 inhabitants of the same conjugal status, 33.2 unmarried male and
+29.3 female lunatics, while the percentage of the married ones was 9.5
+for men, and 9.5 for females, and of the widowed, 32.1 males, and 25.6
+females. Social conditions can not be considered healthy, that hinder a
+normal satisfaction of the natural instincts, and lead to evils like
+those just mentioned.
+
+The question then rises: Has modern society met the demands for a
+natural life, especially as concerns the female sex? If the question is
+answered in the negative, this other rises: Can modern society meet the
+demands? If both questions must be answered in the negative, then this
+third arises: How can these demands be met?
+
+"Marriage and the family are the foundation of the State; consequently,
+he who attacks marriage and the family attacks society and the State,
+and undermines both"--thus cry the defenders of the present order.
+Unquestionably, monogamous marriage, which flows from the bourgeois
+system of production and property, is one of the most important
+cornerstones of bourgeois or capitalist society; whether, however, such
+marriage is in accord with natural wants and with a healthy development
+of human society, is another question. We shall prove that the marriage,
+founded upon bourgeois property relations, is more or less a marriage by
+compulsion, which leads numerous ills in its train, and which fails in
+its purpose quite extensively, if not altogether. We shall show,
+furthermore, that it is a social institution, beyond the reach of
+millions, and is by no means that marriage based upon love, which alone
+corresponds with the natural purpose, as its praise-singers maintain.
+
+With regard to modern marriage, John Stuart Mill exclaims: "_Marriage is
+the only form of slavery that the law recognizes._" In the opinion of
+Kant, man and woman constitute only jointly the full being. Upon the
+normal union of the sexes rests the healthy development of the human
+race. The natural gratification of the sexual instinct is a necessity
+for the thorough physical and mental development of both man and woman.
+But man is no animal. Mere physical satisfaction does not suffice for
+the full gratification of his energetic and vehement instinct. He
+requires also spiritual affinity and oneness with the being that he
+couples with. Is that not the case, then the blending of the sexes is a
+purely mechanical act: such a marriage is immoral. It does not answer
+the higher human demands. Only in the mutual attachment of two beings of
+opposite sexes can be conceived the spiritual ennobling of relations
+that rest upon purely physical laws. Civilized man demands that the
+mutual attraction continue beyond the accomplishment of the sexual act,
+and _that it prolong its purifying influence upon the home that flows
+from the mutual union_.[65] The fact that these demands can not be made
+upon numberless marriages in modern society is what led Barnhagen von
+Ense to say: "That which we saw with our own eyes, both with regard to
+contracted marriages and marriages yet to be contracted, was not
+calculated to give us a good opinion of such unions. On the contrary,
+the whole institution, which was to have only love and respect for its
+foundation, and which in all these instances (in Berlin) we saw founded
+on everything but that, seemed to us mean and contemptible, and we
+loudly joined in the saying of Frederick Schlegel which we read in the
+fragments of the 'Atheneum': Almost all marriages are concubinages,
+left-handed unions, or rather provisional attempts and distant
+resemblances at and of a true marriage, whose real feature consists,
+according to all spiritual and temporal laws, in that two persons become
+one."[66] Which is completely in the sense of Kant.
+
+The duty towards and pleasure in posterity make permanent the love
+relations of two persons, when such really exists. A couple that wishes
+to enter into matrimonial relations must, therefore, be first clear
+whether the physical and moral qualities of the two are fit for such a
+union. The answer should be arrived at uninfluenced; and that can happen
+only, first, _by keeping away all other interests_, that have nothing to
+do with the real object of the union,--the gratification of the natural
+instinct, and the transmission of one's being in the propagation of the
+race; secondly, by a certain degree of insight that curbs blind passion.
+Seeing, however, as we shall show, that _both conditions are, in
+innumerable cases, absent in modern society, it follows that modern
+marriage is frequently far from fulfilling its true purpose; hence that
+it is not just to represent it, as is done, in the light of an ideal
+institution_.
+
+How large the number is of the marriages, contracted with views wholly
+different from these, can, naturally, not be statistically given. The
+parties concerned are interested in having their marriage appear to the
+world different from what it is in fact. There is on this field a state
+of hypocrisy peculiar to no earlier social period. And the State, the
+political representative of this society, has no interest, for the sake
+of curiosity, in initiating inquiries, the result of which would be to
+place in dubious light the social system that is its very foundation.
+The maxims, which the State observes with respect to the marrying of
+large divisions of its own officials and servants, _do not suffer the
+principle to be applied that, ostensibly, is the basis of marriage_.
+
+Marriage--and herewith the bourgeois idealists also agree--should be a
+union that two persons enter into only out of mutual love, in order to
+accomplish their natural mission. This motive is, however, only rarely
+present in all its purity. With the large majority of women, matrimony
+is looked upon as a species of institution for support, which they must
+enter into at any price. Conversely, a large portion of the men look
+upon marriage from a purely business standpoint, and from material
+view-points all the advantages and disadvantages are accurately
+calculated. Even with those marriages, in which low egotistical motives
+did not turn the scales, raw reality brings along so much that disturbs
+and dissolves, that only in rare instances are the expectations verified
+which, in their youthful enthusiasm and ardor, the couple had looked
+forward to.
+
+And quite naturally. If wedlock is to offer the spouses a contented
+connubial life, it demands, together with mutual love and respect, _the
+assurance of material existence, the supply of that measure of the
+necessaries of life and comfort which the two consider requisite for
+themselves and their children_. The weight of cares, the hard struggle
+for existence--these are the first nails in the coffin of conjugal
+content and happiness. The cares become heavier the more fruitful the
+marriage proves itself, i. e., _in the measure in which the marriage
+fulfils its purpose_. The peasant, for instance, is pleased at every
+calf that his cow brings him; he counts with delight the number of
+young that his sow litters; and he communicates the event with pleasure
+to his neighbors. But the same peasant looks gloomy when his wife
+presents him with an increase to his own brood--and large this may never
+be--which he believes to be able to bring up without too much worry. His
+gloom is all the thicker if the new-born child is a _girl_.
+
+We shall now show how, everywhere, marriages and births are completely
+controlled by the economic conditions. This is most classically
+exemplified in France. There, the allotment system prevails generally in
+the country districts. Land, broken up beyond a certain limit, ceases to
+nourish a family. The unlimited division of land, legally permissible,
+the French peasant counteracts by his rarely giving life to more than
+two children,--hence the celebrated and notorious "two child system,"
+that has grown into a social institution in France, and that, to the
+alarm of her statesmen, keeps the population stationary, in some
+provinces even registering considerable retrogression. The number of
+births is steadily on the decline in France; but not in France only,
+also in most of the civilized lands. Therein is found expressed a
+development in our social conditions, that should give the ruling
+classes cause to ponder. In 1881 there were 937,057 children born in
+France; in 1890, however, only 838,059; accordingly, the births in 1890
+fell 98,998 behind the year 1881. Characteristic, however, is the
+circumstance that the number of _illegitimate_ births in France was
+70,079 for the year 1881; that, during the period between 1881 and 1890,
+the number reached high-water mark in 1884, with 75,754; and that the
+number was still 71,086 strong in 1890. Accordingly, the whole of the
+decline of births fell exclusively upon the legitimate births. This
+decline in births, and, we may add, in marriages also, is, as will be
+shown, a characteristic feature, noticeable throughout the century. To
+every 10,000 French population, there were births in the years:
+
+
+    1801   333
+    1821   307
+    1831   303
+    1841   282
+    1851   270
+    1856   261
+    1868   269
+    1886   230
+    1890   219
+
+
+This amounts to a decline of births in 1890, as against 1801, of 114 to
+every 10,000 inhabitants. It is imaginable that such figures cause
+serious headaches to the French statesmen and politicians. But France
+does not stand alone in this. For a long time Germany has been
+presenting a similar phenomenon. In Germany, to every 10,000 population
+there were births in the years:
+
+
+    1869   406
+    1876   403
+    1880   390
+    1883   358
+    1887   369.4
+    1890   357.6
+
+
+Accordingly, Germany too reveals, in the space of only 21 years, a
+decline of 49 births to every 10,000 inhabitants. Similarly with the
+other States of Europe. To every 10,000 population there were live
+births:
+
+
+                       From        From
+      States.       1865-1867.  1886-1888. Decrease. Increase.
+    Ireland            262         231        31       ..
+    Scotland           353         313        40       ..
+    England and Wales  353         314        39       ..
+    Holland            388         344        44       ..
+    Belgium            320         293        27       ..
+    Switzerland        320         278        42       ..
+    Austria            374         380        ..        6
+    Hungary            399         445        ..       46
+    Italy              378         371         7       ..
+    Sweden             320         297        23       ..
+    Norway             344         308        36       ..
+
+
+The decline in births is, accordingly, pretty general, only that, of all
+European States, it is strongest in France. Between 1886 and 1888,
+France had, to every 1,000 inhabitants, an average of 23.9 births,
+England 32.9, Prussia 41.27, and Russia 48.8.
+
+These facts show that the birth of a human being, the "image of God," as
+religious people express it, ranks generally much cheaper than new-born
+domestic animals. What this fact does reveal is the _unworthy_ condition
+that we find ourselves in,--and it is mainly the female sex which
+suffers thereunder. In many respects, modern views distinguish
+themselves but little from those of barbarous nations. Among the latter,
+new-born babes were frequently killed, and such a fate fell to the lot
+of girls mainly; many a half-wild race does so to this day. We no longer
+kill the girls; we are too civilized for that; but they are only too
+often treated like pariahs by society and the family. The stronger man
+crowds them everywhere back in the struggle for existence; and if,
+driven by the love for life, they still take up the battle, they are
+visited with hatred by the stronger sex, as unwelcome competitors. It is
+especially the men in the higher ranks of society who are bitterest
+against female competition, and oppose it most fiercely. That workingmen
+demand the exclusion of female labor on principle happens but rarely. A
+motion to that effect being made in 1877, at a French Labor Convention,
+the large majority declared against it. Since then, it is just with the
+class-conscious workingmen of all countries, that the principle, that
+working-women are beings with equal rights with themselves makes immense
+progress. This was shown especially by the resolutions of the
+International Labor Congress of Paris in 1889. The class-conscious
+workingman knows that the modern economic development forces woman to
+set herself up as a competitor with man; but he also knows that, to
+prohibit female labor, would be as senseless an act as the prohibition
+of the use of machinery. Hence he strives to enlighten woman on her
+position in society, and _to educate her into a fellow combatant in the
+struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat from capitalism_. True
+enough,--due to the ever more widespread employment of female labor in
+agriculture, industry, commerce and the trades--the family life of the
+workingman is destroyed, and the degenerating effects of the double yoke
+of work for a living, and of household duties, makes rapid progress in
+the female sex. Hence the endeavor to keep women by legislative
+enactments, from occupations that are especially injurious to the female
+organism, and by means of protective laws to safeguard her as a mother
+and rearer of children. On the other hand, the struggle for existence
+forces women to turn in ever larger numbers to industrial occupations.
+It is _married woman_, more particularly, who is called upon to increase
+the meager earnings of her husband with her work,--and she is
+particularly welcome to the employer.[67]
+
+Modern society is without doubt more cultured than any previous one, and
+woman stands correspondingly higher. Nevertheless, the views concerning
+the relations of the two sexes have remained at bottom the same.
+Professor L. von Stein published a book,[68]--a work, be it said in
+passing, that corresponds ill with its title--in which he gives a
+poetically colored picture of modern marriage, as it supposedly is. Even
+in this picture the subaltern position of woman towards the "lion" man
+is made manifest. Stein says among other things: "Man deserves a being
+that not only loves, but also understands him. He deserves a person with
+whom not only the heart beats for him, but whose hand may also smooth
+his forehead, and whose presence radiates peace, rest, order, a quiet
+command over herself and the thousand and one things upon which he daily
+reverts: he wants someone who spreads over all these things that
+indescribable aroma of womanhood, one who is the life-giving warmth to
+the life of the house."
+
+In this song of praise of woman lies concealed her own degradation, and
+along therewith, the low egotism of man. The professor depicts woman as
+a vaporous being, that, nevertheless, shall be equipped with the
+necessary knowledge of practical arithmetic; know how to keep the
+balance between "must" and "can" in the household; and, for the rest,
+float zephyr-fashion, like sweet spring-tide, about the master of the
+house, the sovereign lion, in order to spy every wish from his eyes, and
+with her little soft hand unwrinkle the forehead, that he, "the master
+of the house," perchance himself crumpled, while brooding over his own
+stupidity. In short, the professor pictures a woman and a marriage such
+as, out of a hundred, hardly one is to be found, or, for that matter,
+can exist. Of the many thousand unhappy marriages; of the large number
+of women who never get so far as to wed; and also of the millions, who,
+like beasts of burden beside their husbands, have to drudge and wear
+themselves out from early morn till late to earn a bit of bread for the
+current day,--of all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With
+all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic
+coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of
+a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female
+sufferers, would have seriously disturbed his poetically colored
+picture, and spoiled his concept. The women, whom he sees, make up but a
+trifling minority, and that these stand upon the plane of our times is
+to be doubted.
+
+An oft-quoted sentence runs: "The best gauge of the culture of a people
+is the position which woman occupies." We grant that; but it will be
+shown that our so much vaunted culture has little to brag about. In his
+work, "The Subjection of Woman,"--the title is typical of the opinion
+that the author holds regarding the modern position of woman--John
+Stuart Mill says: "The lives of men have become more domestic, growing
+civilization lays them under more obligations towards women." This is
+only partly true. In so far as honorable conjugal relations may exist
+between husband and wife, Mill's statement is true; but it is doubtful
+whether the statement applies to even a strong minority. Every sensible
+man will consider it an advantage to himself if woman step forward into
+life out of the narrow circle of domestic activities, and become
+familiar with the currents of the times. The "chains" he thereby lays
+upon himself do not press him. On the other hand, the question arises
+whether modern life does not introduce into married life factors, that,
+to a higher degree than formerly, act destructively upon marriage.
+
+Monogamous marriage became, from the start, an object of material
+speculation. The man who marries endeavors to wed property, along with a
+wife, and this was one of the principal reasons why daughters, after
+being at first excluded from the right to inherit, when descent in the
+male line prevailed, soon again reacquired the right. But never in
+earlier days was marriage so cynically, in open market, so to speak, an
+object of speculation; a money transaction, as it is to-day. To-day
+trading in marriage is frequently conducted among the property
+classes--among the propertyless the practice has no sense--with such
+shamelessness, that the oft-repeated phrase concerning the "sanctity" of
+marriage is the merest mockery. This phenomenon, as everything else, has
+its ample foundation. At no previous period was it, as it is to-day,
+hard for the large majority of people to raise themselves into a
+condition of well-being, corresponding to the then general conceptions;
+nor was at any time the justified striving for an existence worthy of
+human beings so general as it is to-day. He who does not reach the goal,
+feels his failure all the more keenly, just because all believe to have
+an equal right to enjoyment. _Formally_, there are _no_ rank or class
+distinctions. Each wishes to obtain that which, according to his
+station, he considers a goal worth striving for, in order to come at
+fruition. But many are called and few are chosen. In order that one may
+live comfortably in capitalist society, twenty others must pine; and in
+order that one may wallow in all manner of enjoyment, hundreds, if not
+thousands, of others must renounce the happiness of life. But each
+wishes to be of that minority of favored ones, and seizes every means,
+that promise to take him to the desired goal, provided he does not
+compromise himself too deeply. One of the most convenient means, and,
+withal, nearest at hand, to reach the privileged social station, is the
+_money-marriage_. The desire, on the one hand, to obtain as much money
+as possible, and, on the other, the aspiration after rank, titles and
+honor thus find their mutual satisfaction in the so-called upper classes
+of society. There, marriage is generally considered a business
+transaction; it is a purely conventional bond, which both parties
+respect externally, while, for the rest, each often acts according to
+his or her own inclination. Marriage for political reasons, practiced in
+the higher classes, need here to be mentioned only for the sake of
+completeness. With these marriages also, as a rule, the privilege has
+tacitly existed--of course, again, for the husband to a much higher
+degree than for the wife--that the parties keep themselves scathless,
+_outside of the bonds of wedlock_, according as their whims may point,
+or their needs dictate. There have been periods in history when it was
+part of the _bon ton_ with a Prince to keep mistresses: it was one of
+the princely attributes. Thus, according to Scherr, did Frederick
+William I. of Prussia (1713-1740), otherwise with a reputation for
+steadiness, keep up, at least for the sake of appearances, relations
+with a General's wife. On the other hand, it is a matter of public
+notoriety that, for instance, August the Strong, King of Poland and
+Saxony, gave life to 300 illegitimate children; and Victor Emanuel of
+Italy, the _re galantuomo_, left behind 32 illegitimate children. There
+is still extant a romantically located little German residence city, in
+which are at least a dozen charming villas, that the corresponding
+"father of his country" had built as places of recreation for his
+resigned mistresses. On this head thick books could be written: as is
+well known, there is an extensive library on these piquant matters.
+
+The inside history of most of the German princely courts and noble
+families is to the informed an almost uninterrupted _chronique
+scandaleuse_, and not infrequently has it been stained with crimes of
+blackest dye. In sight of these facts, it certainly is imperative upon
+the sycophantic painters of history, not only to leave untouched the
+question of the "legitimacy" of the several successive "fathers and
+mothers of their country," but also to take pains to represent them as
+patterns of all virtues, as faithful husbands and good mothers. Not yet
+has the breed of the augurs died out; they still live, as did their
+Roman prototypes, on the ignorance of the masses.
+
+In every large town, there are certain places and days when the higher
+classes meet, mainly for the purpose of match-making. These gatherings
+are, accordingly, quite fitly termed "marriage exchanges." Just as on
+the exchanges, speculation and chaffer play here the leading _role_, nor
+are deception and swindle left out. Officers, loaded with debts, but who
+can hold out an old title of nobility; _roues_, broken down with
+debauchery, who seek to restore their ruined health in the haven of
+wedlock, and need a nurse; manufacturers, merchants, bankers, who face
+bankruptcy, not infrequently the penitentiary also, and wish to be
+saved; finally, all those who are after money and wealth, or a larger
+quantity thereof, government office-holders among them, with prospects
+of promotion, but meanwhile in financial straits;--all turn up as
+customers at these exchanges, and ply the matrimonial trade. Quite
+often, at such transactions, it is all one whether the prospective wife
+be young or old, handsome or ugly, straight or bent, educated or
+ignorant, religious or frivolous, Christian or Jew. Was it not a saying
+of a celebrated statesman: "The marriage of a Christian stallion with a
+Jewish mare is to be highly recommended"?[69] The figure,
+characteristically borrowed from the horse-fair, meets, as experience
+teaches, with loud applause from the higher circles of our society.
+Money makes up for all defects, and outweighs all vices. The German
+penal code punishes[70] the coupler with long terms of imprisonment;
+when, however, parents, guardians and relatives couple their children,
+wards or kin to a hated man or woman only for the sake of money, of
+profit, of rank, in short, for the sake of external benefits, there is
+no District Attorney ready to take charge, and yet a crime has been
+committed. There are numerous well organized matrimonial bureaus, with
+male and female panders of all degrees, out for prey, in search of the
+male and female candidates for the "holy bonds of matrimony." Such
+business is especially profitable when the "work" is done for the
+members of the upper classes. In 1878 there was a criminal trial in
+Vienna of a female pander on the charge of poisoning, and ended with her
+being sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. At the trial it
+was established that the French Ambassador in Vienna, Count Bonneville,
+had paid the pander 12,000 florins for procuring his own wife. Other
+members of the high aristocracy were likewise highly compromised through
+the trial. Evidently, certain Government officials had left the woman to
+pursue her dark and criminal practices for many years. The "why" thereof
+is surely no secret. Similar stories are told from the capital of the
+German Empire. During recent years, it is the daughters and heirs of the
+rich American capitalist class, who, on their side, aspire after rank
+and honors, not to be had in their own American home, that have become a
+special subject of matrimonial trading for the needy noblemen of Europe.
+Upon these particular practices characteristic light is thrown by a
+series of articles that appeared in the fall of 1889 in a portion of the
+German press. According thereto, a _chevalier d'industry_ nobleman,
+domiciled in California, had recommended himself as a matrimonial agent
+in German and Austrian papers. The offers that he received amply betray
+the conception concerning the sanctity of marriage and its "ethical"
+side prevalent in the corresponding circles. Two Prussian officers of
+the Guards, both, as they say themselves, belonging to the oldest
+nobility of Prussia, declared that they were ready to enter into
+negotiations for marriage because, as they frankly confessed, they owed
+together 60,000 marks. In their letter to the pander they say literally:
+"It is understood that we shall pay no money in advance. You will
+receive your remuneration after the wedding trip. Recommend us only to
+ladies against whose families no objections can be raised. It is also
+very desirable to be introduced to ladies of attractive appearance. If
+demanded, we shall furnish, for discreet use, our own pictures to your
+agent, after he shall have given us the details, and shown us the
+pictures, etc. We consider the whole affair strictly confidential and as
+a matter of honor (?), and, of course, demand the same from you. We
+expect a speedy answer through your agent in this place, if you have
+one. Berlin, Friedrichstrasse 107, December 15, 1889. Baron v. M----,
+Arthur v. W----."
+
+An Austrian nobleman also, Karl Freiherr v. M---- of Goeding in Moravia,
+seized the opportunity to angle for a rich American bride, and to this
+end sent to the swindle-bureau the following letter:
+
+"According to a notice in the papers of this place, you are acquainted
+with American ladies who wish to marry. In this connection I place
+myself at your service, but must inform you that I have no fortune
+whatever. I am of very old noble stock (Baron), 34 years old, single,
+was a cavalry officer and am at present engaged in building railroads. I
+should be pleased to inspect one or more pictures, which, upon my word
+of honor, I shall return. Should you require my picture, I shall forward
+same to you. I also request you to give me fuller information. Expecting
+a speedy answer in this matter, I remain, very respectfully, your Karl
+Freiherr v. M----, Goeding, Moravia, Austria, November 29, 1889."
+
+A young German nobleman, Hans v. H----, wrote from London that he was 5
+feet 10 tall, of an old noble family, and employed in the diplomatic
+service. He made the confession that his fortune had been greatly
+reduced through unsuccessful betting at the horse races, and hence found
+himself obliged to be on the lookout for a rich bride, so as to be able
+to cover his deficit. He was, furthermore, ready to undertake a trip to
+the United States forthwith.
+
+The _chevalier d'industry_ in question claimed that, besides several
+counts, barons, etc., three Princes and sixteen dukes had reported to
+him as candidates for marriage. But not noblemen only, bourgeois also
+longed for rich American women. An architect, Max W---- of Leipsic,
+demanded a bride who should possess not only money, but beauty and
+culture also. From Kehl on the Rhine, a young mill-owner, Robert D----,
+wrote that he would be satisfied with a bride who had but 400,000 marks,
+and he promised in advance to make her happy.
+
+But why look so far, when at hand the quarry is rich! A very
+patriotic-conservative Leipsic paper, which plumes itself very
+particularly upon its Christianity, contained in the spring of 1894 an
+advertisement, that ran thus: "A cavalry officer of the Guards, of
+large, handsome build, noble, 27 years of age, desires a financial
+marriage. Please address, Count v. W. I., Post Office General Delivery,
+Dresden." In comparison with the fellow who makes so cynical an offer,
+the street-walker, who, out of bitter necessity, plies her trade, is a
+paragon of decency and virtue. Similar advertisements are found almost
+every day in the papers of _all_ political parties--_except the Social
+Democratic_. A Social Democratic editor or manager, who would accept
+such or similar advertisements for his paper, would be expelled from his
+party as dishonorable. The capitalist press is not troubled at such
+advertisements: they bring in money: and it is of the mind of the
+Emperor Vespasian,--_non olet_, it does not smell. Yet all that does not
+hinder that same press from going rabid mad at "the marriage-undermining
+tendencies of Socialism." Never yet was there an age more hypocritical
+than the one we are living in. With the view to demonstrate the fact
+once more, the above instances were cited.
+
+Bureaus of information for marriage,--that's what the advertisement
+pages of most of the newspapers of our day are. Whosoever, be it male
+or female, finds near at hand nothing desirable, entrusts his or her
+heart's wants to the pious-conservative or moral-liberal press, that, in
+consideration of cash and without coaxing, sees to it that the kindred
+souls meet. With illustrations, taken on any one day from a number of
+large newspapers, whole pages, could be filled. Off and on the
+interesting fact also crops out that even clergymen are sought for
+husbands, and, _vice versa_, clergymen angle for wives, with the aid of
+advertisements. Occasionally, the suitors also offer to overlook a
+_slip_, provided the looked-for woman be rich. In short, the moral
+turpitude of certain social circles of our society can be pilloried no
+better than by this sort of courtship.
+
+State and Church play in such "holy matrimony" a by no means handsome
+_role_. Whether the civil magistrate or clergyman, on whom may devolve
+the duty to celebrate the marriage, be convinced that the bridal couple
+before him has been brought together by the vilest of practices; whether
+it be manifest that, neither in point of age nor that of bodily or
+mental qualities, the two are compatible with each other; whether, for
+instance, the bride be twenty and the bridegroom seventy years old, or
+the reverse; whether the bride be young, handsome and joyful, and the
+bridegroom old, ridden with disease and crabbed;--whatever the case, it
+concerns not the representative of the State or the Church; it is not
+for them to look into that. The marriage bond is "blessed,"--as a rule,
+blessed with all the greater solemnity in proportion to the size of the
+fee for the "holy office."
+
+When, later, such a marriage proves a most unfortunate one--as foreseen
+by everybody, by the ill-starred victim, in most instances the woman,
+herself,--and either party decides to separate, then, State and
+Church,--who never first inquire whether real love and natural, moral
+impulses, or only naked, obscene egotism tie the knot--now raise the
+greatest difficulties. At present, moral repulsion is but rarely
+recognized a sufficient ground for separation; at present, only palpable
+proofs, proofs that always dishonor or lower one of the parties in
+public esteem, are, as a rule, demanded; separation is not otherwise
+granted. That the Roman Catholic Church does not allow divorces,--except
+by special dispensation of the Pope, which is hard to obtain, and, at
+best, only from board and bed--only renders all the worse the
+conditions, under which all Catholic countries are suffering. Germany
+has the prospect of receiving, in the not too far distant future, a
+civil code that shall embrace the whole Empire. It is, therefore, a
+side-light upon our times that, although even the superficial observer
+must reach the conclusion that at no previous period have unhappy
+marriages been so numerous as now--a natural consequence of our whole
+social development--the new draft for a civil code still renders divorce
+materially difficult. It is but a fresh instance of the old
+experience,--a social system, in the throes of dissolution, seeks to
+keep itself up by artificial means and compulsion, and to deceive itself
+upon its actual state. In declining Rome, marriage and births were
+sought to be promoted by premiums: in the German Empire, whose social
+order stands under a constellation similar with that of the decaying
+Empire of the Caesars, it is now sought to prevent the ever more
+frequent desire for the dissolution of marriage by means of forcible
+constraints.
+
+Thus people remain against their will chained to each other through
+life. One party becomes the slave of the other, compelled to submit out
+of "conjugal duty" to that other's most intimate embraces, which,
+perhaps, it abhors worse than insult or ill-treatment. Fully justified
+is Montegazza's dictum:[71] "There is probably no worse torture than
+that which compels a human being to put up with the caresses of a person
+it does not love."
+
+We ask, Is such a marriage--and their number is infinite--not worse than
+prostitution? The prostitute has, to a certain degree, the freedom to
+withdraw from her disgraceful pursuit; moreover, she enjoys the
+privilege, if she does not live in a public house, to reject the
+purchase of the embraces of him who, for whatever reason, may be
+distasteful to her. But a sold married woman must submit to the embraces
+of her husband, even though she have a hundred reasons to hate and
+despise him.
+
+When in advance, and with the knowledge of both parties, marriage is
+contracted as a marriage for money or rank, then, as a rule, matters lie
+more favorably. The two accommodate themselves mutually, and a _modus
+vivendi_ is established. They want no scandal, and regard for their
+children compels them to avoid any, although it is the children who
+suffer most under a cold, loveless life on the part of their parents,
+even if such a life does not develop into enmity, quarrel and
+dissension. Often accommodation is reached in order to avoid material
+loss. As a rule it is the husband, whose conduct is the rock against
+which marriage is dashed. This appears from the actions for divorce. In
+virtue of his dominant position, he can indemnify himself elsewhere when
+the marriage is not pleasing to him, and he can not find satisfaction in
+it. The wife is not so free to step on side-roads, partly because, as
+the receiving sex, such action is, for physiologic reasons, a much more
+risky one on her part; then, also, because every infraction of conjugal
+fidelity is imputed a crime to her, which neither the husband nor
+society pardons. Woman alone makes a "slip"--be she wife, widow or maid;
+man, at worst, has acted "incorrectly." One and the same act is judged
+by society with wholly different standards, according as it be committed
+by a man or a woman. And, as a rule, women themselves judge a "fallen"
+sister most severely and pitilessly.[72]
+
+As a rule, only in cases of crassest infidelity or maltreatment, does
+the wife decide upon divorce. She is generally in a materially dependent
+position, and compelled to look upon marriage as a means of support:
+moreover, as a divorced wife, she finds herself socially in no enviable
+situation: unless special reasons render intercourse with her desirable,
+she is considered and treated by society as a neuter, so to speak. When,
+despite all this, most actions for divorce proceed from wives, the
+circumstance is an evidence of the heavy moral torture that they lie
+under. In France, even before the new divorce law came into effect
+(1884), by far the more numerous actions for separation from bed and
+board came from women. For an absolute divorce they could apply only if
+the husband took his concubine into the married home, against the will
+of his wife. Actions for separations from bed and board occurred:[73]
+
+
+                  Average Per   Average Per Year
+      Years.    Year by Wives.    by Husbands.
+    1856-1861       1729              184
+    1861-1866       2135              260
+    1866-1871       2591              330
+
+
+But not only did women institute by far the larger number of actions;
+the figures show that these increased from period to period.
+Furthermore, so far as reliable information before us goes, it appears
+that actions for absolute divorce also proceed preponderatingly from
+wives. In the Kingdom of Saxony, during the period of 1860-1868, there
+were instituted, all told, 8,402 actions for divorce; of these, 3,537
+(42 per cent.) were by men, 4,865 (58 per cent.) by wives.
+
+In the period from 1871 to 1878, there were actions for divorce in
+Saxony[74]:
+
+
+    Year.  By Husbands.  By Wives.
+    1871       475          574
+    1872       576          698
+    1873       553          673
+    1874       643          697
+    1875       717          752
+    1876       722          839
+    1877       746          951
+    1878       754          994
+             -----        -----
+     Total   5,186        6,178
+
+
+The fact that divorce, as a rule, hurts women more, did not restrain
+them in Saxony either from instituting most of the actions. The total
+actions for divorce increased, however, in Saxony, as in France, much
+faster than population. In Switzerland, during the year 1892, there were
+granted 1,036 applications for divorce. Of these, wives had instituted
+493, husbands 229, and both parties 314.
+
+Statistics teach us, however, not alone that wives institute the larger
+number of actions for divorce; they also teach us that the number of
+divorces is in rapid increase. In France, divorce has been regulated
+anew by law since 1884. Since then, divorces have greatly increased from
+year to year. The number of divorces, and years they fell in, were as
+follows:
+
+
+    1884   1,657
+    1885   2,477
+    1886   2,950
+    1887   3,636
+    1888   4,708
+    1889   4,786
+    1890   5,457
+
+
+In Vienna there were, from 1870 to 1871, 148 divorces; they increased
+from year to year; from 1878 to 1879 they ran up to 319 cases.[75] But
+in Vienna, being a preponderatingly Catholic city, divorce is hard to
+obtain. That notwithstanding, about the year 1885 a Vienna Judge made
+the remark: "Complaints on the ground of broken marriage vows are as
+frequent as complaints for broken window-panes." In England and Wales
+there was, in 1867, 1 divorce to every 1,378 marriages, but in 1877
+there was 1 to every 652 marriages; and in 1886, 1 to as few as 527. In
+the United States the number of divorces for 1867 was 9,937, and for
+1886 as many as 25,535. The total number of divorces in the United
+States between 1867 and 1886 was 328,716, and the fault fell in 216,176
+cases upon the husband, in 112,540 upon the wife.
+
+Relatively speaking, the largest number of divorces occurs in the United
+States. The proportion between marriages and divorces during the period
+of 1867 to 1886 stood for those States in which an accurate record is
+kept:
+
+
+                                              Marriages
+                                            to Every One
+      States.        Marriages.   Divorces.   Divorce.
+    Connecticut       96,737       8,542       11.32
+    Columbia          24,065       1,105       21.77
+    Massachusetts    308,195       9,853       31.28
+    Ohio             544,362      26,367       20.65
+    Rhode Island      49,593       4,462       11.10
+    Vermont           54,913       3,238       19.95
+
+
+In the other States of the Union, from which less accurate returns are
+at hand, the proportion seems to be the same. The reasons why in the
+United States divorces are more frequent than in any other country, may
+be sought in the circumstance, first, that divorce is there more easily
+obtained than elsewhere; secondly, that _women occupy in the United
+States a far freer position than in any other country, hence are less
+inclined to allow themselves to be tyrannised by their marital
+lords_.[76]
+
+In Germany there was, by judicial decision, 1 dissolution of marriage--
+
+
+    In the Years  To Population.   To Marriages.
+    1881-1885          8,410           1,430
+         1886          7,585           1,283
+         1887          7,261           1,237
+         1888          6,966           1,179
+         1889          7,155           1,211
+
+
+According to Dr. S. Wernicke, there were to every 1,000 marriages,
+divorces in:
+
+
+      Years.     Belgium.   Sweden.   France.
+    1841-1845       0.7       4.2       2.7
+    1846-1850       0.9       4.4       2.8
+    1851-1855       1.0       4.4       4.0
+    1856-1860       1.4       4.3       4.9
+    1861-1865       1.6       4.8       6.0
+    1866-1870       1.9       5.0       7.6
+    1871-1875       2.8       5.8       6.5
+    1876-1880       4.2       7.1       9.0
+
+
+It would be an error to attempt to arrive at any conclusion touching the
+different conditions of morality, by deductions from the large
+discrepancy between the figures for the different countries cited above.
+No one will dare assert that the population of Sweden has more
+inclination or cause for divorce than that of Belgium. First of all must
+the legislation on the subject be kept in mind, which in one country
+makes divorce difficult, in another easier, more so in some, less in
+others. Only in the second instance does the condition of morality come
+into consideration, i. e., the average reasons that, now the husbands,
+then the wives, consider determining factors in applying for separation.
+But all these figures combine in establishing that divorces increase
+much faster than population; and that they _increase_ while marriages
+_decline_. About this, more later.
+
+On the question how the actions for divorce distribute themselves among
+the several strata of society, there is only one computation at our
+disposal, from Saxony, but which is from the year 1851.[77] At that
+time, to each 100,000 marriages, there were actions for divorce from the
+stratum of
+
+
+    Domestic servants        289 or 1 application to 346 marriages
+    Day laborers             324 or 1 application to 309 marriages
+    Government employes      337 or 1 application to 289 marriages
+    Craftsmen and merchants  354 or 1 application to 283 marriages
+    Artists and scientists   485 or 1 application to 206 marriages
+
+
+Accordingly, the actions for divorce were at that period in Saxony 50
+per cent. more frequent in the _higher_ than in the _lower_ social
+strata.
+
+The increasing number of divorces signifies that, in general, the
+marriage relations are becoming ever more unfavorable, and that the
+factors multiply which destroy marriage. On the other hand, they also
+furnish evidence that an ever larger number of spouses, women in
+particular, decide to shake off the unbearable oppressing yoke.
+
+But the evils of matrimony increase, and the corruption of marriage
+gains ground in the same measure as the struggle for existence waxes
+sharper, and marriage becomes ever more a money-match, or be it,
+marriage by purchase. The increasing difficulty, moreover, of supporting
+a family determines many to renounce marriage altogether; and thus the
+saying that woman's activity should be limited to the house, and that
+she should fill her calling as housewife and mother, becomes ever more
+_a senseless phrase_. On the other hand, the conditions can not choose
+but favor the gratification of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock.
+Hence the number of prostitutes increases, while the number of marriages
+decreases. Besides that, the number increases of those who suffer from
+unnatural gratification of the sexual instinct.
+
+Among the property classes, not infrequently the wife sinks, just as in
+old Greece, to the level of a mere apparatus for the procreation of
+legitimate offspring, of warder of the house, or of nurse to a husband,
+wrecked by debauchery. The husbands keep for their pleasure and physical
+desires hetairae--styled among us courtesans or mistresses--who live in
+elegant abodes, in the handsomest quarters of the city. Others, whose
+means do not allow them to keep mistresses, disport themselves, after
+marriage as before, with Phrynes, for whom their hearts beat stronger
+than for their own wives. With the Phrynes they amuse themselves; and
+quite a number of the husbands among the "property and cultured
+classes" is so corrupt that it considers these entertainments in
+order.[78]
+
+In the upper and middle classes of society, the money matches and
+matches for social position are the mainspring of the evils of married
+life; but, over and above that, marriage is made rank by the lives these
+classes lead. This holds good particularly with regard to the women, who
+frequently give themselves over to idleness or to corrupting pursuits.
+Their intellectual food often consists in the reading of equivocal
+romances and obscene literature, in seeing and hearing frivolous
+theatrical performances, and the fruition of sensuous music; in
+exhilarating nervous stimulants; in conversations on the pettiest
+subjects, or scandals about the dear fellow mortals. Along therewith,
+they rush from one enjoyment into another, from one banquet to another,
+and hasten in summer to the baths and summer retreats to recover from
+the excesses of the winter, and to find fresh subjects for talk. The
+_chronique scandaleuse_ recruits itself from this style of life: people
+seduce and are seduced.
+
+In the lower classes money-matches are unknown, as a rule, although they
+occasionally do play a role. No one can wholly withdraw himself from the
+influence of the society he lives in,--and the existing social
+conditions exercise a particularly depressing influence upon the
+circumstances of the lower classes. As a rule, the workingman weds out
+of inclination, but there is no lack of causes to disturb his marriage.
+A rich blessing of children brings on cares and troubles; but too often
+want sets in. Sickness and death are frequent guests in the workingman's
+family. Lack of work drives misery to its height. Many a circumstance
+pares off the worker's earnings, or temporarily robs him wholly of it.
+Commercial and industrial crises throw him out of work; the introduction
+of new machinery, or methods of work, casts him as superfluous on the
+sidewalk; wars, unfavorable tariffs and commercial treaties, the
+introduction of the new indirect taxes, disciplinary acts on the part of
+the employer in punishment for the exercise of his convictions, etc.,
+destroy his existence, or seriously injure it. Now one thing, then
+another happens, whereby, sometimes for a shorter, sometimes for a
+longer period, he becomes an unemployed, i. e., a starving being.
+Uncertainty is the badge of his existence. When such blows of fortune
+happen, they at first produce dissatisfaction and bitterness, and in the
+home life this mood finds its first expression when daily, every hour,
+demands are made by wife and children for the most pressing needs, needs
+that the husband can not satisfy. Out of despair, he visits the saloon,
+and seeks comfort in bad liquor. The last penny is spent. Quarrel and
+dissension break out. The ruin of both marriage and the family is
+accomplished.
+
+Let us take up another picture. Both--husband and wife--go to work. The
+little ones are left to themselves, or to the care of older brothers and
+sisters, themselves in need of care and education. At noon, the
+so-called lunch is swallowed down in hot haste,--supposing that the
+parents have at all time to rush home, which, in thousands of cases is
+impossible, owing to the shortness of the hour of recess, and the
+distance of the shop from the home. Tired out and unstrung, both return
+home in the evening. Instead of a friendly, cheerful home, they find a
+narrow, unhealthy habitation, often lacking in light and air, generally
+also in the most necessary comforts. The increasing tenement plague,
+together with the horrible improprieties that flow therefrom, is one of
+the darkest sides of our social order, and leads to numerous evils,
+vices and crimes. Yet the plague increases from year to year in all
+cities and industrial regions, and it draws within the vortex of its
+evils ever new strata of society: small producers, public employes,
+teachers, small traders, etc. The workingman's wife, who reaches home in
+the evening tired and harassed, has now again her hands full. She must
+bestir herself at breakneck speed in order but to get ready the most
+necessary things in the household. The crying and noisy children are
+hurried off to bed; the wife sits up, and sews, and patches deep into
+the night. The so-much-needed mental intercourse and encouragement are
+absent. The husband is often uneducated and knows little, the wife still
+less; the little they have to say to each other is soon got through
+with. The husband goes to the saloon, and seeks there the entertainment
+that he lacks at home; he drinks; however little that be that he spends,
+for his means it is too much. At times he falls a prey to gambling,
+which, in the upper circles of society also, claims many victims, and he
+loses more than he spends in drink. The wife, in the meantime, sits at
+home and grumbles; she must work like a dray-horse; for her there is no
+rest or recreation; the husband avails himself of the freedom that
+accident gives him, of having been born a man. Thus disharmony arises.
+If, however, the wife is less true to duty, she seeks in the evening,
+after she has returned home tired, the rest she is entitled to; but then
+the household goes back, and misery is twice as great. Indeed, we live
+"in the best world possible."
+
+Through these and similar circumstances, marriage is shattered ever
+more among the working class also. Even favorable seasons of work exert
+their destructive influence: they compel him to work Sundays and
+overtime: they take from him the hours he still had left for his family.
+In many instances he has to travel hours to reach the shop; to utilize
+the noon recess for going home is an impossibility; he is up in the
+morning at the very earliest, when the children are still sound asleep,
+and returns home late, when they are again in the same condition.
+Thousands, especially those engaged in the building trades in the
+cities, remain away from home all week, owing to the vastness of the
+distance, and return only on Saturdays to their family. And yet it is
+expected of family life that it thrive under such circumstances.
+Moreover, female labor is ever on the increase, especially in the
+textile industry, whose thousands of steam weaving and spinning looms
+are served by cheap woman and children's hands. Here the relations of
+sex and age have been reversed. Wife and child go into the mill, the now
+breadless husband sits at home and attends to household duties. In the
+United States, that, due to its rapid large-capitalist development,
+produces all the evils of European industrial States in much larger
+dimensions, a characteristic name has been invented for the state of
+things brought on by such conditions. Industrial places that employ
+women mainly, while the husbands sit at home, are called "she-towns."
+
+The admission of women to all the manual trades is to-day conceded on
+all hands. Capitalist society, ever on the hunt for profit and gain, has
+long since recognized what an excellent subject for exploitation is
+woman--more docile and submissive, and less exacting woman--in
+comparison with man. Hence the number of trades and occupations, in
+which women are finding employment increases yearly. The extension and
+improvement of machinery, the simplification of the process of
+production through the ever minuter subdivision of labor, the intenser
+competition of capitalists among themselves, together with the
+competitive battle in the world's market among rival industrial
+countries,--all these continue to favor the ever further application of
+female labor. It is a phenomenon noticeable in all industrial countries
+alike. But in the same measure that the number of working-women
+increases, competition among the workingmen is thereby intensified. One
+branch of industry after another, one branch of work after the other, is
+being taken by working-women, who are ever more displacing the men.
+Numerous passages in the reports of factory inspectors, as well as in
+the statistical figures on the occupation of working-women, go to
+confirm the fact.
+
+The condition of the women is worst in the industrial branches in which
+they preponderate, for instance, the clothing and underwear industry,
+those branches, in general, in which work can be done at home. The
+inquiry into the condition of the working-women in the underwear and
+confectionery industries, ordered in 1886 by the Bundesrath, has
+revealed the fact that the wages of these working-women are often so
+miserable that they are compelled to prostitute their bodies for a
+side-source of income. A large number of the prostitutes are recruited
+from the strata of ill-paid working-women.
+
+Our "Christian" Government, whose Christianity, as a rule, is looked for
+in vain there where it should be applied, and is found where the same is
+superfluous and harmful,--this Christian Government acts exactly like
+the Christian capitalists, a fact that does not astonish him who knows
+that the Christian Government is but the agent of our Christian
+capitalists. The Government only with difficulty decides in favor of
+laws to limit woman-labor to a normal measure, or to wholly forbid
+child-labor;--on the same principle that that Government denies many of
+its own employes both the requisite Sunday rest and normal hours of
+work, and in that way materially disturbs their family life. Post
+Office, railroad, penitentiary and other Government employes often must
+perform their functions far beyond the time limit, and their salaries
+stand in inverse ratio to their work. That, however, is, to-day, the
+normal condition of things, still considered quite in order by the
+majority.
+
+Seeing, furthermore, that rent, in comparison to the wages and earnings
+of the workingmen, the lower Government employes and the small men
+included, is much too high, these must exert themselves to the utmost.
+Lodgers are taken into these homes, only males in some, females in
+others, often both. The young and the old live together in narrow
+quarters, without separating the sexes, and are crowded together even
+during the most private acts. How the sense of shame, or morality fares
+thereby, horrifying facts proclaim. The increasing brutalization of the
+youth, so extensively discussed, is due mainly to the conditions
+prevalent in our industrial system, with which the wretchedness of the
+home is closely connected. And, as to the children, what must be upon
+them the effect of industrial labor! The very worst imaginable, both
+physically and morally.
+
+The ever increasing industrial occupation of married women also is
+accompanied with fatal results. Especially is this the case in
+connection with pregnancy and child-birth, as also during the early life
+of the child when it depends upon the nourishment of the mother. A
+number of ailments arise during pregnancy that affect destructively both
+the fruit and the organism of the woman, and cause premature and
+still-born births, upon all of which more later. After the child is
+born, the mother is compelled to return as quickly as possible to the
+factory, lest her place be taken by a competitor. The inevitable
+results to the little ones are: neglected care, improper or total lack
+of nourishment. They are drugged with opiates to keep them quiet. The
+further results are: a vast mortality, or stunted development; in short,
+the degeneration of the race. The children often grow up without having
+enjoyed true motherly and fatherly love, or having on their part, felt
+filial affection. Thus is the proletariat born, thus does it live and
+die. And the "Christian" Government, this "Christian" society wonders
+that rudeness, immorality and crime cumulate.
+
+When, in the early sixties of last century, due to the American Civil
+War for the emancipation of the negroes, many thousands of workingmen in
+the English cotton industries were out of work, physicians made the
+remarkable discovery that, despite great want among the population,
+mortality among children had _declined_. The cause was simple. The
+children now enjoyed the mother's nourishment and better care than they
+had ever had during the best seasons of work. The same fact was attested
+by physicians during the crisis of the seventies in the United States,
+especially in New York and Massachusetts. The general lack of employment
+compelled the women to rest from labor, and left them time for the care
+of their children. Similar observations were also made by Dr. v.
+Recherberg during the inquiry into the condition of the weavers of the
+region of Zittau in Saxony, as shown by him in a work that he wrote
+during the summer of 1890.
+
+In the home-industries, which romantic economists love to represent as
+idyllic, conditions are no better. Here the wife is chained to her
+husband, at work early and late into the night, and the children are
+from an early age hitched on. Crowded into the narrowest space
+imaginable, husband, wife and family, boys and girls, live together,
+along with the waste of materials, amidst the most disagreeable dusts
+and odors, and without the necessary cleanliness. The bedrooms are of a
+piece with the sitting and working rooms: generally dark holes and
+without ventilation, they would be sufficiently unsanitary if they
+housed but a part of the people huddled into them. In short, the
+conditions of these places are such as to cause the skin to creep of
+anyone accustomed to a life worthy of a human being.
+
+The ever harder struggle for existence often also compels women and men
+to commit actions and tolerate indignities that, under other
+circumstances, would fill them with disgust. In 1877 it was
+authentically established in Munich that, among the prostitutes,
+registered by and under the surveillance of the police, there were not
+less than 203 wives of workingmen and artisans. And how many are not the
+married women, who, out of distress, prostitute themselves without
+submitting to a police control that deeply lacerates the sense of shame
+and dignity!
+
+But we have wandered somewhat from our subject. It was shown that the
+number of actions for divorce is on the increase in all countries of
+civilization, and that the majority of these actions proceed from wives.
+This steadily rising figure of actions for divorce is a sign of _the
+decay of bourgeois marriage, which is answering its purpose ever less_.
+But a still much worse sign of its decay is the circumstance that,
+simultaneously, the number of marriages is in almost all these countries
+steadily on the decline. Experience tells that high prices for corn in
+one single year have an unfavorable effect both upon the number of
+marriages and that of births. Long industrial crises, and increasing
+deterioration of the general economic condition must, accordingly, have
+a lasting evil effect. This is confirmed by the statistics of marriages
+for almost all countries in civilization.
+
+In France, marriages between 1881-1890 cast the following picture on the
+canvas. Marriages were contracted in--
+
+
+    1881  282,079     1886  283,208
+    1882  281,060     1887  277,060
+    1883  284,519     1888  276,848
+    1884  289,555     1889  272,934
+    1885  283,170     1890  269,332
+
+
+There is, accordingly, a considerable decrease of marriages.
+
+In the German Empire, the number of marriages was highest after the
+close of the war between Germany and France, during which they had stood
+still. In 1872 there were 423,900 marriages contracted, but in 1876 they
+numbered only 366,912, and during the worst year of the crisis, the year
+1879, they dropped to 335,113. They have since risen again slowly, and
+numbered in
+
+
+    1882  350,457     1889  389,339
+    1886  372,326     1892  398,775
+
+
+Although in the year 1892 the population of Germany was larger by
+8,000,000 heads than in 1872, the number of marriages was not even as
+large as in 1874 when it amounted to 400,282. In the period between
+1871-1880, there were, to an average of 1,000 inhabitants in Germany,
+8.6 marriages; in the period between 1881-1888, only 7.8.
+
+In Prussia, to the average 10,000 inhabitants, there married--
+
+
+    Between 1831-35   1,849
+    Between 1866-70   1,605
+    Between 1871-75   1,896
+    Between 1881-85   1,529
+    And in 1888       1,624
+
+
+A similar, partly even more unfavorable picture than in Germany, is
+furnished by the statistical tables for other European countries.
+
+Out of every 10,000 persons, there married--
+
+
+    Year    Holland Switzerland Austria France Italy Belgium England
+    1873      171       152       188     178   159    156     176
+    1874      168       166       181     167   153    152     170
+    1875      167       179       171     164   168    145     167
+    1876      165       162       165     158   163    142     166
+    1877      162       157       150     150   154    149     157
+    1878      155       147       152     151   142    135     152
+    1879      153       138       155     152   150    136     144
+    1880      150       137       152     149   140    141     149
+    1881      146       136       160     150   162    142     151
+    1882      143       135       164     149   157    140     155
+    1883      142       136       157     150   161    136     154
+    1884      144       136       157     153   164    136     151
+    1885      139       138       152     149   158    136     144
+    1886      139       137       155     149   158    134     141
+              ---       ---       ---     ---   ---    ---     ---
+    Average   153       147       161     155   156    141     156
+
+    Year     Scotland Ireland Denmark Norway Sweden Hungary
+    1873        155      96     162     145    146    226
+    1874        152      92     164     153    145    214
+    1875        148      91     170     157    140    218
+    1876        150      99     171     154    141    198
+    1877        144      93     161     151    137    182
+    1878        134      95     148     146    129    187
+    1879        128      87     147     135    126    205
+    1880        132      78     152     133    126    182
+    1881        139      85     156     128    124    198
+    1882        140      86     154     134    127    203
+    1883        140      85     154     132    128    205
+    1884        135      91     156     137    131    201
+    1885        129      86     151     133    133    ...
+    1886        124      84     142     131    ...    ...
+                ---      --     ---     ---    ---    ---
+    Average     139      89     156     141    133    202
+
+
+These figures are interesting in more respects than one. In the first
+place, they prove that, in all the countries named, the number of
+marriages _declines_. Like Germany, all these countries show the highest
+frequency of marriage in the beginning of 1872, and then follows a drop
+in most of them. Hungary comes out best; Ireland, on the contrary,
+worst, showing the smallest figures of all. The ejectment of the Irish
+population from their lands, and the ever greater concentration of the
+same in the hands of the large landlords, express themselves clearly in
+the figures given.[79]
+
+Industrial conditions have a marked effect upon the number of marriages.
+As the former has, on an average, become ever more unfavorable since the
+middle of the seventies, the decline in marriages is not astonishing.
+But not the industrial conditions only, also the manner in which the
+property relations develop affects marriages in a high degree, as just
+seen in Ireland. The Year-Book of Schmoller for 1885, section 1, gives
+information on the statistics of population of the Kingdom of
+Wuertemberg, from which it appears strikingly that with the increase of
+large age _declines_, while the number of _unmarried_ men between the
+ages of 40 and 50 _rises_:
+
+
+                                                     Percentage of Males.
+                              Percentage of Landed    Married   Unmarried
+                                Property by           of the    of the
+                                 Hectares.            Age of    Age of
+      Districts.        Up to 5.  5-20.  Over 20.     25-30.    40-50.
+    Upper Neurenburg      79.6    20.4     0.0         63.6       4.4
+    East of Stuttgart     78.9    17.7     3.4         51.3       8.1
+    South of Stuttgart    67.6    24.8     7.6         48.6       8.7
+    North of Stuttgart    56.5    34.8     8.8         50.0      10.0
+    Schwarzwald           50.2    42.2     7.6         48.6      10.1
+    Upper Neckar          43.6    40.3    16.1         44.3      10.8
+    Eastward              39.5    47.6    12.8         48.7      10.0
+    Northeast, except
+      north of Hall       22.2    50.1    27.7         38.8      10.6
+    Swabian Alb           20.3    40.8    38.3         38.8       7.5
+    North Upper Swabia    19.7    48.0    32.3         32.5       9.7
+    From Hall eastward    15.5    50.0    34.5         32.5      13.8
+    Bodensee district     14.2    61.4    24.4         23.5      26.4
+    Middle and South
+      Upper Swabia        12.6    41.1    46.3         30.0      19.1
+
+
+There can be no doubt: small landed property favors marriages: it makes
+a living possible for a larger number of families, although the living
+be modest. Large landed property, on the contrary, works directly
+against marriage, and promotes celibacy. All the figures here quoted
+prove, accordingly, that, not _morals_, but purely _material_ causes are
+the determining factor. _The number of marriages, like the moral
+conditions of a commonwealth, depends upon its material foundations._
+
+The fear of want, the mental worry lest the children be not educated up
+to their station,--these are further causes that drive the wives, in
+particular, of all ranks to actions that are out of keeping with nature,
+and still more so with the criminal code. Under this head belong the
+various means for the prevention of pregnancy, or, when, despite all
+care, this does set in, then the removal of the unripe
+fruit--_abortion_. It were an error to claim that these measures are
+resorted to only by heedless, unconscionable women. Often, rather, it is
+conscientious women, who wish to limit the number of children, in order
+to escape the dilemma of either having to deny themselves their
+husbands, or of driving them to paths that they are naturally inclined
+to. It often is such women who prefer to undergo the dangers of
+abortion. Besides these, there are other women, especially in the higher
+walks of life, who, in order to conceal a "slip," or out of aversion
+for the inconveniences of pregnancy, of child-birth and of nursing,
+perhaps, out of fear of sooner losing their charms, and then forfeiting
+their standing with either husband or male friends, incur such criminal
+acts, and, for hard cash, find ready medical and midwife support.
+
+To conclude from diverse indications, artificial abortion is coming ever
+more into practice; nor is the practice new. Artificial abortion was in
+frequent use among the ancient peoples, and is, to this day, from the
+most civilized down to the barbarous. According to Jules Roget,[80] the
+women of Rome took recourse to abortion for several reasons: They either
+sought to destroy the evidence of illicit relations--a reason that even
+to-day is often at its bottom; or they wished to be able to indulge
+their excesses without interruption. There were also other reasons: they
+wished to avoid the changes that pregnancy and child-birth work upon
+woman's physique. Among the Romans, a woman was old from twenty-five
+years to thirty. Accordingly, she sought to avoid all that might impair
+her charms. In the Middle Ages, abortion was punishable with severe
+bodily chastisement, often even with death; the free woman, guilty
+thereof, became a serf. At present, abortion is especially in use in the
+United States. In all large cities of the Union, there are institutions
+in which girls and women are prematurely delivered: many American papers
+contain the advertisements of such places: abortion is talked of there
+almost as freely as of a regular birth. In Germany and Europe, opinion
+on the subject is different: the German criminal code, for instance,
+makes the act of both the principal and the accessory a penitentiary
+offense.[81]
+
+Abortion is, in many cases, accompanied by the most serious results. The
+operation is dangerous; death not infrequently occurs; often the result
+is a permanent impairment of health. "The troubles of troublesome
+pregnancy and child-birth are infinitely less than the sufferings
+consequent upon artificial abortion."[82] Barrenness is one of its most
+common consequences. All that, notwithstanding, abortion is practiced
+also in Germany, ever more frequently, and for the reasons given.
+Between 1882-1888, the number of cases in Berlin, of which the criminal
+courts took cognizance, rose 155 per cent. The _chronique scandaleuse_
+of the last years dealt frequently with cases of abortion, that caused
+great sensation, due to the circumstance that reputable physicians and
+women, prominent in society, played a _role_ in them. Furthermore, to
+judge from the rising number of announcements in our newspapers, the
+institutions and places increase in which married and unmarried women of
+the property class are offered an opportunity to await the results of a
+"slip" in perfect secrecy.
+
+The dread of a large increase of children--due to the smallness of
+means, and the cost of bringing up--has, among all classes and even
+peoples, developed the use of preventatives into a system, that here and
+yonder has grown into a public calamity. It is a generally known fact
+that, in all strata of French society, the "two-child system" is in
+force. In few countries of civilization are marriages relatively as
+numerous as in France, and in no country is the average number of
+children so small, and the increase of population so slow. The French
+capitalist, like the small-holder and allotment peasant, pursues the
+system; the French workingman follows suit. In many sections of Germany
+the special situation of the peasants seems to have led to similar
+conditions. We know a charming region in Southwest Germany, where, in
+the garden of every peasant, there stands the so-called "Sevenbaum,"
+whose properties are applied to abortive purposes. In another district
+of the same country the regular two-child system prevails among the
+peasants: they do not wish to divide the places. Moreover, striking is
+the measure in which literature, that treats with and recommends the
+means of "facultative sterility," increases in Germany both in volume
+and demand,--of course, always under the colors of science, and in
+allusion to the alleged threatening danger of over-population.
+
+Along with abortion and the artificial prevention of conception, crime
+plays its _role_. In France, the murder of children and their exposure
+is perceptibly on the increase, both promoted by the provision of the
+French civil code that forbids all inquiry after the paternity of the
+child. Section 340 of the _Code Civil_ decrees: "_La recherche de la
+paternite est interdite_;" on the other hand, Section 314 provides: "_La
+recherche de la maternite est admise_." To inquire after the paternity
+of a child is forbidden, but is allowed after its maternity,--a law that
+glaringly brings out the injustice contemplated towards the seduced
+woman. The men of France are free to seduce as many women and girls as
+they are able to; they are free from all responsibility; they owe no
+support to the child. These provisions were instituted under the pretext
+that the female sex should be frightened against seducing the men. As
+you see, everywhere it is the weak man, this limb of the stronger sex,
+who is seduced, but never seduces. The result of Section 340 of the
+_Code Civil_ was Section 312, which provides: "_L'enfant concu pendant
+le marriage a pour pere le mari._"[83] Inquiry after the paternity being
+forbidden, it is logical that the husband, crowned with horns, rest
+content with having the child, that his wife received from another,
+considered his own. Inconsistency, at any rate, can not be charged to
+the French capitalist class. All attempts to amend Section 340 have so
+far failed. Lately, February, 1895, the Socialist deputies in the French
+Chamber of Deputies presented a bill intended to put an end to the
+disfranchised position of the seduced or betrayed woman. Whether the
+attempt will be crowned with success is doubtful.
+
+On the other hand, the French capitalist class--sensible of the cruelty
+it committed in so framing the law as to make it impossible for the
+deceived woman to turn for support to the father of her child--sought to
+make up for its sins by establishing foundling asylums. According to our
+famous "morals," there is no paternal feeling towards the illegitimate
+child; that exists only for "legitimate heirs." Through the foundlings'
+asylums the mother also is taken from the new-born child. According to
+the French fiction, foundlings are orphans. In this way, the French
+capitalist class has its illegitimate children brought up, _at the
+expense of the State_, as "children of the fatherland." A charming
+arrangement. In Germany, things bid fair to be switched on the French
+track. The provisions in the bill for a civil code for the German Empire
+contain maxims on the legal status of illegitimate children, strongly in
+contrast with the humane law still in force.
+
+According to the bill, a dishonored girl--even if blameless, or seduced
+with the promise of subsequent marriage, or induced to consent to
+coition through some criminal act--has no claim against the seducer
+except as indemnity for the costs of delivery, and for support during
+the first six weeks after the birth of the child, and then only within
+the bounds of what is strictly necessary. Only in some of the cases of
+the worst crimes against morality, can a slight money indemnity be
+granted to the seduced girl, at the discretion of the court, and without
+the necessity of proving actual damages. The illegitimate child has no
+claim upon the seducer of his mother, except for the merest necessaries
+of life, and then only until its fourteenth year. All claims of the
+child on its father are, however, barred if, within pregnancy, any other
+man cohabit with its mother. The plaintiff child has, moreover, to prove
+that its mother has not accepted the embraces of any other man.
+
+Menger, the expositions in whose treatise[84] we here follow, justly
+raises against the bill the serious charge that it only accrues to the
+advantage of the well-to-do, immoral men, seducers of ignorant girls,
+often girls who sin through poverty, but leaves these fallen girls,
+together with their wholly guiltless children, entirely unprotected,
+aye, pushes them only deeper into misery and crime. Menger cites, in
+this connection, the provisions of the Prussian law. According thereto,
+an unmarried woman or widow of good character, who is made pregnant, is
+to be indemnified by the man according to his means. The indemnity
+shall, however, not exceed one-fourth of his property. An illegitimate
+child has a claim upon its father for support and education, regardless
+of whether his mother is a person of good character: the expenditure,
+however, shall be no higher than the education of a legitimate child
+would cost to people of the peasant or of ordinary citizen walks of
+life. If the illicit intercourse occurred under promise of future
+marriage, then, according to the further provisions of Prussian law, the
+Judge is duly to award the woman, pronounced innocent and a wife, the
+name, standing and rank of the man, together with all the rights of a
+divorced woman. The illegitimate child has, in such cases, all the
+rights of children born in wedlock. We may await with curiosity to see
+whether the provisions of this bill, so hostile to woman, will acquire
+the force of a civil code of law in Germany. But retrogression is the
+key-note in our legislation.
+
+Between the years of 1830-1880, there were 8,563 cases of infanticide
+before the French court of assizes, the figures rising from 471 in 1831,
+to 980 in 1880. During the same period, 1,032 cases of abortion were
+tried, 41 in 1831, and in 1880 over 100. Of course, only a small part of
+the abortions came to the knowledge of the criminal court; as a rule,
+only when followed by serious illness or death. In the cases of
+infanticide, the country population contributed 75 per cent., in the
+cases of abortion the cities 65 per cent. In the city, the women have
+more means at command to prevent normal birth; hence, the many cases of
+abortion and the small number of infanticides. It is the reverse in the
+country.
+
+Such is the composition of the picture presented by modern society in
+respect to its most intimate relations. The picture differs wide from
+that that poets and poetically doused phantasists love to paint it. Our
+picture, however, has this advantage,--it is true. And yet the picture
+still calls for several strokes of the brush to bring out its character
+in full.
+
+In general, there can be no difference of opinion touching the present
+and average mental inferiority of the female sex to the male. True
+enough, Balzac, by no means a woman-lover, claims: "The woman, who has
+received a male education, possesses in fact the most brilliant and
+fruitful qualities for the building of her own happiness and that of her
+husband;" and Goethe, who knew well both the men and women of his times,
+expresses himself in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (confessions of a
+pure soul): "Learned women were ridiculed, and also the educated ones
+were disliked, probably because it was considered impolite to put so
+many ignorant men to shame." We agree with both. Nevertheless, the fact
+is no wise altered that, in general, women stand intellectually behind
+the men. This difference is compulsory, because _woman is that which
+man, as her master, has made her_. The education of woman, more so than
+that of the working class, has been neglected since time immemorial; nor
+are latter-day improvements adequate. We live in days when the
+aspiration after exchange of thought grows in all circles, in the family
+also; and there the neglected education of woman is felt as a serious
+fault, and it avenges itself upon the husband.
+
+The object of the education of man--at least it is so claimed, although
+due to the mistaken methods, the object is often missed, perchance,
+also, is not meant to be reached--aims at the development of the
+intellect, the sharpening of the powers of thought, the broadening of
+the field of practical knowledge, and the invigoration of the
+will-power, in short, at the cultivation of the functions of the mind.
+With woman, on the contrary, education, so far as at all attended to in
+a higher degree, is mainly aimed at the intensification of her feelings,
+at formality and polite culture--music, belles-letters, art, poetry--all
+of which only screw her nervous sensitiveness and phantasy up to a
+higher pitch. This is a mistaken and unhealthy policy. In it the fact
+transpires that the powers, which determine the measure of woman's
+education, are guided only by their ingrained prejudices regarding the
+nature of the female character, and also by the cramped position of
+woman. The object must not be to develop still further the sentimental
+and imaginative side of woman, which would only tend to heighten her
+natural inclination to nervousness; neither should her education be
+limited to etiquette and polite literature. The object, with regard to
+her as to man, should be to develop their intellectual activity and
+acquaint them with the phenomena of practical life. It would be of
+greatest benefit to both sexes if, in lieu of a superfluity of
+sentiment, that often becomes positively uncanny, woman possessed a good
+share of sharpened wit and power for exact reasoning; if, in lieu of
+excessive nervous excitation and timidity, she possessed firmness of
+character and physical courage; in lieu of conventional, literary
+refinement, in so far as she at all has any, she had a knowledge of the
+world, of men and of the powers of Nature.
+
+Generally speaking, what is termed the feeling and spirituality of woman
+has hitherto been nurtured without stint, while her intellectual
+development has, on the contrary, been grossly neglected and kept
+under. As a consequence, she suffers of hypertrophy of feeling and
+spirituality, hence is prone to superstition and miracles,--a more than
+grateful soil for religious and other charlataneries, a pliant tool for
+all reaction. Blockish men often complain when she is thus affected, but
+they bring no relief, because often they are themselves steeped up to
+the ears in prejudices.
+
+By reason of woman's being almost generally as here sketched, she looks
+upon the world differently from man. Hence, again, a strong source of
+contrariety between the two sexes.
+
+Participation in public life is to-day one of the most essential duties
+of a man; that many men do not yet understand this does not alter the
+fact. Nevertheless, the number of those is ever increasing who realize
+that public institutions stand in intimate connection with the private
+lot of the individual; that his success or failure, together with that
+of his family, depend infinitely more upon the condition of public
+affairs than upon his own personal qualities and actions. The fact is
+beginning to receive recognition that the greatest efforts of the
+individual are powerless against evils that lie in the very condition of
+things, and that determine his state. On the other hand, the struggle
+for existence now requires much greater efforts than before. Demands are
+now made upon man that engage ever more his time and strength. The
+ignorant, indifferent wife stands dumb before him, and feels herself
+neglected. It may be even said that, the mental difference between man
+and woman is to-day greater than formerly, when the opportunities for
+both were slight and limited, and lay more within the reach of her
+restricted intellect. Furthermore, the handling of public affairs
+occupies to-day a large number of men to a degree before unknown; this
+widens their horizon; but it also withdraws them ever more from the
+mental sphere of their homes. The wife deems herself set back, and thus
+another source of friction is started. Only rarely does the husband know
+how to pacify his wife and convince her. When he does that, he has
+escaped a dangerous rock. As a rule the husband is of the opinion that
+what he wants does not concern his wife, she does not understand it. He
+takes no pains to enlighten her. "You don't understand such matters," is
+his stereotyped answer, the moment the wife complains that she is
+neglected. Lack of information on the part of wives is promoted by lack
+of sense on the part of most husbands. More favorable relations between
+husband and wife spring up in the rank of the working class in the
+measure that both realize they are tugging at the same rope, and that
+there is but one means towards satisfactory conditions for themselves
+and their family,--the radical reformation of society that shall make
+human beings of them all. In the measure that such insight gains ground
+among the wives of the proletariat, then, despite want and misery,
+their married life is _idealized_: both now have a common aim, after
+which they strive; and they have an inexhaustible source of mutual
+encouragement in the mutual interchange of views, whereto their joint
+battle leads them. The number of proletarian women who reach this
+insight is every year larger. Herein lies a movement, that is in process
+of development, and that is fraught with decisive significance for the
+future of mankind.
+
+In other social strata, the differences in education and views--easily
+overlooked at the beginning of married life, when passion still
+predominates--are felt ever more with ripening years. Sexual passion
+cools off, and its substitution with harmony of thought is all the more
+needful. But, leaving aside whether the husband has any idea of civic
+duties and attends to the same, he, at any rate, thanks to his
+occupation and constant intercourse with the outer world, comes into
+continuous touch with different elements and opinions, on all sorts of
+occasions, and thus floats into an intellectual atmosphere that broadens
+his horizon. As a rule, and in contrast with his wife, he finds himself
+in a state of intellectual molting, while she, on the contrary, due to
+her household duties, which engage her early and late, is robbed of
+leisure for further education, and, accordingly, becomes mentally
+stunted and soured.
+
+The domestic wretchedness in which the majority of wives live to-day, is
+correctly depicted by the bourgeois-minded Gerhard von Amyntor in his
+"Marginal Notes to the Book of Life."[85] In the chapter entitled
+"Deadly Gnat-bites" he says among other things:
+
+"Not the shocking events, that none remain unvisited by, and that bring,
+here the death of a husband, yonder the moral downfall of a beloved
+child; that lie, here in a long and serious illness, yonder in the
+wrecking of a warmly nursed plan;--not these undermine her (the
+housewife's) freshness and strength. It is the small, daily-recurring
+marrow and bone-gnawing cares.... How many millions of brave little
+house-mothers cook and scour away their vigor of life, their very cheeks
+and roguish dimples, in attending to domestic cares until they become
+crumpled, dried and broke-up mummies. The ever-recurring question, what
+shall be cooked to-day? the ever-recurring necessity of sweeping, and
+beating, and brushing, and dusting is the continuously falling drop that
+slowly, but surely, wears away mind and body. The kitchen-hearth is the
+place where the saddest balances are drawn up between income and
+expense, where the most depressing observations are forced upon the mind
+on the rising dearness of the necessaries of life, and on the ever
+increasing difficulty to earn the needed cash. On the flaming altar,
+where the soup kettle bubbles, youth and mental ease, beauty and good
+humor are sacrificed; and who recognizes in the old care-bent cook, the
+one-time blooming, overbearing, coy-coquette bride in the array of her
+myrtle crown? Already in antiquity the hearth was sacred, near it were
+placed the Lares and patron deities. Let us also hold sacred the hearth
+at which the dutiful German bourgeois house-wife dies a slow death, in
+order to keep the house comfortable, the table covered and the family in
+health." Such is the consolation offered in bourgeois society to the
+wife, who, under the present order of society, is miserably going to
+pieces.
+
+Those women, who, thanks to their social condition, find themselves in a
+freer state, have, as a rule, a one-sided, superficial education, that,
+combined with inherited female characteristics, manifests itself with
+force. They generally have a taste for mere superficialities; they think
+only about gew-gaws and dress; and thus they seek their mission in the
+satisfaction of a spoiled taste, and the indulgence of passions that
+demand their pay with usury. In their children and the education of
+these they have hardly any interest: they give them too much trouble and
+annoyance, hence are left to the nurses and servants, and are later
+passed on to the boarding-schools. At any rate their principal task is
+to raise their daughters as show-dolls, and their sons as pupils for the
+_jeunesse dore_ (gilded youth) out of which dudedom recruits its
+ranks--that despicable class of men that may be fairly put upon a level
+with procurers. This _jeunesse dore_ furnishes the chief contingent to
+the seducers of the daughters of the working class. They look upon
+idleness and squandering as a profession.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[58] Mainlaender, "Philosophie der Erloesung," Frankfort-on-the-Main,
+1886, E. Koenitzer.
+
+[59] D. A. Debay, "Hygiene et Physiologue du Marriage," Paris, 1884.
+Quoted in "Im Freien Reich" by Ioma v. Troll-Borostyani, Zurich, 1884.
+
+[60] "Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, in physiologischer,
+pathologischer und therapeutischer Hinsicht dargestellt."
+
+[61] "Die Prostitution vor dem Gesetz," by Veritas. Leipsic, 1893.
+
+[62] V. Oettingen, "Moralstatistik." Erlangen, 1882.
+
+[63] "Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie," Vol. I, Stuttgart, 1883.
+
+[64] Vol. II. Leipsic, 1887.
+
+[65] "The moods and feelings in and which husband and wife approach each
+other, exercise, without a doubt, a definite influence upon the result
+of the sexual act, and transmit certain characteristics to the fruit."
+Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, "The Moral Education of the Young In Relation
+to Sex." See also Goethe's "Elective Affinities," where he sketches
+clearly the influence exerted by the feelings of two beings who approach
+each other for intimate intercourse.
+
+[66] "Denkwuerdigkeiten," Vol. I, p. 239, Leipsic, F. A. Brockhaus.
+
+[67] "Mr. E., a manufacturer ... informed me that he employed females
+exclusively, at his power-looms ... gives a decided preference to
+married females, especially those who have families at home dependent on
+them for support; they are attentive, docile, more so than unmarried
+females, and are compelled to use their utmost exertions to procure the
+necessities of life. Thus are the virtues, the peculiar virtues of the
+female character to be perverted to her injury--thus all that is most
+dutiful and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and
+suffering." Speech of Lord Ashley, March 15, 1884, on the Ten Hour
+Factory Bill. Marx's "Capital."
+
+[68] "Die Frau auf dem Gebiete der Nationaloekonomie."
+
+[69] See "Fuerst Bismarck und seine Leute," Von Busch.
+
+[70] Sections 180 and 181.
+
+[71] "The Physiology of Love."
+
+[72] Alexander Dumas says rightly, In "Monsieur Alfonse:" "Man has built
+two sorts of morals; one for himself, one for his wife; one that permits
+him love with all women, and one that, as indemnity for the liberty she
+has forfeited forever, permits her love with one man only."
+
+[73] L. Bridel, "La Puissance Maritale," Lausanne. 1879.
+
+[74] v. Oettingen, "Moralstatistik," Erlangen, 1882.
+
+[75] v. Oettingen, "Moralstatistik."
+
+[76] [According to the census of 1900, there were in the United States
+198,914 divorced persons: males 84,237, females 114,677. The percentage
+of divorced to married persons was 0.7. The census warns, however, that
+"divorced persons are apt to be reported as single, and so the census
+returns in this respect should not be accepted as a correct measure of
+the prevalence of divorce throughout the country."--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[77] v. Oettingen, "Moralstatistik."
+
+[78] In his work frequently cited by us, "Die Frauenfrage im
+Mittelalter," Buecher laments the decay of marriage and of family life;
+he condemns the increasing female labor in industry, and demands a
+"return" to the "real domain of woman," where she alone produces
+"values" in the house and the family. The endeavors of the modern
+friends of woman appear to him as "dilettanteism" and he hopes finally
+"that the movement may be switched on the right track," but he is
+obviously unable to point to a successful road. Neither is that possible
+from the bourgeois standpoint. The marriage conditions, like the
+condition of woman in general, have not been brought about arbitrarily.
+They are the natural product of our social development. But the social
+development of peoples does not cut capers, nor does it perpetrate any
+such false reasonings in a circle; it takes its course obedient to
+imminent laws. It is the mission of the student of civilization to
+discover these laws, and, planted upon them, to show the way for the
+removal of existing evils.
+
+[79] "Neue Zeit," Jahrgang 1888, p. 239.
+
+[80] "Etudes Medicales sur l'Ancienne Rome," Paris, 1859.
+
+[81] The above account of the United States, concerning the contrast
+between it and Europe, is incorrect. At the time in the nation's history
+when material conditions were easy, theoretically, the thought of
+abortion, let alone its execution, could not spring up; and it did not.
+All the reports of that time, not forgetting Washington Irving's
+humorous account of the custom of "bundling," confirm the fact. Births
+were numerous, families large.
+
+Subsequently, when conditions became less easy, and in the measure that
+the country entered increasingly into the sphere of the material
+hardships implied in advancing capitalism, theoretically, again, the
+thought of abortion, and, along with it, the deed, must be expected to
+have sprung up; and so they did. But the same development that carried
+the country into the material sphere of capitalism, also, and at the
+same time, carried its people into the sphere of capitalist affectation
+of morality and measuredness of language; in short, of hypocrisy. The
+being, that will commit the crimes of a higher civilization with the
+plain-spokenness of the barbarian, is a monstrosity. Capitalist United
+States is abreast of, and moves in even step with, capitalist Europe,
+not in the practice only of crime, but in the Pharisees of its
+condemnation and the severity of its punishment also.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[82] "Geschichte und Gefahren der Fruchtabtreibung," Dr. Ed. Reich,
+Leipsic, 1893.
+
+[83] "The child conceived during marriage has the husband for father."
+
+[84] "Das buergerliche Recht und die besitzlosen Klassen," Tuebingen,
+1890.
+
+[85] Sam. Lucas, Elberfeld.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FURTHER CHECKS AND OBSTRUCTIONS TO MARRIAGE--NUMERICAL PROPORTION OF THE
+SEXES--ITS CAUSES AND EFFECTS.
+
+
+Cast in the mold of the conditions above described, many a feature of
+woman's character took shape, and they reached ever fuller development
+from generation to generation. On these features men love to dwell with
+predilection, but they forget that they are themselves the cause
+thereof, and have promoted with their conduct the defects they now make
+merry about, or censure. Among these widely censured female qualities,
+belong her dreaded readiness of tongue, and passion for gossip; her
+inclination to endless talk over trifles and unimportant things; her
+mental bent for purely external matters, such as dress, and her desire
+to please, together with a resulting proneness to all the follies of
+fashion; lastly, her easily arousable envy and jealousy of the other
+members of her sex.
+
+These qualities, though in different degrees, manifest themselves
+generally in the female sex from early childhood. They are qualities
+that are born under the pressure of social conditions, and are further
+developed by heredity, example and education. A being irrationally
+brought up, can not bring up others rationally.
+
+In order to be clear on the causes and development of good or bad
+qualities, whether with the sexes or with whole peoples, the same
+methods must be pursued that modern natural science applies in order to
+ascertain the formation and development of life according to genus and
+species, and to determine their qualities. They are the laws that flow
+from the material conditions for life, laws that life demands, that
+adapt themselves to it, and finally became its nature.
+
+Man forms no exception to that which holds good in Nature for all
+animate creation. Man does not stand outside of Nature: looked at
+physiologically, he is the most highly developed animal,--a fact,
+however, that some would deny. Thousands of years ago, although wholly
+ignorant of modern science, the ancients had on many matters affecting
+man, more rational views than the moderns; above all, they gave
+practical application to the views founded on experience. We praise with
+enthusiastic admiration the beauty and strength of the men and women of
+Greece; but the fact is overlooked that, not the happy climate, nor the
+bewitching nature of a territory that stretched along the bay-indented
+sea, but the physical culture and maxims of education, consistently
+enforced by the State, thus affected both the being and the development
+of the population. These measures were calculated to combine beauty,
+strength and suppleness of body with wit and elasticity of mind, both of
+which were transmitted to the descendants. True enough, even then, in
+comparison with man, woman was neglected in point of mental, but not of
+corporal culture.[86] In Sparta, that went furthest in the corporal
+culture of the two sexes, boys and girls went naked until the age of
+puberty, and participated in common in the exercises of the body, in
+games and in wrestling. The naked exposure of the human body, together
+with the natural treatment of natural things, had the advantage that
+sensuous excitement--to-day artificially cultivated by the separation of
+the sexes from early childhood--was then prevented. The corporal make-up
+of one sex, together with its distinctive organs, was no secret to the
+other. There, no play of equivocal words could arise. Nature was Nature.
+The one sex rejoiced at the beauty of the other. Mankind will have to
+return to Nature and to the natural intercourse of the sexes; it must
+cast off the now-ruling and unhealthy spiritual notions concerning man;
+it must do that by setting up methods of education that fit in with our
+own state of culture, and that may bring on the physical and mental
+regeneration of the race.
+
+Among us, and especially on the subject of female education, seriously
+erroneous conceptions are still prevalent. That woman also should have
+strength, courage and resolution, is considered heretical, "unwomanly,"
+although none would dare deny that, equipped with such qualities, woman
+could protect herself against many ills and inconveniences. Conversely,
+woman is cramped in her physical, exactly as in her intellectual
+development. The irrationalness of her dress plays an important _role_
+herein. It not only, unconscionably hampers her in her physique, it
+directly ruins her;--and yet, but few physicians dare take a stand
+against the abuse, accurately informed though they are on the
+injuriousness of her dress. The fear of displeasing the patient often
+causes them to hold their tongues, if they do not even flatter her
+insane notions. Modern dress hinders woman in the free use of her limbs,
+it injures her physical growth, and awakens in her a sense of impotence
+and weakness. Moreover, modern dress is a positive danger to her own and
+the health of those who surround her: in the house and on the street,
+woman is a walking raiser of dust. And likewise is the development of
+woman hampered by the strict separation of the sexes, both in social
+intercourse and at school--a method of education wholly in keeping with
+the spiritual ideas that Christianity has deeply implanted in us on all
+matters that regard the nature of man.
+
+The woman who does not reach the development of her faculties, who is
+crippled in her powers, who is held imprisoned in the narrowest circle
+of thought, and who comes into contact with hardly any but her own
+female relatives,--such a woman can not possibly raise herself above the
+routine of daily life and habits. Her intellectual horizon revolves only
+around the happenings in her own immediate surroundings, family affairs
+and what thereby hangs. Extensive conversations on utter trifles, the
+bent for gossip, are promoted with all might; of course her latent
+intellectual qualities strain after activity and exercise;--whereupon
+the husband, often involved thereby in trouble, and driven to
+desperation, utters imprecations upon qualities that he, the "chief of
+creation," has mainly upon his own conscience.
+
+With woman--whose face all our social and sexual relations turn toward
+marriage with every fibre of her being--marriage and matrimonial matters
+constitute, quite naturally, a leading portion of her conversation and
+aspirations. Moreover, to the physically weaker woman, subjected as she
+is to man by custom and laws, the tongue is her principal weapon against
+him, and, as a matter of course, she makes use thereof. Similarly with
+regard to her severely censured passion for dress and desire to please,
+which reach their frightful acme in the insanities of fashion, and often
+throw fathers and husbands into great straits and embarrassments. The
+explanation lies at hand. To man, woman is, first of all, an object of
+enjoyment. Economically and socially unfree, she is bound to see in
+marriage her means of support; accordingly, she depends upon man and
+becomes a piece of property to him. As a rule, her position is rendered
+still more unfavorable through the general excess of women over men,--a
+subject that will be treated more closely. The disparity intensifies the
+competition of women among themselves; and it is sharpened still more
+because, for a great variety of reasons, a number of men do not marry at
+all. Woman is, accordingly, forced to enter into competition for a
+husband with the members of her own sex, by means of the most favorable
+external presentation of her person possible.
+
+Let the long duration, through many generations, of these evils be taken
+into account. The wonder will cease that these manifestations, sprung
+from equally lasting causes, have reached their present extreme form.
+Furthermore, perhaps in no age was the competition of women for husbands
+as sharp as it is in this, due partly to reasons already given, and
+partly to others yet to be discussed. Finally, the difficulties of
+obtaining a competent livelihood, as well as the demands made by
+society, combine, more than ever before, to turn woman's face towards
+matrimony as an "institute for support."
+
+Men gladly accept such a state of things: they are its beneficiaries. It
+flatters their pride, their vanity, their interest to play the _role_ of
+the stronger and the master; and, like all other rulers, they are, in
+their _role_ of masters, difficult to reach by reason. It is, therefore,
+all the more in the interest of woman to warm towards the establishment
+of conditions that shall free her from so unworthy a position. Women
+should expect as little help from the men as workingmen do from the
+capitalist class.
+
+Observe the characteristics, developed in the struggle for the coveted
+place, on other fields, on the industrial field, for instance, so soon
+as the capitalists face each other. What despicable, even scampish,
+means of warfare are not resorted to! What hatred, envy and passion for
+calumny are not awakened!--observe that, and the explanation stands out
+why similar features turn up in the competition of women for a husband.
+Hence it happens that women, on the average, do not get along among
+themselves as well as men; that even the best female friends lightly
+fall out, if the question is their standing in a man's eye, or
+pleasingness of appearance. Hence also the observation that wherever
+women meet, be they ever such utter strangers, they usually look at one
+another as enemies. With one look they make the mutual discovery of
+ill-matched colors, or wrongly-pinned bows, or any other similar
+cardinal sin. In the look that they greet each other with, the judgment
+can be readily read that each has passed upon the other. It is as if
+each wished to inform the other: "I know better than you how to dress,
+and draw attention upon myself."
+
+On the other hand, woman is by nature more impulsive than man; she
+reflects less than he; she has more abnegation, is naiver, and hence is
+governed by stronger passions, as revealed by the truly heroic
+self-sacrifice with which she protects her child, or cares for
+relatives, and nurses them in sickness. In the fury, however, this
+passionateness finds its ugly expression. But the good as well as the
+bad sides, with man as well as woman, are influenced, first of all, by
+their social position; favored, or checked, or transfigured. The same
+impulse, that, under unfavorable circumstances, appears as a blemish,
+is, under favorable circumstances, a source of happiness for oneself and
+others. Fourier has the credit of having brilliantly demonstrated how
+the identical impulses of man produce, under different conditions,
+wholly opposite results.
+
+Running parallel with the effects of mistaken education, are the no less
+serious effects of mistaken or imperfect physical culture upon the
+purpose of Nature. All physicians are agreed that the preparation of
+woman for her calling as mother and rearer of children leaves almost
+everything to be wished. "Man exercises the soldier in the use of his
+weapons, and the artisan in the handling of his tools; every office
+requires special studies; even the monk has his novitiate. Woman alone
+is not trained for her serious duties of mother."[87] Nine-tenths of the
+maidens who marry enter matrimony with almost utter ignorance about
+motherhood and the duties of wedlock. The inexcusable shyness, even on
+the part of mothers, to speak with a grown-up daughter of such important
+sexual duties, leaves the latter in the greatest darkness touching her
+duties towards herself and her future husband. With her entrance upon
+married life, woman enters a territory that is wholly strange to her.
+She has drawn to herself a fancy-picture thereof--generally from novels
+that are not particularly to be commended--that does not accord with
+reality.[88] Her defective household knowledge, that, as things are
+to-day, is inevitable, even though many a function, formerly naturally
+belonging to the wife, has been removed from her, also furnishes many a
+cause for friction. Some know nothing whatever of household matters:
+They consider themselves too good to bother about them, and look upon
+them as matters that concern the servant girl; numerous others, from the
+ranks of the masses, are prevented, by the struggle for existence, from
+cultivating themselves for their calling as householders: they must be
+in the factory and at work early and late. It is becoming evident that,
+due to the development of social conditions, the separate household
+system is losing ground every day; and that it can be kept up only at
+the sacrifice of money and time, neither of which the great majority is
+able to expend.
+
+Yet another cause that destroys the object of marriage to not a few men
+is to be found in the physical debility of many women. Our food,
+housing, methods of work and support, in short, our whole form of life,
+affects us in more ways than one rather harmfully than otherwise. We can
+speak with perfect right of a "nervous age." Now, then, this nervousness
+goes hand in hand with physical degeneration. Anaemia and nervousness
+are spread to an enormous degree among the female sex: They are assuming
+the aspect of a social calamity, that, if it continue a few generations
+longer, as at present, and we fail to place our social organization on a
+normal footing, is urging the race towards its destruction.[89]
+
+With an eye to its sexual mission, the female organism requires
+particular care,--good food, and, at certain periods, the requisite
+rest. Both of these are lacking to the great majority of the female sex,
+at least in the cities and industrial neighborhoods, nor are they to be
+had under modern industrial conditions. Moreover, woman has so
+habituated herself to privation that, for instance, numberless women
+hold it a conjugal duty to keep the tid-bits for the man, and satisfy
+themselves with insufficient nourishment. Likewise are boys frequently
+given the preference over girls in matters of food. The opinion is
+general that woman can accommodate herself, not with less food only, but
+also with food of poorer quality. Hence the sad picture that our female
+youth, in particular, presents to the eyes of the expert. A large
+portion of our young women are bodily weak, anaemic, hypernervous. The
+consequences are difficulties in menstruation, and disease of the organs
+connected with the sexual purpose, the disease often assuming the
+magnitude of incapacity to give birth and to nurse the child, even of
+danger to life itself. "Should this degeneration of our women continue
+to increase in the same measure as before, the time may not be far away
+when it will become doubtful whether man is to be counted among the
+mammals or not."[90] Instead of a healthy, joyful companion, of a
+capable mother, of a wife attentive to her household duties, the husband
+has on his hands a sick, nervous wife, whose house the physician never
+quits, who can stand no draught, and can not bear the least noise. We
+shall not expatiate further on this subject. Every reader--and as often
+as in this book we speak of "reader," we mean, of course, the female as
+well as the male--can himself further fill the picture: he has
+illustrations enough among his own relatives and acquaintances.
+
+Experienced physicians maintain that the larger part of married women,
+in the cities especially, are in a more or less abnormal condition.
+According to the degree of the evil and the character of the couple,
+such unions can not choose but be unhappy, and, they give the husband
+the right, in public opinion, to allow himself freedoms outside of the
+marriage bed, the knowledge of which throws the wife into the most
+wretched of moods. Furthermore the, at times, very different sexual
+demands of one party or the other give occasion to serious friction,
+without the so much wished-for separation being possible. A great
+variety of considerations render that, in most cases, out of all
+question.
+
+Under this head the fact may not be suppressed that a _considerable
+number of husbands are themselves responsible for certain serious
+physical ailments of their wives, ailments that these are not
+infrequently smitten with in marriage_. As consequences of the excesses
+indulged in during bachelorship, a considerable number of men suffer of
+chronic sexual diseases, which, seeing these cause them no serious
+inconvenience, are taken lightly. Nevertheless, through sexual
+intercourse with the wife, these diseases bring upon her disagreeable,
+even fatal troubles of the womb, that set in, soon after marriage, and
+often develop to the point of rendering her unable to conceive or to
+give birth. The wretched woman usually has no idea of the cause of the
+sickness, that depresses her spirits, embitters her life, and uproots
+the purpose of marriage. She blames herself, and accepts blame for a
+condition, that the other party is alone responsible for. Thus many a
+blooming wife falls, barely married, a prey to chronic malady,
+unaccountable to either herself or her family.
+
+"As recent investigations have proved, this circumstance--that, as a
+result of gonorrhea, the male sperm no longer contains any seed-cells,
+and the man is, consequently, incapacitated for life from begetting
+children--_is a comparatively frequent cause of matrimonial barrenness,
+in contradiction to the old and convenient tradition of the lords of
+creation, who are ever ready to shift to the shoulder of the wife the
+responsibility for the absence of the blessing of children_."[91]
+
+Accordingly, a large number of causes are operative in preventing modern
+married life, in the large majority of instances, from being that which
+it should be:--a union of two beings of opposite sexes, who, out of
+mutual love and esteem, wish to belong to each other, and, in the
+striking sentence of Kant, mean, jointly, to constitute the complete
+human being. It is, therefore, a suggestion of doubtful value--made even
+by learned folks, who imagine thereby to dispose of woman's endeavors
+after emancipation--that she look to domestic duties, to marriage,--to
+marriage, that our economic conditions are ever turning into a viler
+caricature, and that answers its purpose ever less!
+
+The advice to woman that she seek her salvation in marriage, this being
+her real calling,--an advice that is thoughtlessly applauded by the
+majority of men--sounds like the merest mockery, when both the advisers
+and their _claqueurs_ do the opposite. Schopenhauer, the philosopher,
+has of woman only the conception of the philistine. He says: "Woman is
+not meant for much work. Her characteristicon is not action but
+_suffering_. She pays the debt of life with the pains of travail,
+anxiety for the child, _subjection to man_. The strongest utterances of
+life and sentiment are denied her. Her life is meant to be quieter and
+less important than man's. Woman is destined for nurse and educator of
+infancy, _being herself infant-like, and an infant for life_, a sort of
+intermediate stage between the child and the man, _who is the real
+being_.... Girls should be trained for domesticity and _subjection....
+Women are the most thorough-paced and incurable Philistines._"
+
+In the same spirit as Schopenhauer, who, of course, is greatly quoted,
+is cast Lombroso and Ferrerro's work, "Woman as a Criminal and a
+Prostitute." We know no scientific work of equal size--it contains 590
+pages--with such a dearth of valid evidence on the theme therein
+treated. The statistical matter, from which the bold conclusions are
+drawn, is mostly meager. Often a dozen instances suffice the joint
+authors to draw the weightiest deductions. The matter that may be
+considered the most valuable in the work is, typically enough, furnished
+by a woman,--Dr. Tarnowskaja. The influence of social conditions, of
+cultural development, is left almost wholly on one side. Everything is
+judged exclusively from the physiologico-psychologic view-point, while a
+large quantity of ethnographic items of information on various peoples
+is woven into the argument, without submitting these items to closer
+scrutiny. According to the authors, just as with Schopenhauer, woman is
+a grown child, a liar _par excellence_, weak of judgment, fickle in
+love, incapable of any deed truly heroic. They claim the inferiority of
+woman to man is manifest from a large number of bodily differences.
+"Love, with woman, is as a rule nothing but a secondary feature of
+maternity,--all the feelings of attachment that bind woman to man arise,
+not from sexual impulses, but from the instincts of subjection and
+resignation, acquired through habits of conformancy." How these
+"instincts" were acquired and "conformed" themselves, the joint authors
+fail to inquire into. They would then have had to inquire into the
+social position of woman in the course of thousands of years, and would
+have been compelled to find that it is that that made her what she now
+is. It is true, the joint authors describe partly the enslaved and
+dependent position of woman among the several peoples and under the
+several periods of civilization; but as Darwinians, with blinkers to
+their eyes, they draw all that from physiologic and psychologic, not
+from social and economic reasons, which affected in strongest manner the
+physiologic and psychologic development of woman.
+
+The joint authors also touch upon the vanity of woman, and set up the
+opinion that, among the peoples who stand on a lower stage of
+civilization, man is the vain sex, as is noticeable to-day in the New
+Hebrides and Madagascar, among the peoples of the Orinoco, and on many
+islands of the Polynesian archipelago, as also among a number of African
+peoples of the South Sea. With peoples standing on a higher plane,
+however, woman is the vain sex. But why and wherefor? To us the answer
+seems plain. Among the peoples of a lower civilization, mother-right
+conditions prevail generally, or have not yet been long overcome. The
+_role_ that woman there plays raises her above the necessity of seeking
+for the man, the man seeks her, and to this end, ornaments himself and
+grows vain. With the people of a higher grade, especially with all the
+nations of civilization, excepting here and there, not the man seeks the
+woman, but the woman him. It happens rarely that a woman openly takes
+the initiative, and offers herself to the man; so-called propriety
+forbids that. In point of fact, however, the offering is done by the
+manner of her appearance; by means of the beauty of dress and luxury,
+that she displays; by the manner in which she ornaments herself, and
+presents herself, and coquets in society. The excess of women, together
+with the social necessity of looking upon matrimony as an institute for
+support, or as an institution through which alone she can satisfy her
+sexual impulse and gain a standing in society, forces such conduct upon
+her. Here also, we notice again, it is purely economic and social causes
+that call forth, one time with man, another with woman, a quality that,
+until now, it was customary to look upon as wholly independent of social
+and economic causes. Hence the conclusion is justified, that so soon as
+society shall arrive at social conditions, under which all dependence of
+one sex upon another shall have ceased, and both are equally free,
+_ridiculous vanity and the folly of fashion will vanish, just as so many
+other vices that we consider to-day uneradicable, as supposedly inherent
+in man_. Schopenhauer, as a philosopher, judges woman as one-sidedly as
+most of our anthropologists and physicians, who see in her only the
+sexual, never the social, being. Schopenhauer was never married. He,
+accordingly, has not, on his part, contributed towards having one more
+woman pay the "debt of life" that he debits woman with. And this brings
+us to the other side of the medal, which is far from being the
+handsomer.
+
+Many women do not marry, simply because they cannot. Everybody knows
+that usage forbids woman to offer herself. She must allow herself to be
+wooed, i. e., chosen. She herself may not woo. Is there no wooer to be
+had, then she enters the large army of those poor beings who have missed
+the purpose of life, and, in view of the lack of safe material
+foundation, generally fall a prey to want and misery, and but too often
+to ridicule also. But few know what the discrepancy in numbers between
+the two sexes is due to; many are ready with the hasty answer: "There
+are too many girls born." Those who make the claim are wrongly
+informed, as will be shown. Others, again, who admit the unnaturalness
+of celibacy, conclude from the fact that women are more numerous than
+men in most countries of civilization, that polygamy should be allowed.
+But not only does polygamy do violence to our customs, it, moreover,
+degrades woman, a circumstance that, of course, does not restrain
+Schopenhauer, with his underestimation of and contempt for women, from
+declaring: "For the female sex, as a whole, polygamy is a benefit."
+
+Many men do not marry because they think they cannot support a wife, and
+the children that may come, according to their station. To support _two_
+wives is, however, possible to a small minority only, and among these
+are many who now have two or more wives,--one legitimate and several
+illegitimate. These few, privileged by wealth, are not held back by
+anything from doing what they please. Even in the Orient, where polygamy
+exists for thousands of years by law and custom, comparatively few men
+have more than one wife. People talk of the demoralizing influence of
+Turkish harem life; but the fact is overlooked that this harem life is
+possible only to an insignificant fraction of the men, and then only in
+the ruling class, while the majority of the men live in monogamy. In the
+city of Algiers, there were, at the close of the sixties, out of 18,282
+marriages, not less than 17,319 with one wife only; 888 were with two;
+and only 75 with more than two. Constantinople, the capital of the
+Turkish Empire, would show no materially different result. Among the
+country population in the Orient, the proportion is still more
+pronouncedly in favor of single marriages. In the Orient, exactly as
+with us, the most important factor in the calculation are the material
+conditions, and these compel most men to limit themselves to but one
+wife. If, on the other hand, material conditions were equally favorable
+to all men, polygamy would still not be practicable,--for want of women.
+_The almost equal number of the two sexes, prevalent under normal
+conditions, points everywhere to monogamy._
+
+As proof of these statements, we cite the following tables, that Buecher
+published in an essay.[92]
+
+In these tables the distinction must be kept in mind between the
+enumerated and the estimated populations. In so far as the population
+was enumerated, the fact is expressly stated in the summary for the
+separate main divisions of the earth. The sexes divide themselves in the
+population of several divisions and countries as follows:
+
+
+1. EUROPE.
+
+                                                                Females
+                                                                    for
+                                                                  Every
+                       Census                                     1,000
+    Countries.          Year.    Males.    Females.  Population.   Men.
+  Great Britain and
+    Ireland             1891  18,388,756  19,499,397  37,888,153  1,060
+  Denmark and Faror     1890   1,065,447   1,119,712   2,185,159  1,052
+  Norway                1891     951,496   1,037,501   1,988,997  1,090
+  Sweden                1890   2,317,105   2,467,570   4,784,675  1,065
+  Finland               1889   1,152,111   1,186,293   2,338,404  1,030
+  Russia                1886  42,499,324  42,895,885  85,395,209  1,009
+  Poland                1886   3,977,406   4,279,156   8,256,562  1,076
+  German Empire         1890  24,231,832  25,189,232  49,421,064  1,039
+  Austria               1880  10,819,737  11,324,507  22,144,244  1,047
+  Hungary               1880   7,799,276   7,939,192  15,738,468  1,019
+  Liechtenstein         1886       4,897       4,696       9,593    959
+  Luxemburg             1890     105,419     105,669     211,088  1,002
+  Holland               1889   2,228,487   2,282,925   4,511,415  1,024
+  Belgium               1890   3,062,656   3,084,385   6,147,041  1,007
+  Switzerland           1888   1,427,377   1,506,680   2,934,057  1,055
+  France                1886  18,900,312  19,030,447  37,930,759  1,007
+  Spain and the Canary
+    Islands             1887   8,608,532   8,950,776  17,559,308  1,039
+  Gibraltar (Civil
+    population)         1890       9,201       9,326      18,527  1,013
+  Portugal              1878   2,175,829   2,374,870   4,550,699  1,091
+  Italy                 1881  14,265,383  14,194,245  28,459,628    995
+  Bosnia and
+    Herzegovina         1885     705,025     631,066   1,336,091    895
+  Servia                1890   1,110,731   1,052,028   2,162,759    947
+  Bulgaria              1881   1,519,953   1,462,996   2,982,949    962
+  Roumania              1860   2,276,558   2,148,403   4,424,961    944
+  Greece                1889   1,133,625   1,053,583   2,187,208    929
+  Malta                 1890      82,086      83,576     165,662  1,018
+                             ----------- ----------- -----------  -----
+      Total                  170,818,561 174,914,119 345,732,680  1,024
+
+
+2. AMERICA.
+
+                                                                Females
+                                                                    for
+                                                                  Every
+                       Census                                     1,000
+    Countries.          Year.    Males.    Females.  Population.   Men.
+
+  Danish Greenland      1888       4,838       5,383      10,221  1,112
+  British North America 1881   2,288,196   2,229,735   4,517,931    974
+  United States of
+    North America       1880  25,518,820  24,636,963  50,155,783    965
+  Bermuda Islands       1890       7,767       8,117      15,884  1,046
+  Mexico                1882   5,072,054   5,375,920  10,447,974  1,060
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  North America and
+  Islands                     32,891,675  32,256,118  65,147,793    981
+
+  Nicaragua             1883     136,249     146,591     282,845  1,076
+  British Honduras      1881      14,108      13,344      27,452    946
+  Cuba                  1877     850,520     671,164   1,521,684    789
+  Porto Rico            1877     369,054     362,594     731,648    983
+  British West Indies   1881     589,012     624,132   1,213,144  1,060
+  French West Indies    1885     176,364     180,266     356,630  1,022
+  Danish Possessions    1880      14,889      18,874      33,763  1,263
+  Dutch Colony Curacao  1889      20,234      25,565      45,799  1,263
+                             -----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  Central America and
+  the West Indies              2,170,430   2,042,530   4,212,965    941
+
+  British Guiana        1891     151,759     126,569     278,328    834
+  French Guiana         1885      15,767      10,735      26,502    681
+  Dutch Guiana          1889      30,187      28,764      58,951    953
+  Brazil                1872   5,123,869   4,806,609   9,930,478    938
+  Chili                 1885   1,258,616   1,268,353   2,526,969  1,008
+  Falkland Islands      1890       1,086         703       1,789    647
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  South America total          6,581,284   6,241,733  12,823,017    949
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  Population of America       41,643,389  40,540,386  82,183,775    973
+
+
+3. ASIA.
+
+                                                                Females
+                                                                    for
+                                                                  Every
+                        Census                                    1,000
+    Countries.          Year.    Males.    Females.  Population.   Men.
+
+  Russian Caucasia      1885   3,876,868   3,407,699   7,284,567    879
+  Siberia, minus Amur
+    and Sachalin        1885   2,146,411   2,002,879   4,149,290    933
+  Province Uralsk       1885     263,915     263,686     527,601    999
+  General Province of
+    the Prairies        1885     926,246     781,626   1,707,872    844
+  Province Fergana      1885     365,461     350,672     716,133    959
+  Province Samarkand    1885     335,530     305,616     641,146    911
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  Russian  Possessions,
+    total                      7,914,431   7,112,178  15,026,609    899
+
+  British India
+    (immediate
+    possessions)        1891 112,150,120 108,313,980 220,464,100    966
+  Tributary States (so
+    far known)          1891  31,725,910  29,675,150  61,401,060    935
+  Hong Kong             1889     138,033      56,449     194,482    409
+  Ceylon                1881   1,473,515   1,290,469   2,763,984    876
+  Of the French
+    Possessions:
+    Cambodscha            ?      392,383     422,371     814,754  1,076
+    Cochinchina         1889     944,146     932,543   1,876,689    988
+  Philippines (partly)  1877   2,796,174   2,762,846   5,559,020    988
+  Japan                 1888  20,008,445  19,598,789  39,607,234    979
+  Cyprus                1891     104,887     104,404     209,291    995
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+    Total population in
+      Asia                   177,648,044 170,269,179 347,917,223    958
+
+
+4. AUSTRALIA AND POLYNESIA.
+
+                                                                Females
+                                                                    for
+                                                                  Every
+                           Census                                 1,000
+    Countries.          Year.    Males.    Females.  Population.   Men.
+
+  Australia, New Zealand
+    (1890) and Tasmania 1891   2,059,594   1,772,472   3,832,066    861
+  Fiji Islands          1890      67,902      57,780     125,682    851
+  French Possessions
+    (Tahiti, Marquesas,
+     etc.)              1889      11,589      10,293      21,882    888
+  Hawaii                1890      58,714      31,276      89,990    533
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+  Total                        2,197,799   1,871,821   4,069,620    852
+
+
+5. AFRICA.
+
+                                                                Females
+                                                                    for
+                                                                  Every
+                           Census                                 1,000
+    Countries.          Year.    Males.    Females.  Population.   Men.
+
+  Egypt                  1882  3,401,498   3,415,767   6,817,265  1,004
+  Algeria (minus Sahara) 1886  2,014,013   1,791,671   3,805,684    889
+  Senegal                1889     70,504      76,014     146,518  1,078
+  Gambia                 1881      7,215       6,935      14,150    961
+  Sierra Leone           1881     31,201      29,345      60,546    940
+  Lagos                  1881     37,665      39,605      75,270    998
+  St. Helena             1890      2,020       2,202       4,222  1,090
+  Capeland               1890    766,598     759,141   1,525,739    990
+  Natal                  1890    268,062     275,851     543,913  1,029
+  Orange Free State:
+    White                1890     40,571      37,145      77,716    915
+    Black                1890     67,791      61,996     129,787    914
+  Republic:
+    White                1890     66,498      52,630     119,128    791
+    Black                1890    115,589     144,045     259,634  1,246
+  Reunion                1889     94,430      71,485     165,915    757
+  Mayotte                1889      6,761       5,509      12,270    815
+  St. Marie de
+    Madagascar           1888      3,648       4,019       7,667  1,102
+                              ----------  ----------  ----------  -----
+      Total                    6,994,064   6,771,360  13,765,424[93]968
+
+
+Probably the result of this presentation will be astonishing to many.
+With the exception of Europe, where, on an average, there are 1,024
+women to every 1,000 men, the reverse is the case everywhere else. If it
+is further considered that in the foreign divisions of the earth, and
+even there where actual enumeration was had, information upon the female
+sex is particularly defective--a fact that must be presumed with regard
+to all the countries of Mohammedan population, where the figures for the
+female population are probably below the reality--it stands pat that,
+apart from a few European nations, the female sex nowhere tangibly
+exceeds the male. It is otherwise in Europe, the country that interests
+us most. Here, with the exception of Italy and the southeast territories
+of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania and Greece, the
+female population is everywhere more strongly represented than the male.
+Of the large European countries, the disproportion is slightest in
+France--1,002 females to every 1,000 males; next in order is Russia,
+with 1,009 females to every 1,000 males. On the other hand, Portugal,
+Norway and Poland, with 1,076 females to every 1,000 males, present the
+strongest disproportion. Next to these stands Great Britain,--1,060
+females to every 1,000 males. Germany and Austria lie in the middle:
+they have, respectively, 1,039 and 1,047 females to every 1,000 males.
+
+In the German Empire, the excess of the female over the male population,
+according to the census of December 1, 1890, was 957,400, against
+988,376, according to the census of December 1, 1885. A principal cause
+of this disproportion is emigration, inasmuch as by far more men
+emigrate than women. This is clearly brought out by the opposite pole of
+Germany, the North American Union, which has about as large a deficit in
+women as Germany has a surplus. The United States is the principal
+country for European emigration, and this is mainly made up of males. A
+second cause is the larger number of accidents to men than to women in
+agriculture, the trades, the industries and transportation. Furthermore,
+there are more males than females temporarily abroad,--merchants,
+seamen, marines, etc. All this transpires clearly from the figures on
+the conjugal status. In 1890 there were 8,372,486 married men to
+8,398,607 married women in Germany, i. e., 26,121 more of the latter.
+Another phenomenon, that statistics establish and that weigh heavily in
+the scales, is that, on an average, women reach a higher age than men:
+at the more advanced ages there are more women than men. According to
+the census of 1890 the relation of ages among the two sexes were these:
+
+
+                                              Excess   Excess of
+                        Males.    Females.   of Males.  Females.
+    Below ten years   5,993,681   5,966,226   27,455        ...
+    10 to 20 years    5,104,751   5,110,093      ...      5,342
+    20 to 30 years    3,947,324   4,055,321      ...    107,997
+    30 to 40 years    3,090,174   3,216,704      ...    126,530
+    40 to 50 years    2,471,617   2,659,609      ...    187,992
+    50 to 60 years    1,826,951   2,041,377      ...    214,426
+    60 to 70 years    1,177,142   1,391,227      ...    214,085
+    70 and up           619,192     757,081      ...    137,889
+                      ---------   ---------   ------    -------
+                     24,230,832  25,197,638   27,455    994,261
+
+
+This table shows that, up to the tenth year, the number of boys exceeds
+that of girls, due merely to the disproportion in births. Everywhere,
+there are more boys born than girls. In the German Empire, for
+instance,[94] there were born:--
+
+
+    In the year 1872 to 100 girls 106.2 boys
+    In the year 1878 to 100 girls 105.9 boys
+    In the year 1884 to 100 girls 106.2 boys
+    In the year 1888 to 100 girls 106.0 boys
+    In the year 1891 to 100 girls 106.2 boys
+
+
+But the male sex dies earlier than the female, and from early childhood
+more boys die than girls. Accordingly, the table shows that, between the
+ages of 10 to 20 the female sex exceeds the male.
+
+To each 100 females, there died, males:--[95]
+
+
+    In 1872   107.0    In 1884   109.2
+    In 1878   110.5    In 1888   107.9
+                       In 1891   107.5
+
+
+The table shows, furthermore, that at the matrimonial age, proper,
+between the ages of 20 and 50, the female sex exceeds the male by
+422,519, and that at the age from 50 to 70 and above, it exceeds the
+male by 566,400. A very strong disproportion between the sexes appears,
+furthermore, among the widowed.
+
+According to the census of 1890, there were:--
+
+
+    Widowers                           774,967
+    Widows                           2,154,870
+                                     ---------
+    Excess of widows over widowers   1,382,903
+
+
+Of these widowed people, according to age, there were:--
+
+
+      Age.           Males.          Females.
+    40-60           222,286           842,920
+    60 and over     506,319         1,158,712
+
+
+The number of divorced persons was, in 1890: Males, 25,271; females,
+49,601. According to age, they were distributed:--
+
+
+      Age.         Males.     Females.
+    40-60          13,825       24,842
+    60 and over     4,917        7,244
+
+
+These figures tell us that _widows and divorced women are excluded from
+remarriage_, and at the fittest age for matrimony, at that; there being
+of the age of 15-40, 46,362 widowers and 156,235 widows, 6,519 divorced
+men and 17,515 divorced women. These figures furnish further proof of
+the injury that divorce entails to married women.
+
+In 1890, there were unmarried:--[96]
+
+
+      Age.          Males.     Females.
+    15-40        5,845,933    5,191,453
+    40-60          375,881      503,406
+    60 and over    130,154      230,966
+
+
+Accordingly, among the unmarried population between the ages of 15 and
+40, the male sex is stronger by 654,480 than the female. This
+circumstance would seem to be favorable for the latter. But males
+between the ages of 15 and 21 are, with few exceptions, not in condition
+to marry. Of that age there were 3,590,622 males to 3,774,025 females.
+Likewise with the males of the age of 21-25, a large number are not in a
+position to start a family: we have but to keep in mind the males in the
+army, students, etc. On the other side, all women of this age period are
+marriageable. Taking further into consideration that for a great variety
+of reasons, many men do not marry at all--the number of unmarried males
+of 40 years of age and over alone amounted to 506,035, to which must be
+added also the widowed and divorced males, more than two million
+strong--it follows that the situation of the female sex with regard to
+marriage is decidedly unfavorable. Accordingly, a large number of women
+are, under present circumstances, forced to renounce the legitimate
+gratification of their sexual instincts, while the males seek and find
+solace in prostitution. The situation would instantaneously change for
+women with the removal of the obstacles that keep to-day many hundreds
+of thousands of men from setting up a married home, and from doing
+justice to their natural instincts in a legitimate manner. For that the
+existing social system must be upturned.
+
+As already observed, emigration across the seas is, in great part,
+responsible for the disproportion in the number of the sexes. In the
+years 1872-1886, on an average, more than 10,000 males left the country
+in excess of females. For a period of fifteen years, that runs up to
+150,000 males, most of them in the very vigor of life. Military duties
+also drive abroad many young men, and the most vigorous, at that. In
+1893, according to the report officially submitted to the Reichstag on
+the subject of substitutes in the army, 25,851 men were sentenced for
+emigrating without leave, and 14,522 more cases were under investigation
+on the same charge. Similar figures recur from year to year. The loss in
+men that Germany sustains from this unlawful emigration is considerable
+in the course of a century. Especially strong is emigration during the
+years that follow upon great wars. That appears from the figures after
+1866 and between 1871 and 1874. We sustain, moreover, severe losses in
+male life from accidents. In the course of the years 1887 to 1892, the
+number of persons killed in the trades, agriculture, State and municipal
+undertakings, ran up to 30,568,[97] of whom only a small fraction were
+women. Furthermore, another and considerable number of persons engaged
+in these occupations are crippled for life by accidents, and are
+disabled from starting a family; others die early and leave their
+families behind in want and misery. Great loss in male life is also
+connected with navigation. In the period between 1882-1891, 1,485 ships
+were lost on the high seas, whereby 2,436 members of crews--with few
+exceptions males--and 747 passengers perished.
+
+Once the right appreciation of life is had, society will prevent the
+large majority of accidents, particularly in navigation; and such
+appreciation will touch its highest point under Socialist order. In
+numberless instances human life, or the safety of limb, is sacrificed to
+misplaced economy on the part of employers, who recoil before any outlay
+for protection; in many others the tired condition of the workman, or
+the hurry he must work in, is the cause. Human life is cheap; if one
+workingman goes to pieces, three others are at hand to take his place.
+
+On the domain of navigation especially, and aided by the difficulty of
+control, many unpardonable wrongs are committed. Through the revelations
+made during the seventies by Plimsoll in the British Parliament, the
+fact has become notorious that many shipowners, yielding to criminal
+greed, take out high insurances for vessels that are not seaworthy, and
+unconscionably expose them, together with their crews, to the slightest
+weather at sea,--all for the sake of the high insurance. These are the
+so-called "coffin-ships," not unknown in Germany, either. The steamer
+"Braunschweig," for instance, that sank in 1881 near Helgoland, and
+belonged to the firm Rocholl & Co., of Bremen, proved to have been put
+to sea in a wholly unseaworthy condition. The same fate befell, in 1889,
+the steamer "Leda" of the same firm; hardly out at sea, she went to the
+bottom. The boat was insured with the Russian Lloyd for 55,000 rubles;
+the prospect of 8,500 rubles were held out to the captain, if he took
+her safe to Odessa; and the captain, in turn, paid the pilot the
+comparatively high wage of 180 rubles a month. The verdict of the Court
+of Admiralty was that _the accident was due to the fact that the "Leda"
+was unseaworthy and unfit to be taken to Odessa_. The license was
+withdrawn from the captain. According to existing laws, the real guilty
+parties could not be reached. No year goes by without our Court of
+Admiralty having to pass upon a larger number of accidents at sea, to
+the effect that the accident was due to vessels being too old, or too
+heavily loaded, or in defective condition, or insufficiently equipped;
+sometimes to several of these causes combined. With a good many of the
+lost ships, the cause of accident can not be established: they have gone
+down in midocean, and no survivor remains to tell the tale. Likewise are
+the coast provisions for the saving of shipwrecked lives both defective
+and insufficient; they are dependent mainly upon private charity. The
+case is even more disconsolate along distant and foreign coasts. A
+commonwealth that makes the promotion of the well-being of all its
+highest mission will not fail to so improve navigation, and provide it
+with protective measures that these accidents would be of rare
+occurrence. But the modern economic system of rapine, that weighs men as
+it weighs figures, to the end of whacking out the largest possible
+amount of profit, not infrequently destroys a human life if thereby
+there be in it but the profit of a dollar. With the change of society in
+the Socialist sense, immigration, in its present shape, also would drop;
+the flight from military service would cease; suicide in the Army would
+be no more.
+
+The picture drawn from our political and economic life shows that woman
+also is deeply interested therein. Whether the period of military
+service be shortened or not; whether the Army be increased or not;
+whether the country pursues a policy of peace or one of war; whether the
+treatment allotted to the soldier be worthy or unworthy of human beings;
+and whether as a result thereof the number of suicides and desertions
+rise or drop;--_all of these are questions that concern woman as much as
+man_. Likewise with the economic and industrial conditions and in
+transportation, in all of which branches the female sex, furthermore,
+steps from year to year more numerously as working-women. Bad
+conditions, and unfavorable circumstances injure woman as a social and
+as a sexual being; favorable conditions and satisfactory circumstances
+benefit her.
+
+But there are still other momenta that go to make marriage difficult or
+impossible. A considerable number of men are kept from marriage by the
+State itself. People pucker up their brows at the celibacy imposed upon
+Roman Catholic clergymen; but these same people have not a word of
+condemnation for the much larger number of soldiers who also are
+condemned thereto. The officers not only require the consent of their
+superiors, they are also limited in the choice of a wife: the regulation
+prescribes that she shall have property to a certain, and not
+insignificant, amount. In this way the Austrian corps of officers, for
+instance, obtained a social "improvement" at the cost of the female sex.
+Captains rose by fully 8,000 guilders, if above thirty years of age,
+while the captains under thirty years of age were thenceforth hard to be
+had, in no case for a smaller dower than 30,000. "Now a 'Mrs. Captain,'"
+it was thus reported in the "Koelnische Zeitung" from Vienna, "who until
+now was often a subject of pity for her female colleagues in the
+administrative departments, can hold her head higher by a good deal;
+everybody now knows that she has wherewith to live. Despite the greatly
+increased requirements of personal excellence, culture and rank, the
+social status of the Austrian officer was until then rather indefinite,
+partly because very prominent gentlemen stuck fast to the Emperor's coat
+pocket; partly because many poor officers could not make a shift to live
+without humiliation, and many families of poor officers often played a
+pitiful _role_. Until then, the officer who wished to marry had, if the
+thirty-year line was crossed, to qualify in joint property to the amount
+of 12,000 guilders, or in a 600-guilder side income, and even at this
+insignificant income, hardly enough for decency, the magistrates often
+shut their eyes, and granted relief. The new marriage regulations are
+savagely severe, though the heart break. The captain under thirty must
+forthwith deposit 30,000 guilders; over thirty years of age, 20,000
+guilders; from staff officers up to colonels, 16,000 guilders. Over and
+above this, only one-fourth of the officers may marry without special
+grace, while a spotless record and corresponding rank is demanded of the
+bride. This all holds good for officers of the line and army surgeons.
+For other military officials with the rank of officer, the new marriage
+regulations are milder; but for officers of the general staff still
+severer. The officer who is detailed to the captain of the general staff
+may not thereafter marry; the actual captain of the staff, if below
+thirty, is required to give security in 36,000 guilders, and later
+24,000 more." In Germany and elsewhere, there are similar regulations.
+Also the corps of under-officers is subject to hampering regulations
+with regard to marriage, and require besides the consent of their
+superior officers. These are very drastic proofs of the _purely
+materialistic conception_ that the State has of marriage.
+
+In general, public opinion is agreed that marriage is not advisable for
+men under twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. Twenty-five is the
+marriageable age for men fixed by the civil code, with an eye to the
+civic independence that, as a rule, is not gained before that age. Only
+with persons who are in the agreeable position of not having to first
+conquer independence--with people of princely rank--does public opinion
+consider it proper when occasionally the men marry at the age of
+eighteen or nineteen, the girls at that of fifteen or sixteen. The
+Prince is declared of age with his eighteenth year, and considered
+capable to govern a vast empire and numerous people. Common mortals
+acquire the right to govern their possible property only at the age of
+twenty-one.
+
+The difference of opinion as to the age when marriage is desirable shows
+that public opinion judges by the social standing of the bride and
+bridegroom. Its reasons have nothing to do with the human being as a
+natural entity, or with its natural instincts. It happens, however, that
+Nature's impulses do not yoke themselves to social conditions, nor to
+the views and prejudices that spring from them. So soon as man has
+reached maturity, the sexual instincts assert themselves with force;
+indeed, they are the incarnation of the human being, and they demand
+satisfaction from the mature being, at the peril of severe physical and
+mental suffering.
+
+The age of sexual ripeness differs according to individuals, climate and
+habits of life. In the warm zone it sets in with the female sex, as a
+rule, at the age of eleven to twelve years, and not infrequently are
+women met with there, who, already at that age, carry offspring on their
+arms; but at their twenty-fifth or thirtieth year, these have lost their
+bloom. In the temperate zone, the rule with the female sex is from the
+fourteenth to the sixteenth year, in some cases later. Likewise is the
+age of puberty different between country and city women. With healthy,
+robust country girls, who move much in the open air and work vigorously,
+menstruation sets in later, on the average, than with our badly
+nourished, weak, hypernervous, ethereal city young ladies. Yonder,
+sexual maturity develops normally, with rare disturbances; here a normal
+development is the exception: all manner of illnesses set in, often
+driving the physician to desperation. How often are not physicians
+compelled to declare that, along with a change of life, the most radical
+cure is marriage. But how apply such a cure? Insuperable obstacles rise
+against the proposition.
+
+All this goes to show where the change must be looked for. In the first
+place, the point is to make possible a totally different education, one
+that takes into consideration the physical as well as the mental being;
+in the second place, to establish a wholly different system of life and
+of work. But both of these are, without exception, possible for all only
+under _wholly different social conditions_.
+
+Our social conditions have raised a violent contradiction between man,
+as a natural and sexual being, on the one hand, and man as a social
+being on the other. The contradiction has made itself felt at no period
+as strongly as at this; and it produces a number of diseases into whose
+nature we will go no further, but that affect mainly the female sex: in
+the first place, her organism depends, in much higher degree than that
+of man, upon her sexual mission, and is influenced thereby, as shown by
+the regular recurrence of her periods; in the second place, most of the
+obstacles to marriage lie in the way of women, preventing her from
+satisfying her strongest natural impulse in a natural manner. The
+contradiction between natural want and social compulsion goes against
+the grain of Nature; it leads to secret vices and excesses that
+undermine every organism but the strongest.
+
+Unnatural gratification, especially with the female sex, is often most
+shamelessly promoted. More or less underhandedly, certain preparations
+are praised, and they are recommended especially in the advertisements
+of most of the papers that penetrate into the family circle as
+especially devoted to its entertainment. These puffs are addressed
+mainly to the better situated portion of society, seeing the prices of
+the preparations are so high that a family of small means can hardly
+come by them. Side by side with these shameless advertisements are found
+the puffs--meant for the eyes of both sexes--of obscene pictures,
+especially of whole series of photographs, of poems and prose works of
+similar stripe, aimed at sexual incitation, and that call for the action
+of police and District Attorneys. But these gentlemen are too busy with
+the "civilization, marriage and family-destroying" Socialist movement to
+be able to devote full attention to such machinations. A part of our
+works of fiction labors in the same direction. The wonder would be if
+sexual excesses, artificially incited, besides, failed to manifest
+themselves in unhealthy and harmful ways, and to assume the proportions
+of a social disease.
+
+The idle, voluptuous life of many women in the property classes; their
+refined measures of nervous stimulants; their overfeeding with a certain
+kind of artificial sensation, cultivated in certain lines on the
+hothouse plan, and often considered the principal topic of conversation
+and sign of culture by that portion of the female sex that suffers of
+hypersensitiveness and nervous excitement;--all this incites still more
+the sexual senses, and naturally leads to excesses.
+
+Among the poor, it is certain exhausting occupations, especially of a
+sedentary nature, that promotes congestion of blood in the abdominal
+organs, and promotes sexual excitation. One of the most dangerous
+occupations in this direction is connected with the, at present, widely
+spread sewing machine. This occupation works such havoc that, with ten
+or twelve hours' daily work, the strongest organism is ruined within a
+few years. Excessive sexual excitement is also promoted by long hours of
+work in a steady high temperature, for instance, sugar refineries,
+bleacheries, cloth-pressing establishments, night work by gaslight in
+overcrowded rooms, especially when both sexes work together.
+
+A succession of further phenomena has been here unfolded, sharply
+illustrative of the irrationableness and unhealthiness of modern
+conditions. These are evils deeply rooted in our social state of things,
+and removable neither by the moral sermonizings nor the palliatives that
+religious quacks of the male and female sexes have so readily at hand.
+The axe must be laid to the root of the evil. The question is to bring
+about a natural system of education, together with healthy conditions of
+life and work, and to do this in amplest manner, to the end that the
+normal gratification of natural and healthy instincts be made possible
+for all.
+
+As to the male sex, a number of considerations are absent that are
+present with the female sex. Due to his position as master, and in so
+far as social barriers do not hinder him, there is on the side of man
+the free choice of love. On the other hand, the character of marriage as
+an institution for support, the excess of women, custom;--all these
+circumstances conspire to prevent woman from manifesting her will; they
+force her to wait till she is wanted. As a rule, she seizes gladly the
+opportunity, soon as offered, to reach the hand to the man who redeems
+her from the social ostracism and neglect, that is the lot of that poor
+waif, the "old maid." Often she looks down with contempt upon those of
+her sisters who have yet preserved their self-respect, and have not sold
+themselves into mental prostitution to the first comer, preferring to
+tread single the thorny path of life.
+
+On the other hand, social considerations tie down the man, who desires
+to reach by marriage the gratification of his life's requirements. He
+must put himself the question: Can you support a wife, and the children
+that may come, so that pressing cares, the destroyers of your happiness,
+may be kept away? The better his marital intentions are, the more
+ideally he conceives them, the more he is resolved to wed only out of
+love, all the more earnestly must he put the question to himself. To
+many, the affirmative answer is, under the present economic conditions,
+a matter of impossibility: they prefer to remain single. With other and
+less conscientious men, another set of considerations crowd upon the
+mind. Thousands of men reach an independent position, one in accord with
+their wants, only comparatively late. But they can keep a wife in a
+style suitable to their station only if she has large wealth. True
+enough, many young men have exaggerated notions on the requirements of a
+so-called life "suitable to one's station." Nevertheless, they can not
+be blamed--as a result of the false education above described, and of
+the social habits of a large number of women,--for not guarding against
+demands from that quarter that are far beyond their powers. Good women,
+modest in their demands, these men often never come to know. These
+women are retiring; they are not to be found there where such men have
+acquired the habit of looking for a wife; while those whom they meet are
+not infrequently such as seek to win a husband by means of their looks,
+and are intent, by external means, by show, to deceive him regarding
+their personal qualities and material conditions. The means of seduction
+of all sorts are plied all the more diligently in the measure that these
+ladies come on in years, when marriage becomes a matter of hot haste.
+Does any of these succeed in conquering a husband, she has become so
+habituated to show, jewelry, finery and expensive pleasures, that she is
+not inclined to forego them in marriage. The superficial nature of her
+being crops up in all directions, and therein an abyss is opened for the
+husband. Hence many prefer to leave alone the flower that blooms on the
+edge of the precipice, and that can be plucked only at the risk of
+breaking their necks. They go their ways alone, and seek company and
+pleasure under the protection of their freedom. Deception and swindle
+are practices everywhere in full swing in the business life of
+capitalist society: no wonder they are applied also in contracting
+marriage, and that, when they succeed, both parties are drawn into
+common sorrows.
+
+According to E. Ansell, the age of marriage among the cultured and
+independent males of England was, between 1840-1871, on an average 29.25
+years. Since then the average has risen for many classes, by at least
+one year. For the different occupations, the average age of marriage,
+between 1880-1885, was as follows:--
+
+
+      Occupations.                               Age.
+    Miners                                       23.56
+    Textile workers                              23.88
+    Shoemakers and tailors                       24.42
+    Skilled laborers                             24.85
+    Day laborers                                 25.06
+    Clerks                                       25.75
+    Retailers                                    26.17
+    Farmers and their sons                       28.73
+    Men of culture and men of independent means  30.72
+
+
+These figures give striking proof of how social conditions and standing
+affect marriage.
+
+The number of men who, for several reasons, are kept from marrying is
+ever on the increase. It is especially in the so-called upper ranks and
+occupations that the men often do not marry, partly because the demands
+upon them are too great, partly because it is just the men of these
+social strata who seek and find pleasure and company elsewhere. On the
+other hand, conditions are particularly unfavorable to women in places
+where many pensionaries and their families, but few young men, have
+their homes. In such places, the number of women who cannot marry rises
+to 20 or 30 out of every 100. The deficit of candidates for marriage
+affects strongest those female strata that, through education and social
+position, make greater pretensions, and yet, outside of their persons,
+have nothing to offer the man who is looking for wealth. This concerns
+especially the female members of those numerous families that live upon
+fixed salaries, are considered socially "respectable," but are without
+means. The life of the female being in this stratum of society is,
+comparatively speaking, the saddest of all those of her
+fellow-sufferers. It is out of these strata that is mainly recruited the
+most dangerous competition for the working-women in the embroidering,
+seamstress, flower-making, millinery, glove and straw hat sewing; in
+short, all the branches of industry that the employer prefers to have
+carried on at the homes of the working-women. These ladies work for the
+lowest wages, seeing that, in many cases, the question with them is not
+to earn a full livelihood, but only something over and above that, or to
+earn the outlay for a better wardrobe and for luxury. Employers have a
+predilection for the competition of these ladies, so as to lower the
+earnings of the poor working-woman and squeeze the last drop of blood
+from her veins: it drives her to exert herself to the point of
+exhaustion. Also not a few wives of government employes, whose husbands
+are badly paid, and can not afford them a "life suitable to their rank,"
+utilize their leisure moments in this vile competition that presses so
+heavily upon wide strata of the female working class.
+
+The activity on the part of the bourgeois associations of women for the
+abolition of female labor and for the admission of women to the higher
+professions, at present mainly, if not exclusively, appropriated by men,
+aims principally at procuring a position in life for women from the
+social circles just sketched. In order to secure for their efforts
+greater prospects of success, these associations have loved to place
+themselves under the protectorate of higher and leading ladies. The
+bourgeois females imitate herein the example of the bourgeois males, who
+likewise love such protectorates, and exert themselves in directions
+that can bring only _small_, never _large results_. A Sisyphus work is
+thus done with as much noise as possible, to the end of deceiving
+oneself and others on the score of the necessity for a radical change.
+The necessity is also felt to do all that is possible in order to
+suppress all doubts regarding the wisdom of the foundations of our
+social and political organization, and to prescribe them as treasonable.
+The conservative nature of these endeavors prevents bourgeois
+associations of women from being seized with so-called destructive
+tendencies. When, accordingly, at the Women's Convention of Berlin, in
+1894, the opinion was expressed by a minority that the bourgeois women
+should go hand and hand with the working-women, i. e., with their
+Socialist citizens, a storm of indignation went up from the majority.
+But the bourgeois women will not succeed in pulling themselves out of
+the quagmire by their own topknots.
+
+How large the number is of women who, by reason of the causes herein
+cited, must renounce married life, is not accurately ascertainable. In
+Scotland, the number of unmarried women of the age of twenty years and
+over was, towards the close of the sixties, 43 per cent. of the female
+population, and there were 110 women to every 100 men. In England,
+outside of Wales, there lived at that time 1,407,228 more women than men
+of the age of 20 to 40, and 359,966 single women of over forty years of
+age. Of each 100 women 42 were unmarried.
+
+The surplus of women that Germany owns is very unevenly distributed in
+point of territories and age. According to the census of 1890, it
+stood:--[98]
+
+
+                          To Every 1,000 Males, Females of
+                                     the Age of
+      Divisions.          Under 15.  15-40. 40-60. Over 60.
+    Berlin                    1,014  1,056  1,108  1,666
+    Kingdom of Saxony         1,020  1,032  1,112  1,326
+    Kingdom of Bavaria, on
+      the right of the Rhine  1,022  1,040  1,081  1,155
+    On the left of the Rhine    986  1,024  1,065  1,175
+    Wurtemberg                1,021  1,076  1,135  1,158
+    Baden                     1,006  1,027  1,099  1,175
+    Hamburg                   1,003    967  1,042  1,522
+    Province of Brandenburg     986    981  1,085  1,261
+    Province of Pommern         984  1,053  1,126  1,191
+    Province of Rhineland       984    990  1,010  1,087
+                              -----  -----  -----  -----
+      German Empire             995  1,027  1,094  1,196
+
+
+Accordingly, of marriageable age proper, 15-40, the surplus of women in
+the German Empire amounts to 27 women to every 1,000 men. Seeing that,
+within these age periods, there are 9,429,720 male to 9,682,454 female
+inhabitants, there is a total female surplus of 252,734. In the same
+four age periods, the proportion of the sexes in other countries of
+Europe and outside of Europe stood as follows:--[99]
+
+
+                          To Every 1,000 Males, Females of
+                                     the Age of
+                                                   60 and
+      Countries.          Under 15.  15-40. 40-60. Over.
+    Belgium (1890)              992    984  1,018  1,117
+    Bulgaria (1888)             950  1,068    837    947
+    Denmark (1890)              978  1,080  1,073  1,179
+    France (1886)               989  1,003  1,006  1,063
+    England and Wales (1891)  1,006  1,075  1,096  1,227
+    Scotland (1891)             973  1,073  1,165  1,389
+    Ireland (1891)              966  1,036  1,109  1,068
+    Italy (1881)                963  1,021  1,005    980
+    Luxemburg (1891)            996    997  1,004  1,042
+    Holland (1889)              990  1,022  1,035  1,154
+    Austria (1890)            1,005  1,046  1,079  1,130
+    Hungary (1890)            1,001  1,040    996  1,000
+    Sweden (1890)               975  1,062  1,140  1,242
+    Switzerland (1888)          999  1,059  1,103  1,148
+    Japan (1891)                978    962    951  1,146
+    Cape of Good Hope (1891)    989  1,008    939  1,019
+
+
+It is seen that all countries of the same or similar economic structure
+reveal the identical conditions with regard to the distribution of the
+sexes according to ages. According thereto, and apart from all other
+causes already mentioned, a considerable number of women have in such
+countries no prospect of entering wedded life. The number of unmarried
+women is even still larger, because a large number of men prefer, for
+all sorts of reasons, to remain single. What say hereto those
+superficial folks, who oppose the endeavor of women after a more
+independent, equal-righted position in life, and who refer them to
+marriage and domestic life? The blame does not lie with the women that
+so many of them do not marry; and how matters stand with "conjugal
+happiness" has been sufficiently depicted.
+
+What becomes of the victims of our social conditions? The resentment of
+insulted and injured Nature expresses itself in the peculiar facial
+lines and characteristics whereby so-called old maids, the same as old
+ascetic bachelors, stamp themselves different from other human beings in
+all countries and all climates; and it gives testimony of the mighty and
+harmful effect of suppressed natural love. Nymphomania with women, and
+numerous kinds of hysteria, have their origin in that source; and also
+discontent in married life produces attacks of hysteria, and is
+responsible for barrenness.
+
+Such, in main outlines, is our modern married life and its effects. The
+conclusion is: _Modern marriage is an institution that is closely
+connected with the existing social condition, and stands or falls with
+it. But this marriage is in the course of dissolution and decay, exactly
+as capitalist society itself_,--because, as demonstrated under the
+several heads on the subject of marriage:
+
+1. Relatively, the number of births declines, although population
+increases on the whole,--showing that the condition of the family
+deteriorates.
+
+2. Actions for divorce increase in numbers, considerably more than does
+population, and, in the majority of cases, the plaintiffs are women,
+although, both economically and socially, they are the greatest
+sufferers thereunder,--showing that the unfavorable factors, that
+operate upon marriage, are on the increase, and marriage, accordingly,
+is dissolving and falling to pieces.
+
+3. Relatively, the number of marriages is on the decline, although
+population increases,--showing again that marriage, in the eyes of many,
+no longer answers its social and moral purposes, and is considered
+worthless, or dangerous.
+
+4. In almost all the countries of civilization there is a disproportion
+between the number of the sexes, and to the disadvantage of the female
+sex, and the disproportion is not caused by births--there are, on the
+average, more boys born than girls,--but is due to unfavorable social
+and political causes, that lie in the political and economic conditions.
+
+_Seeing that all these unnatural conditions, harmful to woman in
+particular, are grounded in the nature of capitalist society, and grow
+worse as this social system continues, the same proves itself unable to
+end the evil and emancipate woman. Another social order is, accordingly,
+requisite thereto._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Plato requires in his "Republic" that "the women be educated like
+the men," and he demands careful selection in breeding. He, accordingly,
+was thoroughly familiar with the effect of a careful selection on the
+development of man. Aristotle lays it down as a maxim of education that
+"First the body, then the mind must be built up," Aristotle's
+"Politics." With us, when thought is at all bestowed upon the matter,
+the body, the scaffolding for the intellect, is considered last.
+
+[87] "Die Mission unseres Jahrhunderts. Eine Studie zur Frauenfrage,"
+Irma v. Troll-Borostyani; Pressburg and Leipsic.
+
+[88] In "Les Femmes Qui Tuent et les Femmes Qui Votent," Alexander
+Dumas, son, narrates: "A Catholic clergyman of high standing stated in
+the course of a conversation that, out of a hundred of his former female
+pupils, who married, after a month at least eighty came to him and said
+they were disillusioned and regretted having married." This sounds very
+probable. The Voltarian French bourgeoisie reconcile it with their
+conscience to allow their daughters to be educated in the cloisters.
+They proceed from the premises that an ignorant woman is more easy to
+lead than one who is posted. Conflicts and disappointment are
+inevitable. Laboulaye gives the flat-footed advice to keep woman in
+moderate ignorance, because "notre empire est detruit, si l'homme est
+reconnu" (our empire is over if man is found out).
+
+[89] According to observations made in the psychiatric clinic at Vienna,
+paralysis (softening of the brain) is making by far greater progress
+among women than among men. To 100 patients taken in, there were in the
+years:
+
+
+    1873-77: 15.7 male and 4.4 female paralytics.
+    1888-92: 19.7 male and 10.0 female paralytics.
+
+
+During the sixties there was, on the average, 1 female paralytic to 8
+males; now there is 1 female paralytic to 3.49 males in Denmark, to 3.22
+in middle and upper Italy, 2.89 in England, 2.77 in Belgium, and 2.40 in
+France.--"Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung," January 31, 1895.
+
+[90] Dr. F. B. Simon: "Die Gesundheitspflege des Weibes," Stuttgart,
+1893, F. J. Dietz.
+
+[91] Dr. F. B. Simon. Simon devotes extensive consideration to this
+theme, together with that akin thereto,--why so many married women take
+sick shortly after marriage without knowing why; and he holds up the
+mirror to the men.
+
+[92] Karl Buecher: "Ueber die Vertheilung der beiden Geschlechter auf
+der Erde," "Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv," Tuebingen, 1892.
+
+[93] Besides 550,430 children without specification of sex.
+
+[94] "Statistisches Jahrbuch fuer das Deutsche Reich." Jahrgang 1893.
+
+[95] Ibidem.
+
+[96] "Statistik des Deutschen Reiches," 1890.
+
+[97] "Statistisches Jahrbuch fuer das Deutsche Reich," 1889-1894.
+
+[98] "Statistik des Deutschen Reiches."
+
+[99] "Statistik des Deutschen Reiches."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PROSTITUTION A NECESSARY SOCIAL INSTITUTION OF THE CAPITALIST WORLD.
+
+
+Marriage presents one side of the sexual life of the capitalist or
+bourgeois world; prostitution presents the other. Marriage is the
+obverse, prostitution the reverse of the medal. If men find no
+satisfaction in wedlock, then they usually seek the same in
+prostitution. Those men, who, for whatever reason, renounce married
+life, also usually seek satisfaction in prostitution. To those men,
+accordingly, who, whether out of their free will or out of compulsion,
+live in celibacy, as well as to those whom marriage does not offer what
+was expected of it, conditions are more favorable for the gratification
+of the sexual impulse than to women.
+
+Man ever has looked upon the use of prostitution as a privilege due him
+of right. All the harder and severer does he keep guard and pass
+sentence when a woman, who is no prostitute, commits a "slip." That
+woman is instinct with the same impulses as man, aye, that at given
+periods of her life (at menstruation) these impulses assert themselves
+more vehemently than at others,--that does not trouble him. In virtue of
+his position as master, he compels her to violently suppress her most
+powerful impulses, and he conditions both her character in society and
+her marriage upon her chastity. Nothing illustrates more drastically,
+and also revoltingly, the dependence of woman upon man than this
+radically different conception regarding the gratification of the
+identical natural impulse, and the radically different measure by which
+it is judged.
+
+To man, circumstances are particularly favorable. Nature has devolved
+upon woman the consequences of the act of generation: outside of the
+enjoyment, man has neither trouble nor responsibility. This advantageous
+position over against woman has promoted that unbridled license in
+sexual indulgence wherein a considerable part of men distinguish
+themselves. Seeing, however, that, as has been shown, a hundred causes
+lie in the way of the legitimate gratification of the sexual instinct,
+or prevent its full satisfaction, the consequence is frequent
+gratification, like beasts in the woods.
+
+_Prostitution thus becomes a social institution in the capitalist world,
+the same as the police, standing armies, the Church, and
+wage-mastership._
+
+Nor is this an exaggeration. We shall prove it.
+
+We have told how the ancient world looked upon prostitution, and
+considered it necessary, aye, had it organized by the State, as well in
+Greece as in Rome. What views existed on the subject during the Middle
+Ages has likewise been described. Even St. Augustine, who, next to St.
+Paul, must be looked upon as the most important prop of Christendom, and
+who diligently preached asceticism, could not refrain from exclaiming:
+"Suppress the public girls, and the violence of passion will knock
+everything of a heap." The provincial Council of Milan, in 1665,
+expressed itself in similar sense.
+
+Let us hear the moderns:
+
+Dr. F. S. Huegel says:[100] "Advancing civilization will gradually drape
+prostitution in more pleasing forms, but only with the end of the world
+will it be wiped off the globe." A bold assertion; yet he who is not
+able to project himself beyond the capitalist form of society, he who
+does not realize that society will change so as to arrive at healthy and
+natural social conditions,--he must agree with Dr. Huegel.
+
+Hence also did Dr. Wichern, the late pious Director of the Rauhen House
+near Hamburg, Dr. Patton of Lyon, Dr. William Tait of Edinburg, and Dr.
+Parent-Duchatelet of Paris, celebrated through his investigations of the
+sexual diseases and prostitution, agree in declaring: "Prostitution is
+ineradicable _because it hangs together with the social institutions_,"
+and all of them demanded its regulation by the State. Also Schmoelder
+writes: "Immorality as a trade has existed at all times and in all
+places, and, so far as the human eye can see, _it will remain a constant
+companion_ of the human race."[101] Seeing that the authorities cited
+stand, without exception, upon the ground of the modern social order,
+the thought occurs to none that, with the aid of another social order,
+the causes of prostitution, and, consequently, prostitution itself,
+might disappear; none of them seeks to fathom the causes. Indeed, upon
+one and another, engaged in this question, the fact at times dawns that
+the sorry social conditions, which numerous women suffer under, might be
+the chief reason why so many women sell their bodies; but the thought
+does not press itself through to its conclusion, to wit, that,
+therefore, the necessity arises of bringing about other social
+conditions. Among those who recognize that the economic conditions are
+the chief cause of prostitution belong Th. Bade, who declares:[102] "The
+causes of the bottomless moral depravity, out of which the prostitute
+girl is born, lie in the existing social conditions.... _It is the
+bourgeois dissolution of the middle classes and of their material
+existence, particularly of the class of the artisans_, only a small
+fraction of which carries on to-day an independent occupation as a
+trade." Bade closes his observations, saying: "Want for material
+existence, that has partly worn out the families of the middle class and
+will yet wear them out wholly, leads also to the moral ruin of the
+family, especially of the female sex." In fact, the statistical figures,
+gathered by the Police Department of Berlin, between 1871-1872, on the
+extraction of 2,224 enrolled prostitutes, show:
+
+
+    Number.  Per Cent.   Father's Occupation.
+
+     1,015     47.9     Artisans
+       467     22.0     Millhands
+       305     14.4     Small office-holders
+       222     10.4     Merchants and railroad workers
+        87     4.1      Farmers
+        26     1.2      Military service
+
+
+Of 102 the father's occupation was not ascertainable.
+
+Specialists and experts rarely take up investigations of a deeper
+nature; they accept the facts that lie before them, and judge in the
+style of the "Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift," that writes in its No.
+35, for the year 1863: "What else is there left to the large majority of
+willing and unwilling celibates, in order to satisfy their _natural
+wants_, than the forbidden fruit of the Venus Pandemos?" The paper is,
+accordingly, of the opinion that, for the sake of these celibates,
+prostitution is necessary, because what else, forsooth, are they to do
+in order to satisfy their sexual impulse? And it closes, saying: "Seeing
+that prostitution is necessary, it has the right to existence, to
+protection, and to immunity from the State." And Dr. Huegel declares
+himself in his work, mentioned above, in accord with this view. Man,
+accordingly, to whom celibacy is a horror and a martyrdom, is the only
+being considered; that there are also millions of women living in
+celibacy is well known; but they have to submit. What is right for man,
+is, accordingly, wrong for women; is in her case immorality and a crime.
+
+The Leipsic Police Doctor, Dr. J. Kuehn, says:[103] "Prostitution is not
+merely an evil that must be tolerated, _it is a necessary evil_, because
+it protects the wives from infidelity, [which only the husbands have the
+right to be guilty of] and virtue also [female virtue, of course, the
+husbands have no need of the commodity] from being assailed [sic.] and,
+therefore, from falling." These few words of Dr. Kuehn typify, in all
+its nakedness, the crass egoism of male creation. Kuehn takes the
+correct stand for a Police Doctor, who, by superintending prostitution,
+sacrifices himself, to the end of saving the men from disagreeable
+diseases. In the same sense with him did his successor, Dr. Eckstein,
+utter himself at the twelfth convention of the German Associations of
+House and City Real Estate Owners, held in Magdeburg in the summer of
+1890. The honorable house-owners wished to know how they could prevent
+the numerous instances of prostitutes occupying their houses, and how to
+protect themselves against fines in case prostitutes are caught living
+in them. Dr. Eckstein lectured them on this head to the effect that
+prostitution was a "necessary evil," never absent from any people or
+religion. Another interesting gentleman is Dr. Fock, who in a treatise,
+entitled "Prostitution, in Its Ethical and Sanitary Respects," in the
+"Deutschen Vierteljahrschrift fuer offentliche Gesundheitspflege," vol.
+xx, No. 1, considers prostitution "an unenviable corollary of our
+civilized arrangements." He fears an over-production of people if all
+were to marry upon reaching the age of puberty; hence he considers
+important to have prostitution "regulated" by the State. He considers
+natural that the State supervise and regulate prostitution, and thereby
+assume the care of providing for the supply of girls that are free from
+syphilis. He pronounces himself in favor of the most rigid inspection of
+"all women, proven to lead an abandoned life;"--also when ladies of "an
+abandoned life" belong to the prominent classes? It is the old story.
+That in all logic and justice also those men should be held under
+surveillance who hunt up prostitutes, maintain them and make their
+existence possible,--of that no one thinks. Dr. Fock also demands the
+taxing of the prostitutes, and their concentration in given streets. In
+other words, the Christian State is to procure for itself a revenue out
+of prostitution, and, at the same time, organize and place prostitution
+under its protection for the benefit of male creation. What was it that
+the Emperor Vespasian said at a somewhat similar juncture? "_Non
+olet!_"--it smells not.
+
+Did we exaggerate when we said: Prostitution is to-day a necessary
+social institution just as the police, standing armies, the Church and
+wage-mastership?
+
+In the German Empire, prostitution is not, like in France, organized and
+superintended by the State; it is only tolerated. Official public houses
+are forbidden by law, and procuring is severely punishable. But that
+does not prevent that in a large number of German cities public houses
+continue to exist, and are winked at by the police. This establishes an
+incomprehensible state of things. The defiance of the law implied in
+such a state of things dawned even upon our statesmen and they bestirred
+themselves to remove the objection by legislative enactments. The German
+Criminal Code makes also the lodging of a prostitute a penal offense. On
+the other hand, however, the police are compelled to tolerate thousands
+of women as prostitutes, and, in a measure, to privilege them in their
+trade, provided they enter themselves as prostitutes on the Police
+Register, and submit to the Police regulations,--for instance,
+periodically recurring examinations by a physician. It follows, however,
+that, if the Government licenses the prostitute, and thereby protects
+the exercise of her trade, she must also have a habitation. Aye, it is
+even in the interest of public health and order that they have such a
+place to ply their trade in. What contradictions! On the one hand, the
+Government officially acknowledges that prostitution is necessary; on
+the other, it prosecutes and punishes the prostitute and the pimp. But
+it is out of contradictions that bourgeois society is put together.
+Moreover, the attitude of the Government is an avowal that prostitution
+is a Sphinx to modern society, the riddle which society can not solve:
+it considers necessary to tolerate and superintend prostitution in order
+to avoid greater evils. In other words, our social system, so boastful
+of its morality, its religiousness, its civilization and its culture,
+feels compelled to tolerate that immorality and corruption spread
+through its body like a stealthy poison. But this state of things
+betrays something else, besides _the admission by the Christian State
+that marriage is insufficient, and that the husband has the right to
+demand illegitimate gratification of his sexual instincts_. Woman counts
+with such a State in so far only as she is willing, as a sexual being,
+to yield to illegitimate male desires, i. e., become a prostitute. In
+keeping herewith, the supervision and control, exercised by the organs
+of the State over the registered prostitutes, do not fall upon the men
+also, those who seek the prostitute. Such a provision would be a matter
+of course if the sanitary police control was to be of any sense, and
+even of partial effect,--apart from the circumstance that a sense of
+justice would demand an even-handed application of the law to both
+sexes. No; "supervision and control" fall upon woman alone.
+
+This protection by the State of man and not woman, turns upside down the
+nature of things. _It looks as if men were the weaker vessel and women
+the stronger; as if woman were the seducer, and poor, weak man the
+seduced._ The seduction-myth between Adam and Eve in Paradise continues
+to operate in our opinions and laws, and it says to Christianity: "You
+are right; woman is the arch seductress, the vessel of iniquity." Men
+should be ashamed of such a sorry and unworthy _role_; but this _role_
+of the "weak" and the "seduced" suits them;--_the more they are
+protected, all the more may they sin_.
+
+Wherever men assemble in large numbers, they seem unable to amuse
+themselves without prostitution. This was shown, among other instances
+of the kind, by the occurrences at the German Schuetzenfest, held in
+Berlin in the summer of 1890, which caused 2,300 women to express
+themselves as follows in a petition addressed to the Mayor of the German
+capital: "May it please your Honor to allow us to bring to your
+knowledge the matters that have reached the provinces, through the
+press and other means of communication, upon the German shooting
+matches, held at Pankow from the 6th to the 13th of July of this year.
+The reports of the matter, that we have seen with indignation and
+horror, represent the programme of that festival with the following
+announcements, among others: 'First German Herald, the Greatest
+Songstress of the World;' 'A Hundred Ladies and Forty Gentlemen:'
+Besides these smaller _cafes chantants_ and shooting galleries, in which
+importunate women forced themselves upon the men. Also a 'free concert,'
+whose gaily-clad waitresses, seductively smiling, brazenly and
+shamelessly invited the gymnasium students and the fathers of families,
+the youths and the grown men alike, to the 'shooting retreats.'... The
+barely dressed 'lady' who invited people to the booth of 'The Secrets of
+Hamburg, or a Night in St. Pauli,' should have been enough to justify
+her removal by the police. And then the shocking announcement, almost
+incredible of the much boasted about Imperial capital, and hardly to be
+believed by plain male and female citizens in the provinces, to the
+effect that the managers of the festival had consented to the
+employment, without pay, of 'young women' in large numbers, as
+bar-maids, instead of the waiters who applied for work.... We, German
+women, have thousands of occasions, as wives, mothers and as sisters, to
+send our husbands, children, daughters and brothers to Berlin in the
+service of the fatherland; we, consequently, pray to your Honor in all
+humbleness and in the confident expectation that, with the aid of the
+overpowering influence, which, as the chief magistrate of the Imperial
+capital, lies in your hand, you may institute such investigations of
+those disgraceful occurrences, or adopt such other measures as to your
+Honor may seem fit, to the end that a recurrence of those orgies may not
+have to be apprehended at the pending Sedan festival, for instance...."
+(!!)
+
+During the session of the Reichstag, from 1892 to 1893, the united
+Governments made an effort to put an end to the contradiction that
+governmental practice, on the one hand, and the Criminal Code on the
+other, find themselves in with regard to prostitution. They introduced a
+bill that was to empower the police to designate certain habitations to
+prostitutes. It was admitted that prostitution could not be suppressed,
+and that, therefore, the most practical thing was to tolerate the thing
+in certain localities, and to control it. The bill--upon that all minds
+were agreed--would, if it became a law, have called again to life the
+brothels that were officially abolished in Prussia about 1845. The bill
+caused a great uproar, and it evoked a number of protests in which the
+warning was raised against the State's setting itself up as the
+protector of prostitution, and thereby favoring the idea that the use of
+prostitution was not in violation of good morals, or that the trade of
+the prostitute was such that the State could allow and approve of. The
+bill, which met with the strongest opposition both on the floor of the
+Reichstag and in the committee, was pigeon-holed, and dared not again
+come into daylight. That, nevertheless, such a bill could at all take
+shape reveals the embarrassment that society is in.
+
+The administrative regulation of prostitution raises in the minds of men
+not only the belief that the State allows the use of prostitution, but
+also that such control protects them against disease. Indeed, this
+belief greatly promotes indulgence and recklessness on the part of men.
+Brothels do not reduce sexual diseases, they promote the same: _the men
+grow more careless and less cautious_.
+
+Experience has taught that neither the establishment of houses of
+prostitution, controlled by the police, nor the supervision and medical
+inspection, ordered by the police, afford the slightest guarantee
+against contagion. The nature of these diseases is frequently such that
+they are not to be easily or immediately detected. If there is to be any
+safety, the inspection would have to be held several times a day. That,
+however, is impossible in view of the number of women concerned, and
+also of the costs. Where thirty or forty prostitutes must be "done" in
+an hour, inspection is hardly more than a farce; moreover, one or two
+inspections a week is wholly inadequate. The success of these measures
+also suffers shipwreck in the circumstance that the men, who transmit
+the germs of disease from one woman to another, remain free from all
+official annoyance. A prostitute, just inspected and found healthy, may
+be infected that same hour by a diseased man, and she transmits the
+virus to other patrons, until the next inspection day, or until she has
+herself become aware of the disease. The control is not only illusory:
+These inspections, made at command, and conducted by male, instead of
+female physicians, hurt most deeply the sense of shame; and they
+contribute to its total ruination. This is a phenomenon confirmed by
+many physicians. Even the official report of the Berlin Police
+Department admits the fact by stating: "It may also be granted that
+_registration causes the moral sense of the prostitute to sink_ still
+lower."[104] Accordingly, the prostitutes try their utmost to escape
+this control. A further consequence of these police measures is that
+they make it extraordinarily difficult, even impossible, for the
+prostitute ever again to return to a decent trade. _A woman, that has
+fallen under police control, is lost to society; she generally goes down
+in misery within a few years._ Accurately and exhaustively did the fifth
+Congress at Geneva for Combatting Immorality utter itself against the
+police regulation of prostitutes, by declaring: "The compulsory medical
+inspection of prostitutes is an all the more cruel punishment to the
+woman, seeing that, by destroying the remnants of shame, still possible
+within even the most abandoned, such inspection drags down completely
+into depravity the wretched being that is subjected thereto. The State,
+that means to regulate prostitution with the police, forgets that it
+owes equal protection to both sexes; it demoralizes and degrades women.
+Every system for the official regulation of prostitution has police
+arbitrariness for its consequence, as well as the violation of civic
+guaranties that are safeguarded to every individual, even to the
+greatest criminal, against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Seeing
+this violation of right is exercised to the injury of woman only, the
+consequence is an inequality, shocking to nature, between her and man.
+Woman is degraded to the level of a mere means, and is no longer treated
+as a person. _She is placed outside of the pale of law._"
+
+Of how little use police control is, England furnishes a striking
+illustration. In the year 1866 a law was enacted on the subject for
+places in which soldiers and marines were garrisoned. Now, then, while
+from 1860 to 1866, without the law, the lighter cases of syphilis had
+declined from 32.68 to 24.73 per cent., after a six years' enforcement
+of the new law, the percentage of diseased in 1872 was still 24.26. In
+other words, it was not one-half per cent. lower in 1872 than in 1866;
+but the average for these six years was 1-16 per cent. higher than in
+1866. In sight of this, a special Commission, appointed in 1873, to
+investigate the effect of that law, arrived at the unanimous conclusion
+that "the periodical inspection of the women who usually have sexual
+intercourse with the _personnel_ of the army and navy, _had, at best,
+not occasioned the slightest diminution in the number of cases_," and it
+_recommended the suspension_ of periodical inspections.
+
+The effects of the Act of Inspection on the women subjected thereto
+were, however, quite different from those on the troops. In 1866, there
+were, to every 1,000 prostitutes, 121 diseases; in 1868, after the law
+had been in force two years, there were 202. The number then gradually
+dropped, but, nevertheless, still exceeded in 1874 the figure for 1866
+by 16 cases. Under the Act, deaths also increased frightfully among the
+prostitutes. In 1865 the proportion was 9.8 to every 1,000 prostitutes,
+whereas, in 1874 it had risen to 23. When, towards the close of the
+sixties, the English Government made the attempt to extend the Act of
+Inspection to all English cities, a storm of indignation arose from the
+women. The law was considered an affront to the whole sex. The Habeas
+Corpus Act,--that fundamental law, that protects the English citizen
+against police usurpation--would, such was the sentiment, be suspended
+for women: any brutal policeman, animated by revenge or any other base
+motive, would be free to seize any decent woman on the suspicion of her
+being a prostitute, whereas the licentiousness of the men would remain
+unmolested, aye, would be protected and fed, by just such a law.
+
+Although this intervention in behalf of the outcasts of their sex
+readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading
+remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow
+themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction
+of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and
+pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were discussed by men and women; in
+Parliament, the extension of the law was, first, prevented; its repeal
+followed later. The German police is vested with a similar power, and
+cases that have forced themselves into publicity from Berlin, Leipsic
+and other cities, prove that its abuse--or be it "mistakes" in its
+exercise--is easy; nevertheless, of an energetic opposition to such
+regulations naught is heard. Even in middle class Norway, brothels were
+forbidden in 1884; in 1888 the compulsory registration of the
+prostitutes and the inspection connected therewith were abolished in the
+capital, Christiania; and in January, 1893, the enactment was made
+general for the whole country. Very rightly does Mrs. Guillaume-Schack
+remark upon the "protective" measures adopted by the State in behalf of
+the men: "To what end do we teach our sons to respect virtue and
+morality if the State pronounces immorality a necessary evil; and if,
+before the young man has at all reached mental maturity, the State leads
+woman to him stamped by the authorities as a merchandise, as a toy for
+his passion?"
+
+Let a sexually diseased man, in his unbridled career of licentiousness,
+contaminate ever so many of these poor beings--who, to the honor of
+woman be it said, are mostly driven by bitter want or through seduction
+to ply their disgraceful trade,--the scurvy fellow remains unmolested.
+But woe to the woman who does not forthwith submit to inspection and
+treatment! The garrison cities, university towns, etc., with their
+congestion of vigorous, healthy men, are the chief centers of
+prostitution and of its dangerous diseases, that are carried thence into
+the remotest corners of the land, and everywhere spread infection. The
+same holds with the sea towns. What the moral qualifications are with a
+large number of our students the following utterance in a publication
+for the promotion of morality may give an idea of: "_With by far the
+larger number of students, the views entertained upon matters of
+morality are shockingly low, aye, they are downright unclean._"[105] And
+these are the circles--boastful of their "German breed," and "German
+morals"--from which our administrative officers, our District Attorneys
+and our Judges are in part recruited.
+
+"Thy sins shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
+generation." This Bible sentence falls upon the dissipated and sexually
+diseased man in the fullest sense of the word, unhappily also upon the
+innocent woman. "Attacks of apoplexy with young men and also women,
+several manifestations of spinal debility and softening of the brains,
+all manner of nervous diseases, affections of the eyes, cariosity,
+inflammation of the intestines, sterility and atrophy, _frequently
+proceed from nothing else than chronic and neglected, and, often for
+special reasons, concealed syphilis_.... As things now are, ignorance
+and lightheadedness also contribute towards _turning blooming daughters
+of the land into anaemic, listless creatures_, who, under the burden of
+a chronic inflammation of the pelvis, _have to atone for the excesses
+committed by their husbands before and after marriage_."[106] In the
+same sense does Dr. Blaschke utter himself:[107] "Epidemics like cholera
+and smallpox, diphtheria and typhus, whose visible effects are, by
+reason of their suddenness, realized by all, although hardly equal to
+syphilis in point of virulence, and, in point of diffusion, not to be
+compared therewith, yet are they the terror of the population ... while
+before syphilis society stands, one feels inclined to say, with
+frightful indifference." The fault lies in the circumstance that it is
+considered "improper" to talk openly of such things. Did not even the
+German Reichstag stop short before a resolution to provide by law that
+sexual diseases, as well as all others, shall be treated by Sick-Benefit
+Associations?
+
+The syphilitic virus is in its effects the most tenacious and hardest
+poison to stamp out. Many years after an outbreak has been overcome, and
+the patient believes every trace to be wiped out, the sequels frequently
+crop up afresh in the wife or the new-born child;[108] and a swarm of
+ailments among wives and children trace their causes back, respectively,
+to marital and parental venereal diseases. With some who are born blind,
+the misfortune is due to the father's sins, the consequences of which
+transmitted themselves to the wife, and from her to the child.
+Weak-minded and idiotic children may frequently ascribe their infirmity
+to the same cause. Finally, what dire disaster may be achieved through
+vaccination by an insignificant drop of syphilitic blood, our own days
+can furnish crass illustrations of.
+
+In the measure that men, willingly or otherwise, renounce marriage, and
+seek the gratification of natural impulses through illegitimate
+channels, seductive allurements increase also. The great profits yielded
+by all undertakings that cater to immorality, attract numerous and
+unscrupulous business men, who spare no artifice of refinement to draw
+and keep customers. Account is taken of every demand, according to the
+rank and position of the custom, also of its means and readiness to
+bleed. If some of these "public houses" in our large cities were to blab
+out their secrets, the fact would appear that their female
+tenants--mostly of low extraction, without either culture or education,
+often unable to write their own names, but possessed of all the mere
+physical charms--stand in the most intimate relations with "leaders of
+society," with men of high intelligence and culture. There would be
+found among these Cabinet Ministers, high military dignitaries,
+Councillors, members of Legislatures, Judges, etc., going in and out,
+and side by side with representatives of the aristocracy of birth, of
+finance, of commerce and of industry,--all of them, who, by day and in
+society, strut about with grave and dignified mien as "representatives
+and guardians of morality, of order, of marriage, and of the family,"
+and who stand at the head of the Christian charity societies and of
+societies for the "suppression of prostitution." Modern capitalist
+society resembles a huge carnival festival, at which all seek to deceive
+and fool one another. Each carries his official disguise with dignity,
+in order later, unofficially and with all the less restraint, to give a
+loose to his inclinations and passions. All the while, public life is
+running over with "Morality," "Religion" and "Propriety." In no age was
+there greater hypocrisy than in ours. The number of the augurs swells
+daily.
+
+The supply of women for purposes of lust rises even more rapidly than
+the demand. Our increasingly precarious social conditions--want,
+seduction, the love for an externally brilliant and apparently easy
+life--furnish the female candidates from all social strata. Quite
+typically does a novel of Hans Wachenhusen[109] depict the state of
+things in the capital of the German Empire. The author expresses himself
+on the purpose of his work in these words: "My book deals mainly with
+the victims of the female sex and its steady depreciation, due to the
+unnatural plight of our social and civic state, through its own fault,
+through neglect of education, through the craving of luxury and the
+increasing light-headed supply in the market of life. It speaks of this
+sex's increasing surplus, which renders daily more hopeless the new-born
+ones, more prospectless those that grow up.... I wrote much in the same
+way as the District Attorney puts together the past life of a criminal,
+in order to establish therefrom the measure of his guilt. Novels being
+generally considered works of fiction, permissible opposites of Truth,
+the following is, in that sense, no novel, but a true picture of life,
+without coloring." In Berlin, things are no better and no worse than in
+other large cities. Whether Greek-Orthodox St. Petersburg or Catholic
+Rome, Germanic-Christian Berlin or heathen Paris, puritanic London or
+gay Vienna, approach nearer to Babylon of old is hard to decide.
+"Prostitution possesses its written and its unwritten laws, its
+resources, its various resorts, from the poorest cottage to the most
+splendid palace, its numberless grades from the lowest to the most
+refined and cultivated; it has its special amusements and public places
+of meeting, its police, its hospitals, its prisons and its
+literature."[110] "We no longer celebrate the festival of Osiris, the
+Bacchanalia and the Indian orgies of the spring month; but in Paris and
+other large cities, under the black cloak of night, behind the walls of
+'public' and 'private' houses, people give themselves over to orgies and
+Bacchanalia that the boldest pen dare not describe."[111]
+
+Under such conditions, the traffic in female flesh has assumed mammoth
+proportions. It is conducted on a most extensive scale, and is most
+admirably organized in the very midst of the seats of civilization and
+culture, rarely attracting the notice of the police. A swarm of brokers,
+agents, carriers, male and female, ply the trade with the same unconcern
+as if they dealt in any other merchandise. Birth certificates are
+forged, and bills of lading are drawn up with accurate descriptions of
+the qualifications of the several "articles," and are handed over to the
+carriers as directions for the purchasers. As with all merchandise, the
+price depends upon the quality, and the several categories are assorted
+and consigned, according to the taste and the requirements of the
+customers in different places and countries. The slyest manipulations
+are resorted to in order to evade the snares and escape the vigilance of
+the police; not infrequently large sums are used to shut the eyes of the
+guardians of the law. A number of such cases have been established,
+especially in Paris.
+
+Germany enjoys the sorry fame of being the woman market for half the
+world. The innate German migratory disposition seems to animate also a
+portion of the women. In larger numbers than those of any other people,
+the Austrian excepted, do they furnish their contingent to the supply of
+international prostitution. German women populate the harems of the
+Turks, as well as the public houses of central Siberia, and as far away
+as Bombay, Singapore, San Francisco and Chicago. In a book of
+travels,[112] the author, W. Joest, speaks as follows on the German
+trade in girls: "People so often grow warm in our moral Germany over
+the slave trade that some African negro Prince may be carrying on, or
+over conditions in Cuba and Brazil, but they should rather keep in mind
+the beam in their own eyes: _in no country is there such a trade with
+white female slaves, from no country is the export of this living
+merchandise as large as it is from Germany and Austria_. The road that
+these girls take can be accurately followed. From Hamburg they are
+shipped to South America; Bahia and Rio de Janeiro receive their quotas;
+the largest part is destined for Montevideo and Buenos Ayres, while a
+small rest goes through the Straits of Magellan as far as Valparaiso.
+Another stream is steered via England, or direct to North America,
+where, however, it can hold its own only with difficulty against the
+domestic product, and, consequently, splits up down the Mississippi as
+far as New Orleans and Texas, or westward to California. Thence, the
+coast is supplied as far south as Panama; while Cuba, the West Indies
+and Mexico draw their supplies from New Orleans. Under the title of
+"Bohemians," further droves of German girls are exported over the Alps
+to Italy and thence further south to Alexandria, Suez, Bombay, Calcutta
+and Singapore, aye, even to Hongkong and as far as Shanghai. The Dutch
+Indies and Eastern Asia, Japan, especially, are poor markets, seeing
+that Holland does not allow white girls of this kind in its colonies,
+while in Japan the daughters of the soil are themselves too pretty and
+cheap. American competition from San Francisco also tends to spoil the
+otherwise favorable chances. Russia is provided from East Prussia,
+Pomerania and Poland. The first station is usually Riga. Here the
+dealers from St. Petersburg and Moscow supply themselves, and ship their
+goods in large quantities to Nischni-Novgorod and beyond the Ural
+Mountains to Irbit and Krestofsky, aye as far as the interior of
+Siberia. I found, for instance, a German girl in Tschita who had been
+traded in this way. This wonderful trade is thoroughly organized, it is
+attended to by agents and commercial travelers. _If ever the Foreign
+Department of the German Empire were to demand of its consuls reports on
+this matter, quite interesting statistical tables could be put
+together._"
+
+This trade flourishes to this day at its fullest, as proved in the
+autumn of 1893 by a Social Democratic delegate to the German Reichstag.
+
+The number of prostitutes is hard to estimate; accurately it can not be
+at all given. The police can state approximately the number of women
+whose principal occupation is prostitution; but it can not do this with
+regard to the much larger number of those who resort to it as a side
+means of income. All the same, the figures approximately known are
+frightfully high. According to v. Oettingen, the number of prostitutes
+in London was, as early as the close of the sixties, estimated at
+80,000. In Paris the number of registered prostitutes in 1892 was 4,700,
+but fully one-third escape police control. In all Paris, there were, in
+1892, about sixty brothels, with 600 to 700 prostitutes, and the number
+of brothels is steadily on the decline. On the other hand, based upon an
+investigation, instituted by the Municipal Council of Paris, in 1889,
+the number of women who prostitute themselves is placed at the enormous
+figure of 120,000. In Berlin, the number of prostitutes, registered with
+the police, was:--
+
+
+    1886  3,006
+    1887  3,063
+    1888  3,392
+    1889  3,703
+    1890  4,039
+
+
+In 1890, there were six physicians employed, whose duty it was to devote
+two hours a day to inspection.[113] Since then the number of physicians
+has been increased. The prostitutes, registered with the police,
+constitute, however, in Berlin also, only a very small portion of the
+total. Expert sources estimate it at not less than 50,000. In the year
+1890 alone, there were in 9,024 liquor saloons 2,022 bar-maids, almost
+all of whom yield to prostitution. Furthermore, the, from year to year,
+rising number of girls, arrested for disorderly conduct, shows that
+prostitution in Berlin is steadily on the increase. The numbers of these
+arrests were:--
+
+
+    1881  10,878
+    1884  11,157
+    1887  13,358
+    1890  16,605
+
+
+Of the 16,605 girls, arrested in 1890, there were 9,162 carried for
+sentence before the Judge. There were, accordingly, 30 of these at every
+session of the court, and 128 of them were placed under the police by
+judicial decree. Already in 1860, it was calculated in Hamburg that
+every ninth woman was a prostitute. Since then the proportion has become
+greatly worse.
+
+In Germany, the number of prostitutes probably runs up to 180,000.
+Accordingly, we here have to do with a large female army, that considers
+prostitution as a means of livelihood; and the number of victims, whom
+disease and death claim, is in proportion.[114]
+
+Tait calculates for Edinburg that the average life of the prostitute is
+22 to 25 years. According to him, year in and year out, _every fourth
+aye, every third prostitute seeks to take her own life, and every
+twelfth actually succeeds in killing herself_. A truly shocking state of
+things. The majority of prostitutes are heartily tired of their way of
+living; aye, that they are disgusted thereat, is an experience admitted
+by all experts. But once fallen into prostitution, only to very few is
+the opportunity ever offered to escape.
+
+And yet the number of prostitutes increases in the same measure that
+does that of the women engaged as female labor in the various branches
+of industry and trade, and that are paid off with wages that are too
+high to die, and too low to live on. Prostitution is, furthermore,
+promoted by the industrial crises that have become a necessity of the
+capitalist world, that commence to become chronic, and that carry want
+and misery into hundreds and thousands of families. According to a
+letter of the Chief Constable of Bolton, October 31, 1865, to a Factory
+Inspector, the number of young prostitutes had increased more during the
+English cotton famine, consequent upon the North American war for the
+emancipation of the slaves, than during the previous twenty-five
+years.[115] But it is not only the working-women, who, through want,
+fall a prey to prostitution. Prostitution also finds its recruiting
+grounds in the higher walks of life. Lombroso and Ferrero quote
+Mace,[116] who says of Paris that "a governess certificate, whether of
+high or low degree, is not so much a draft upon bread, _as upon suicide,
+theft and prostitution_."
+
+Parent-Duchatelet made out in his time a statistical table, according to
+which, out of 5,000 prostitutes there were 1,440 who took to the
+occupation out of want and misery; 1,250 were orphaned and without
+support; 80 prostituted themselves in order to feed poor parents; 1,400
+were concubines left by their keepers; 400 were girls whom officers and
+soldiers had seduced and dragged to Paris; 280 had been deserted by
+their lovers during pregnancy. These figures speak for themselves. They
+need no further explanation. Mrs. Butler, the zealous champion of the
+poorest and most wretched of her sex in England, says on the subject of
+prostitution: "Fortuitous circumstances, the death of a father, of a
+mother, lack of work, insufficient wages, misery, false promises,
+snares, have led them to sin." Instructive also is the information given
+by K. Schneidt[117] on the causes, that lead the Berlin bar-maids so
+often into the arms of prostitution. Shockingly large is the number of
+female servants that become barmaids, and that almost always means
+prostitutes. The answers that Schneidt received on his schedules of
+questions addressed to bar-maids, ran like this: "Because I got a child
+from my master and had to earn my living;" or "Because my book was
+spoiled;" or "Because with sewing shirts and the like too little is
+made;" or "Because I was discharged from the factory and could get no
+more work;" or "Because my father died, and there were four other little
+ones." That, particularly, servant girls, after they fall a prey to
+seduction by their masters, furnish a large contingent to the
+prostitutes, is a known fact. On the subject of the shockingly large
+number of seductions of servant girls by their masters or by the sons of
+these, Dr. Max Taude expresses himself reproachfully.[118] When,
+however, the upper classes furnish their quota to prostitution, it is
+not want but seduction and the inclination for an easy life, for dress
+and for pleasures. On that subject a certain work[119] utters itself
+this wise:
+
+"Cold with horror and dismay, many a staid citizen, many a parson,
+teacher, high official, high military dignitary, etc., learns that his
+daughter has secretly taken to prostitution. _Were it allowable to
+mention all these daughters by name, either a social revolution would
+take place on the spot, or the popular ideas concerning honor and virtue
+would be seriously damaged._"
+
+It is especially the finer prostitutes, the _haute volee_ among the
+prostitutes, that are recruited from these circles. Likewise do a large
+portion of actresses, whose wardrobe outlays alone stand in crass
+disproportion to their salaries, depend upon such unclean sources of
+revenue.[120] The same with numerous girls, engaged as sales-ladies, and
+in similar capacities. There are employers dishonorable enough to
+justify the low wages that they pay by referring their female employes
+to the aid of "friends." For instance: In 1889 the "Sachsische Arbeiter
+Zeitung" of Dresden published a notice that ran as follows: "A cultured
+young lady, long time out of work on account of lung troubles, looked,
+upon her recovery, for work of any sort. She was a governess. Nothing
+fit offered itself quickly, and she decided to accept the first job that
+came along, whatever it was. She first applied to Mr. ----. Seeing she
+spoke readily several languages, she was acceptable; but the 30 marks a
+month wages seemed to her too small to get along with. She stated to Mr.
+----, and his answer was that most of his girls did not get even that
+much, but from 15 to 20 marks at most, and they all pulled through quite
+well, each having a 'good friend,' who helped along. Another gentleman,
+Mr. ----, expressed himself in the same sense. Of course, the lady
+accepted a place in neither of the two establishments."
+
+Seamstresses, female tailors, milliners, factory girls by the hundreds
+of thousands find themselves in similar plight. Employers and their
+subalterns--merchants, mill owners, landlords, etc.,--who keep female
+hands and employes, frequently consider it a sort of privilege to find
+these women handy to administer to their lusts. Our pious and
+conservative folks love to represent the rural districts as truly
+idyllic in point of morality, compared with the large cities and
+industrial centers. Everyone acquainted with the actual state of things
+knows that it is not so; and the fact was evidenced by the address,
+delivered by a baronial landlord of Saxony in the fall of 1889, reported
+as follows in the papers of the place:
+
+"GRIMMA.--Baron Dr. v. Waechter of Roecknitz, recently delivered an
+address, before a diocese meeting that took place here, upon the subject
+of 'Sexual Immorality in Our Rural Communities.' Local conditions were
+not presented by him in a rosy color. The speaker admitted with great
+candor that _employers_, even _married_ ones, are frequently in _very
+intimate relations_ with their female domestics, the consequences of
+which were either cancelled with _cash_, or were removed from the eyes
+of the world through a _crime_. The fact could, unfortunately, not be
+cloaked over, that immorality was nursed in these communities, not alone
+by girls, who, as nurses in cities, had taken in the poison, or by
+fellows, who made its acquaintance in the military service, but that,
+sad to say, also the _cultured classes_, through the stewards of
+manorial estates, and through the officers on the occasions of field
+manoeuvres, carried lax principles of morality into the country
+districts. According to Dr. v. Waechter, there are _actually here in the
+country few girls who reach the age of seventeen_ without having
+fallen." The open-hearted speaker's love of truth was answered with a
+social boycott, placed upon him by the officers who felt insulted. The
+_jus primae noctis_ of the medieval feudal lord continues in another
+form in these very days of ours.
+
+The majority of prostitutes are thrown into the arms of this occupation
+at a time when they can hardly be said to have arrived at the age of
+discretion. Of 2,582 girls, arrested in Paris for the secret practice of
+prostitution, 1,500 were minors; of 607 others, 487 had been deflowered
+under the age of twenty. In September, 1894, a scandal of first rank
+took the stage in Buda-Pest. It appeared that about 400 girls of from
+twelve to fifteen years fell prey to a band of rich rakes. The sons of
+our "property and cultured classes" generally consider it an attribute
+of their rank to seduce the daughters of the people, whom they then
+leave in the lurch. Only too readily do the trustful daughters of the
+people, untutored in life and experience, and generally joyless and
+friendless, fall a prey to the seduction that approaches them in
+brilliant and seductive guise. Disillusion, then sorrows, finally
+crime,--such are the sequels. Of 1,846,171 live births in Germany in
+1891, 172,456 were illegitimate. Only conjure up the volume of worry and
+heartaches prepared for a great number of these mothers, by the birth of
+their illegitimate children, even if allowance is made for the many
+instances when the children are legitimatized by their fathers! _Suicide
+by women and infanticide_ are to a large extent traceable to the
+destitution and wretchedness in which the women are left when deserted.
+The trials for child murder cast a dark and instructive picture upon the
+canvas. To cite just one case, in the fall of 1894, a young girl, who,
+eight days after her delivery, had been turned out of the lying-in
+institute in Vienna and thrown upon the streets with her child and
+without means, and who, in her distress and desperation, killed the
+infant, _was sentenced to be hanged_ by a jury of Krems in Lower
+Austria. About the scamp of a father nothing was said. And how often do
+not similar instances occur! The seduced and outrageously deserted
+woman, cast helpless into the abyss of despair and shame, resorts to
+extreme measures: she kills the fruit of her womb, is dragged before the
+tribunals, is sentenced to penitentiary or the gallows. The
+unconscionable, and actual murderer,--he goes off scott-free; marries,
+perchance, shortly after, the daughter of a "respectable and honest"
+family, and becomes a much honored, upright man. There is many a
+gentleman, floating about in honors and distinctions, who has soiled his
+honor and his conscience in this manner. Had women a word to say in
+legislation, much would be otherwise in this direction.
+
+Most cruel of all, as already indicated, is the posture of French
+legislation, which forbids inquiry after the child's paternity, and,
+instead, sets up foundling asylums. The resolution on the subject, by
+the Convention of June 28, 1793, runs thus: "The nation takes charge of
+the physical and moral education of abandoned children. From that moment
+they will be designated only by the term of orphans. No other
+designation shall be allowed." Quite convenient for the men, who,
+thereby, shifted the obligation of the individual upon the collectivity,
+to the end of escaping exposure before the public and their wives. In
+all the provinces of the land, orphan and foundling asylums were set up.
+The number of orphans and foundlings ran up, in 1893, to 130,945, of
+which it was estimated that each tenth child was legitimate, but not
+wanted by its parents. But no particular care was taken of these
+children, and the mortality among them was, accordingly, great. In that
+year, fully 59 per cent., i. e., more than one-half died during the
+first year of their lives; 78 per cent. died twelve years of age and
+under. Accordingly, of every 100 only 22 reached the age of twelve years
+and over. It is claimed that matters have in the meantime improved in
+those establishments.
+
+In Austria and Italy also foundling asylums were established, and their
+support assumed by the State. "_Ici on fait mourir les enfants_" (Here
+children are killed) is the inscription that a certain King is said to
+have recommended as fit for foundling asylums. In Austria, they are
+gradually disappearing; there are now only eight of them left; also the
+treatment and care of the children has considerably improved to what it
+was. In 1888, there were 40,865 children cared for in Austria, including
+Galicia; of these 10,466 were placed in public institutions, 30,399
+under private care, at a joint cost of 1,817,372 florins. Mortality was
+slighter among the children in the public institutions than among those
+placed under private care. This was especially the case in Galicia.
+There, 31.25 per cent. of the children died during the year 1888 in the
+public establishments, by far more than in the public establishments of
+other countries; but of those under private care, 84.21 per cent.
+died,--a veritable mass-assassination. It almost looks as though the
+Polish slaughterhouse system aimed at killing off these poor little
+worms as swiftly as possible. It is a generally accepted fact that the
+percentage of deaths among children born out of wedlock is far higher
+than among those born in wedlock. In Prussia there died, early in the
+sixties, during the first year of their lives 18.23 per cent. of
+children born in wedlock, and 33.11 per cent. of children born out of
+wedlock, accordingly twice as many of the latter. In Paris there died,
+100 children born in wedlock to every 139 born out of wedlock, and in
+the country districts 215. Italian statistics throw up this picture: Out
+of every 10,000 live-births, there died--
+
+
+    Legitimate children:    1881.  1882.  1883.  1884.  1885.
+      One month old           751    741    724    698    696
+      Two to twelve months  1,027  1,172    986    953  1,083
+    Illegitimate children:
+      One month old         2,092  2,045  2,139  2,107  1,813
+      Two to twelve months  1,387  1,386  1,437  1,437  1,353
+
+
+The difference in the mortality between legitimate and illegitimate
+children is especially noticeable during the first month of life. During
+that period, the mortality of children born out of wedlock is on an
+average three times as large as that of those born in wedlock. Improper
+attention during pregnancy, weak delivery and poor care afterwards, are
+the very simple causes. Likewise do maltreatment and the infamous
+practice and superstition of "making angels" increase the victims. The
+number of still-births is twice as large with illegitimate than with
+legitimate children, due, probably, mainly to the efforts of some of the
+mothers to bring on the death of the child during pregnancy. The
+illegitimate children who survive revenge themselves upon society for
+the wrong done them, by furnishing _an extraordinary large percentage of
+criminals of all degrees_.
+
+Yet another evil, frequently met, must also be shortly touched upon.
+Excessive sexual indulgence is infinitely more harmful than too little.
+A body, misused by excess, will go to pieces, even without venereal
+diseases. Impotence, barrenness, spinal affections, insanity, at least
+intellectual weakness, and many other diseases, are the usual
+consequences. _Temperance_ is as necessary in sexual intercourse as in
+eating and drinking, and all other human wants. But temperance seems
+difficult to youth. Hence the large number of "young old men," in the
+higher walks of life especially. The number of young and old _roues_ is
+enormous, and they require special irritants, excess having deadened and
+surfeited them. Many, accordingly, lapse into the unnatural practices of
+Greek days. The crime against nature is to-day much more general than
+most of us dream of: upon that subject the secret archives of many a
+Police Bureau could publish frightful information. But not among men
+only, among women also have the unnatural practices of old Greece come
+up again with force. Lesbian love, or Sapphism, is said to be quite
+general among married women in Paris; according to Taxal,[121] it is
+enormously in practice among the prominent ladies of that city. In
+Berlin, one-fourth of the prostitutes are said to practice "tribady;"
+but also in the circles of our leading dames there are not wanting
+disciples of Sappho. Still another unnatural gratification of the sexual
+instinct manifests itself in the violation of children, a practice that
+has increased greatly during the last thirty years. In France, during
+1851-1875, 17,656 cases of this nature were tried. The colossal number
+of these crimes in France is intimately connected with the two-child
+system, and with the abstinence of husbands towards their wives. To the
+German population also we find people recommending Malthusianism,
+without stopping to think what the sequels will be. The so-called
+"liberal professions," to whom belong mainly the members of the upper
+classes, furnish in Germany about 5.6 per cent. of the ordinary
+criminals, but they furnish 13 per cent. of the criminals indicted for
+violation of children; and this latter percentage would be still higher
+were there not in those circles ample means to screen the criminals, so
+that, probably, the majority of cases remain undiscovered. The
+revelations made in the eighties by the "Pall Mall Gazette" on the
+violation of children in England, are still fresh in the public memory.
+
+The moral progress of this our best of all possible worlds is recorded
+in the below tables for England, the "leading country in civilization."
+In England there were:--
+
+
+                    Immoral Acts    Deaths from
+     Year.          of Violence.     Syphilis.    Insane.
+    1861               280             1,345       39,647
+    1871               315             1,995       56,755
+    1881               370             2,334       73,113
+    1882               466             2,478       74,842
+    1883               390               ...       76,765
+    1884               510               ...          ...
+    Increase
+      since 1861    82 per cent.  84 per cent. 98 per cent.
+
+
+A frightful increase this is of the phenomena that point to the rising
+physical and moral ruin of English society.
+
+The best statistical record of venereal diseases and their increase is
+kept by Denmark, Copenhagen especially. Here venereal diseases, with
+special regard to syphilis, developed as follows:--
+
+
+                            Venereal    Of these,
+     Year.    Population.   Diseases.   Syphilis.
+    1874        196,000       5,505        836
+    1879        227,000       6,299        934
+    1885        290,000       9,325      1,866
+
+
+Among the personnel of the navy in Copenhagen, the number of venereal
+diseases increased 1224 per cent. during the period mentioned; in the
+army and for the same period, 227 per cent.[122] And how stands it in
+Paris? From the year 1872 to the year 1888, the number of persons
+treated for venereal diseases in the hospitals Du Midi, de Lourcine and
+de St. Louis was 118,223, of which 60,438 suffered of syphilis and
+57,795 of other venereal affections. Besides these, of the number of
+outside persons, who applied to the clinics of the said three hospitals,
+there was a yearly average of 16,385 venereals.[123]
+
+We have seen how, as a result of our social conditions, vice, excesses,
+wrongs and crimes of all sorts are bred. All society is kept in a state
+of unrest. Under such a state of things woman is the chief sufferer.
+
+Numerous women realize this and seek redress. They demand, first of all,
+economic self-support and independence; they demand that woman be
+admitted, as well as man, to all pursuits that her physical and mental
+powers and faculties qualify her for; they demand, especially, admission
+to the occupations that are designated with the term "liberal
+professions." Are the efforts in these directions justified? Are they
+practical? Would they mend matters? These are questions that now crowd
+forward.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[100] "Geschichte, Statistik und Regelung der Prostitution in Wien."
+
+[101] "Die Bestrafung und polizelliche Behaundlung der gewerbsmaessigen
+Unzucht."
+
+[102] "Ueber Gelegenheitsmacherei und oeffentliches Tanzvergnuegen."
+
+[103] "Die Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert vom sanitaetspolizeilichen
+Standpunkt."
+
+[104] Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Koenigl. Polizei-Praesidiums von
+Berlin fuer die Jahre 1881-1890; pp. 351-359
+
+[105] "Korrespondenzblatt zur Bekaempfung der oeffentlichen
+Sittenlosigkeit," August 15, 1893.
+
+[106] "Die gesundheitschaedliche Tragweite der Prostitution," Dr. Oskar
+Lassar.
+
+[107] "Die Behandlung der Geschlechtskrankheiten in Krankenkassen und
+Heilanstalten."
+
+[108] In the English hospitals, during 1875, fully 14 per cent. of the
+children under treatment were suffering of inherited venereal diseases.
+In London, there died of these diseases 1 man out of every 190 cases of
+death; in all England, 1 out of every 159 cases; in the poor-houses of
+France, 1 out of 160.5.
+
+[109] "Was die Strasse verschlingt."
+
+[110] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, "The Moral Education."
+
+[111] Montegazza, "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."
+
+[112] "Aus Japan nach Deutschland durch Sibirien."
+
+[113] "Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Kgl. Polizei-Praesidiums von Berlin
+vom Jahre 1881-1890."
+
+[114] In the large trades union sick-benefit associations of Berlin the
+number of syphilitic diseases increased from 4326 in 1881 to 9420 in
+1890. Dr. A. Blaschko, _ubi supra_.
+
+[115] Karl Marx, "Capital," p. 461, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896.
+
+[116] _Ubi supra._
+
+[117] "Das Kellnerinnen-Elend In Berlin," Berlin, 1893.
+
+[118] Dr. Max Taube, "Der Schutz der unehelichen Kinder," Leipsic, 1893.
+
+[119] "Die gefallenen Maedchen und die Sittenpolizei," Wilh. Issleib,
+Berlin, 1889.
+
+[120] In a work, "Kapital und Presse," Berlin, 1891, Dr. F. Mehring
+proves that a by no means indifferent actress was engaged at a well
+known theater at a salary of 100 marks a month, and that her outlay for
+wardrobe alone ran up to 1000 marks a month. The deficit was covered by
+a "friend."
+
+[121] Lombroso and Ferrero, _ubi supra_.
+
+[122] "Die venerischen Krankheiten in Daenemark," Dr. Giesing.
+
+[123] Report of the Sanitary Commission on the organization of
+sanitation relative to prostitution in Paris, addressed to the Municipal
+Council of Paris, 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+WOMAN'S POSITION AS A BREADWINNER; HER INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES; DARWINISM
+AND THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+The endeavor of woman to secure economic self-support and personal
+independence has, to a certain degree, been recognized as legitimate by
+bourgeois society, the same as the endeavor of the workingman after
+greater freedom of motion. The principal reason for such acquiescence
+lies in the class interests of the bourgeoisie itself. The bourgeoisie,
+or capitalist class, requires the free and unrestricted purveyance of
+male and female labor-power for the fullest development of production.
+In even tempo with the perfection of machinery, and technique; with the
+subdivision of labor into single acts requiring ever less technical
+experience and strength; with the sharpening of the competitive warfare
+between industry and industry, and between whole regions--country
+against country, continent against continent--the labor-power of woman
+comes into ever greater demand.
+
+The special causes, from which flows this ever increasing enlistment of
+woman in ever increasing numbers, have been detailed above _in extenso_.
+Woman is increasingly employed _along with man, or in his place, because
+her material demands are less than those of man_. A circumstance
+predicated upon her very nature as a sexual being, forces woman to
+proffer herself cheaper. More frequently, on an average, than man, woman
+is subject to physical derangements, that cause an interruption of work,
+and that, in view of the combination and organization of labor, in force
+to-day in large production, easily interfere with the steady course of
+production. Pregnancy and lying-in prolong such pauses. The employer
+turns the circumstance to advantage, and _recoups himself doubly for the
+inconveniences_, that these disturbances put him to, _with the payment
+of much lower wages_.
+
+Moreover--as may be judged from the quotation on page 90, taken from
+Marx's "Capital"--the work of married women has a particular fascination
+for the employer. The married woman is, as working-woman, much more
+"attentive and docile" than her unmarried sister. Thought of her
+children drives her to the utmost exertion of her powers, in order to
+earn the needed livelihood; accordingly, she submits to many an
+imposition that the unmarried woman does not. In general, the
+working-woman ventures only exceptionally to join her fellow-toilers in
+securing better conditions of work. That raises her value in the eyes of
+the employer; not infrequently she is even a trump card in his hands
+against refractory workingmen. Moreover, she is endowed with great
+patience, greater dexterity of fingers, a better developed artistic
+sense, the latter of which renders her fitter than man for many branches
+of work.
+
+These female "virtues" are fully appreciated by the virtuous capitalist,
+and thus, along with the development of industry, woman finds from year
+to year an ever wider field for her application--but, and this is the
+determining factor, _without tangible improvement to her social
+condition_. If woman labor is employed, it generally sets male labor
+free. The displaced male labor, however, wishes to live; it proffers
+itself for lower wages; and the proffer, in turn, re-acts depressingly
+upon the wages of the working-woman. The reduction of wages thus turns
+into an endless screw, that, due to the constant revolutions in the
+technique of the labor-process, is set rotating all the more swiftly,
+seeing that the said technical revolutions, through the savings of
+labor-power, set also female labor free,--all of which again increases
+the supply of hands. New industries somewhat counteract the constant
+supply of relatively superfluous labor-power, but are not strong enough
+to establish lasting improvement. Every rise of wages above a certain
+measure causes the employer to look to further improvements in his
+plant, calculated to substitute will-less, automatic mechanical devices
+for human hands and human brain. At the start of capitalist production,
+hardly any but male labor confronted male labor in the labor-market; now
+sex is played against sex, and, further along the line, age against age.
+Woman displaces man, and, in her turn, woman is displaced by younger
+folks and child-labor. Such is the "Moral Order" in modern industry.
+
+The endeavor, on the part of employers, to extend the hours of work,
+with the end in view of pumping more surplus values out of their
+employes, is made easier to them, thanks to the slighter power of
+resistance possessed by women. Hence the phenomenon that, in the textile
+industries, for instance, in which women frequently constitute far more
+than one-half of the total labor employed, the hours of work are
+everywhere longest. Accustomed from home to the idea that her work is
+"never done," woman allows the increased demands to be placed upon her
+without resistance. In other branches, as in the millinery trade, the
+manufacture of flowers, etc., wages and hours of work deteriorate
+through the taking home of extra tasks, at which the women sit till
+midnight, and even later, without realizing that they thereby only
+compete against themselves, and, as a result, earn in a sixteen-hour
+workday what they would have made in a regular ten-hour day.[124] In
+what measure female labor has increased in the leading industrial
+countries may appear from the below sets of tables. We shall start with
+the leading industrial country of Europe,--England. The last census
+furnishes this picture:
+
+
+                Total Persons
+    Year.         Employed.       Males.     Females.
+    1871         11,593,466     8,270,186   3,323,280
+    1881         11,187,564     7,783,646   3,403,918
+    1891         12,898,484     8,883,254   4,016,230
+
+
+Accordingly, within twenty years, the number of males employed increased
+613,068, or 7.9 per cent.; the number of females, however, by 692,950,
+or 20.9 per cent. It is especially to be observed in this table that, in
+1881, a year of crisis, the number of males employed fell off by
+486,540, and the number of females increased by 80,638. The increase of
+female at the cost of male persons employed is thus emphatically brought
+to light. But within the increasing number of female employes itself a
+change is going on: _younger forces are displacing the older_. It
+transpired that in England, during the years 1881-1891, female
+labor-power of the age 10 to 45 had increased, while that above 45 had
+decreased.
+
+Industries in which female exceeded considerably the number of male
+labor, were mainly the following:
+
+
+       Industries.                    Females.    Males.
+    Manufacture of woman's clothing    415,961      4,470
+    Cotton industry                    332,784    213,231
+    Manufacture of worsted goods        69,629     40,482
+    Manufacture of shirts               52,943      2,153
+    Manufacture of hosiery              30,887     18,200
+    Lace industry                       21,716     13,030
+    Tobacco industry                    15,880     13,090
+    Bookbinding                         14,249     11,487
+    Manufacture of gloves                9,199      2,756
+    Teachers                           144,393     50,628
+
+
+Again the wages of women are, in almost all branches, considerably lower
+than the wages of men _for the same hours_. In the year 1883, the wages
+in England were for men and women as follows, per week:--
+
+
+       Industries.              Males.        Females.
+    Flax and jute factories  26    Marks    10-11 Marks
+    Manufacture of glass     38      "      12      "
+    Printing                 32-36   "      10-12   "
+    Carpet factories         29      "      15      "
+    Weaving                  26      "      16      "
+    Shoemaking               29      "      15      "
+    Dyeing                   25-29   "      12-13   "
+
+
+Similar differences in wages for men and women are found in the Post
+Office service, in school teaching, etc. Only in the cotton industry in
+Lancashire did both sexes earn equal wages for equal hours of work in
+the tending of power looms.
+
+In the United States, according to the census of 1890, there were
+2,652,157 women, of the age of ten years and over engaged in productive
+occupations:--594,510 in agriculture, 631,988 in manufacture, 59,364 in
+trade and transportation, and 1,366,235 in personal service, of whom
+938,910 were servants. Besides that, there were 46,800 female farmers
+and planters, 5,135 Government employes, 155,000 school teachers, 13,182
+teachers of music, 2,061 artists.[125] In the city of New York, 10,961
+working-women participated in strikes during the year 1890, a sign that
+working-women in the United States, like their European fellow-female
+wage slaves, understand the class distinctions that exist between
+Capital and Labor. In what measure women are displacing the men in a
+number of industries in the United States also, is indicated by the
+following item from the "Levest. Journ." in 1893:
+
+"One of the _features_ of the factory towns of Maine is a class of men
+that may be termed 'housekeepers.' In almost every town, where much
+factory work is done, these men are to be found in large numbers.
+Whoever calls shortly before noon will find them, with aprons tied in
+front, washing dishes. At other hours of the day they can be seen
+scrubbing, making the beds, washing the children, tidying up the place,
+or cooking. Whether any of them attend to the sewing and mending of the
+family we are not quite sure. These men attend to the household for the
+simple reason that _their wives can earn more in the factory than they_,
+and it means a saving of money if the wife goes to work."[126]
+
+The closing sentence should read: "Because the women work for wages that
+the men can no longer work for, and the employer therefore prefers
+women,"--which happens in Germany also. The towns here described are the
+so-called "she-towns," already more fully referred to.
+
+In France, there were, in 1893, not less than 15,958 women engaged in
+the railroad service (in the offices and as ticket agents); in the
+provincial Post Office there were 5,383 women employed; as telegraphers
+and telephonists, 9,805; and in the State Savings Banks 425. Altogether
+the number of women in France engaged in gainful occupations, inclusive
+of agriculture and personal service, was, in 1893, in round figures
+4,415,000. Of 3,858 decisions, rendered by the trades courts of Paris,
+not less than 1,674 concerned women.
+
+To what extent female labor was applied in the industries of Switzerland
+as early as 1886, is told by the following figures of the "Bund":
+
+
+        Industries.                  Males.   Females.
+    Silk industry                    11,771    51,352
+    Cotton industry                  18,320    23,846
+    Linen and half-linen industry     5,553     5,232
+    Embroidery                       15,724    21,000
+
+
+Altogether, there were then in the textile industries, 103,452 women
+engaged, besides 52,838 men; and the "Bund" expressly declares that
+there is hardly an occupation in Switzerland in which women are not
+found.
+
+In Germany, according to the census of occupations of 1882, of the
+7,340,789 persons engaged in gainful occupations, 1,506,743 were women;
+or 20.6 per cent. The proportions were, among others, these:--
+
+
+                                                      Per
+       Industries.                Males.  Females.   Cent.
+
+    Commercial occupations       536,221   181,286    25.2
+    Service and restaurants      172,841   141,407    45.0
+    Messengers and day laborers    9,212     3,265    26.2
+    Spinning                      69,272   100,459    60.0
+    Weaving                      336,400   155,396    32.0
+    Embroidery                    42,819    31,010    42.0
+    Lace and crochet work          5,676    30,204    84.0
+    Lace manufacture              13,526    17,478    56.4
+    Bookbinding and paste-board
+      box-making                  31,312    10,409    25.0
+    Paper manufacture             37,685    20,847    35.6
+    Tobacco working               64,477    48,919    43.1
+    Clothes-making, etc.         279,978   440,870    61.2
+
+
+To these must be added 2,248,909 women engaged in agriculture, 1,282,400
+female servants, also school teachers, artists, Government
+office-holders, etc.
+
+According to the census of occupations for 1875-1882, the following was
+the result. There were employed in industrial occupations in the German
+Empire:--
+
+
+               Total                  Total Persons Employed.
+          Persons Employed.  In the Small Trades.  In the Large Trades.
+ Year.    Males.    Females.    Males.    Females.    Males.    Females.
+1875    5,463,856  1,116,095  3,453,357    705,874  2,010,499    410,221
+1882    5,815,039  1,506,743  3,487,073    989,422  2,327,966    514,321
+        ---------  ---------  ---------    -------  ---------    -------
+Increase
+ in 1882  351,183    390,648     33,716    283,548    317,966    107,100
+           or 6.4      or 35       or 1    or 40.2    or 15.8    or 26.1
+        per cent.  per cent.  per cent.  per cent.  per cent.  per cent.
+
+
+According to these figures, not only did female labor increase by 35 per
+cent. during the period of 1875-1882, while male labor increased only
+by 6.4 per cent., but the great increase of female labor, especially in
+small industries, tells the tale that _only by dint of a strong
+application of female labor, with its correspondingly low wages, can
+small production keep itself afloat, for a while_.
+
+In 1882, there were to every 1,000 persons engaged in industry 176
+women; in commerce and transportation, 190; in agriculture, 312.
+
+In 1892, the number of women, employed in the factories of Germany, were
+of the following ages:
+
+
+                                        Number
+     Age.                              Employed.
+    12-14                               3,897
+    14-16                              68,735
+    16-21                             223,538
+    Over 21                           337,499
+    Besides (for Reuss younger line
+        without designation of ages)    6,197
+                                      -------
+                                      639,866
+
+
+In the Kingdom of Saxony, notedly the most industrial portion of
+Germany, the number of working-women employed in the factories was:--
+
+
+      Year.        16 Years and Over.   12 to 16.
+    1883                 72,716           8,477
+    1892                110,555          13,333
+                        -------         -------
+    Increase             37,839           4,856
+                   52 per cent.    57 per cent.
+
+
+As a result of the new factory regulations, which limited the hours of
+female labor, between the ages of 14 to 16, to 10 a day, and wholly
+forbade factory work to children of school age, the number of
+working-women between the ages of 14 to 16 sank to 6,763, and of girls
+between the ages of 12 to 14, sank by 6,334. The strongest increase in
+the number of working-women, as far as we are informed, took place in
+the tobacco industry of Baden. According to the reports of the Baden
+Factory Inspector, Dr. Woerishoffer, the number of persons engaged in
+the said industry and their subdivisions by sexes; was as follows:
+
+
+                    Total Number
+      Year.           Employed.   Males.    Females.
+    1882               12,192     5,193      6,999
+    1892               24,056     7,932     16,124
+                       ------     -----     ------
+    Increase           11,864     2,739      9,125
+                                or 52.8     or 130
+                              per cent.  per cent.
+
+
+This increase in the number of female tobacco workers, denotes the
+sharpening competitive struggle, that has developed during the last ten
+years in the German tobacco as well as many other industries, and which
+compels the ever intenser engagement of the cheaper labor of woman.
+
+And, as in the rest of Germany, so likewise in Baden the industrial
+development in general shows a larger increase of female than of male
+workers. Within a year, it recorded the following changes:--
+
+
+     Year.      Males.    Females.
+    1892        79,218     35,598
+    1893        84,470     38,557
+                ------     ------
+    Increase     5,252     2,959
+                or 6.6    or 8.3
+             per cent.  per cent.
+
+
+Of the working-women over 16 years of age, 28.27 were married. In the
+large ammunition factory at Spandau, there were, in 1893, 3,000 women
+out of a total of 3,700 employes.
+
+As in England, in Germany also, female labor is paid worse than male.
+According to the report of the Leipsic Chamber of Commerce for the year
+1888, the weekly wage for equal hours were:--
+
+
+                               Males.      Females.
+       Industries.             Marks.       Marks.
+    Lace manufacture           20   --35   7   --15
+    Cloth glove manufacture    12   --30   6   --25
+    Linen and jute weaving     12   --27   5   --10
+    Wool-carding               15   --27   7.20--10.20
+    Sugar refinery             10.50--31   7.50--10
+    Leather and leather goods  12   --28   7   --18
+    Chemicals                   8.50--25   7.50--10
+    Rubber fabrics              9   --28   6   --17
+    One factory of paper
+      lanterns                 16   --22   7.50--10
+
+
+In an investigation of the wages earned by the factory hands of Mannheim
+in 1893, Dr. Woerishoffer divided the weekly earnings into three
+classes: one, the lowest, in which the wages reached 15 marks; one from
+15 to 24; and the last and highest in which wages exceeded 24 marks.
+According to this subdivision, wages in Mannheim presented the following
+picture:--
+
+
+                     Low.           Medium.        High.
+    Both sexes  29.8 per cent.  49.8 per cent.  20.4 per cent.
+    Males       20.9 per cent.  56.2 per cent.  22.9 per cent.
+    Females     99.2 per cent.   0.7 per cent.   0.1 per cent.
+
+
+The working-women earned mostly veritable starvation wages. They
+received per week:--
+
+
+                  Percentage
+        Marks.   of Females.
+    Under 5         4.62
+       5--6         5.47
+       6--8        43.96
+       8--10       27.45
+      10--12       12.38
+      12--15        5.38
+     Over 15        0.74
+
+
+In the Thueringer Wald district, in 1891, the workingmen engaged in the
+slate works received 2.10 marks a day; the women 0.70. In the spinning
+establishments, the men received 2 marks, the women from 0.90 to 1 mark.
+
+Worst of all are the earnings in the tenement industry, for men as well
+as for women, but for the women it is still more miserable than for the
+men. In this branch, hours of work are unlimited; when the season is on,
+they transcend imagination. Furthermore, it is here that the sweating
+system is generally in vogue, _i. e._, work given out by middlemen
+(contractors) who, in recompense for their irksome labor of
+superintendence, keep to themselves a large part of the wages paid by
+the principal. Under this system, women are also expected to submit to
+indignities of other nature.
+
+How miserably female labor is paid in the tenement industries, the
+following figures on Berlin conditions may indicate. Men's colored
+shirts, paid for in 1889 with from 2 marks to 2.50, the employer got in
+1893 for 1 mark 50 pfennig. A seamstress of average skill must work from
+early till late if she means to make from 6 to 8 of these shirts. Her
+earnings for the week are 4 or 5 marks. An apron-maker earns from 2
+marks 50 pfennig to 5 marks a week; a necktie-maker, 5 to 6 marks; a
+skilled blouse-maker, 6 marks; a very skilled female operator on boys'
+clothing, 8 to 9 marks; an expert jacket-maker, 5 to 6 marks. A very
+swift seamstress on men's shirts may, in the good season, and working
+from 5 in the morning to 10 at night, make as much as 12 marks.
+Millinery workers, who can copy patterns independently, make 30 marks a
+month. Quick trimmers, with years of experience, earn from 50 to 60
+marks a month during the season. The season usually lasts five months.
+An umbrella-maker, working twelve hours a day, makes 6 to 7 marks. Such
+starvation wages force the working-women into prostitution: even with
+the very plainest wants, no working-women can live in Berlin on less
+than 8 or 9 marks a week.
+
+According to a statistical report on wages, ordered by the Chamber of
+Commerce of Reichenberg for its own district, 91 per cent. of all the
+working-women came under the wage category of from 2 to 5 guilders a
+week. Upon the enforcement in Austria of the law on sick insurance, the
+authorities discovered that in 116 districts (21.6 per cent. of all) the
+working-women earned at most 30 kreuzer a day, 90 guilders a year; and
+in 428 districts (78.4 per cent. of the total) from 30 to 50 kreuzer, or
+from 90 to 150 guilders a year. The young working-women, under 16 years
+of age, earned in 173 districts (30.9 per cent.) 20 kreuzer a day at the
+most, or at the most 60 guilders a year; and in 387 districts (69.1 per
+cent.) from 20 to 30 kreuzer, or from 60 to 90 guilders a year.
+
+Similar differences between the wages of male and female labor exist in
+all countries on earth. According to the report on Russian industry at
+the Chicago Exposition in 1893, a workingman made in cotton weaving 66
+marks a month, a working-woman 18; a male cotton spinner 66 marks, a
+female 14. In the lace industry men earned up to 130 marks, women 26; in
+cloth manufacture, with the power loom, a working man made 90 marks, a
+working-woman 26 a month.
+
+These facts show that woman is increasingly torn from family life by
+modern developments. Marriage and the family, in the bourgeois sense,
+are undermined by this development, and dissolved. From the view point
+afforded by this fact also, it is an absurdity to direct women to a
+domestic life. That can be done only by such people, who thoughtlessly
+walk the path of life; who fail to see the facts that shape themselves
+all around, or do not wish to see them, because they have an interest in
+plying the trade of optimism. Facts furnish a very different picture
+from that presented by such gentlemen.
+
+In a large number of industries women are employed exclusively; in a
+larger number they constitute the majority; and in most of the others
+women are more or less numerously found. Their number steadily
+increases, and they crowd into ever newer occupations, that they had not
+previously engaged in. Finally, the working-woman is not merely paid
+worse than the working man; where she does as much as a man, her hours
+are, on an average, longer.
+
+The German factory ordinances of the year 1891 fixed a maximum of eleven
+hours for adult working-women. The same is, however, broken through by a
+mass of exceptions that the authorities are allowed to make. Nightwork
+also is forbidden for working-women in factories, but here also the
+Government can make exceptions in favor of factories where work is
+continuous, or for special seasons; in sugar refineries, for instance.
+German legislation has not yet been able to rise to the height of
+really effective measures for the protection of working-women;
+consequently, these are exploited by inhumanly long hours, and
+physically wrecked in the small factories, especially in the tenement
+house industry. Their exploitation is made all the easier to the
+employer through the circumstance that, until now, a small minority
+excepted, the women have not realized that, the same as the men, they
+must organize in their trades, and, there where also men are employed,
+they must organize jointly with them, in order to conquer for themselves
+better conditions of work. The ever stronger influx of women in
+industrial pursuits affects, however, not those occupations only that
+their correspondingly weaker physique especially fits them for, but it
+affects also all occupations in which the modern system of exploitation
+believes it can, with their aid, knock off larger profits. Under this
+latter head belong both the physically exhausting and the most
+disagreeable and dangerous occupations. Thus the fantastic pretence of
+seeing in woman only a tender, finely-strung being, such as poets and
+writers of fiction love to depict for the delectation of men, a being,
+that, if it exists at all exists only as an exception, is again reduced
+to its true value.
+
+Facts are obstinate things, and it is only they that concern us. They
+alone preserve us from false conclusions, and sentimental twaddle. These
+facts teach us that to-day we find women engaged in the following
+occupations, among others:--in cotton, linen and woolen weaving; in
+cloth and flannel making; in mechanical spinning, calico printing and
+dyeing; in steel pen and pin making; in the preparation of sugar,
+chocolate and cocoa; in manufacturing paper and bronzes; in making glass
+and porcelain and in glass painting; in the manufacture of faience,
+majolica and earthen ware; in making ink and preparing paints; making
+twine and paper bags; in preparing hops and manure and chemical
+disinfectants; in spinning and weaving silk and ribbons; in making soap,
+candles and rubber goods; in wadding and mat making; in carpet weaving;
+portfolio and cardboard making; in making lace and trimmings, and
+embroidering; making wall-paper, shoes and leather goods; in refining
+oil and lard and preparing chemicals of all sorts; in making jewelry and
+galvanoplastic goods; in the preparation of rags and refuse and bast; in
+wood carving, xylography and stone coloring; in straw hat making and
+cleaning; in making crockery, cigars and tobacco products; in making
+lime and gelatine fabrics; in making shoes; in furriery; in hat making;
+in making toys; in the flax, shoddy and hair industries; in watchmaking
+and housepainting; in the making of spring beds, pencils and wafers; in
+making looking-glasses, matches and gunpowder preparations; in dipping
+phosphorus match-sticks and preparing arsenic; in the tinning of iron;
+in the delicacy trade; in book printing and composition; in the
+preparation of precious stones; in lithography, photography,
+chromo-lithography and metachromotype, and also in the founding of
+types; in tile making, iron founding and in the preparation of metals
+generally; in the construction of houses and railroads; in electrical
+works; in book-binding, wood-carving and joining; in the making of
+footwear and clothing; file making; the making of knives and brass
+goods; in manufacturing combs, buttons, gold thread and gas implements;
+in the making of tanned goods and trunks; in making starch and chicory
+preparations; in metallurgy, wood-planing, umbrella making and fish
+manufacturing; the preservation of fruit, vegetables and meat; in the
+making of china buttons and fur goods; in mining above ground--in
+Belgium also underground after the women are 21 years old; in the
+natural oil and wax production; in slate making and stone breaking; in
+marble and granite polishing; in making cement; the transportation of
+barges and canal boats. Also in the wide field of horticulture,
+agriculture and cattle-breeding, and all that is therewith connected.
+Lastly, in the various industries in which they have long been
+considered to have the right of way: in the making of linen and woman's
+clothing, in the several branches of fashion, also as saleswomen, and
+more recently as clerks, teachers, kindergarten trainers, writers,
+artists of all sorts. Thousands upon thousands of women of the middle
+class are being utilized as slaves in the shops and in the markets, and
+are thereby withdrawn from all domestic functions, the training of
+children in particular. Finally, there is one occupation to be
+mentioned, in which young, especially pretty, girls are ever more in
+demand, to the great injury of their physical and moral development: it
+is the occupation in public resorts of all sorts as bar-maids, singers,
+dancers, etc., to attract men in quest of pleasure. This is a field in
+which impropriety runs riot, and the holders of white slaves lead the
+wildest orgies.
+
+Among the occupations mentioned, not a few are most dangerous.
+Dangerous, for instance, are the sulphuric and alkaline gases in the
+manufacturing and cleaning of straw hats; so is the inhalation of
+chlorine gases in the bleaching of vegetable materials; the danger of
+poisoning is imminent in the manufacture of colored paper, colored
+wafers and artificial flowers; in the preparation of metachromotype,
+poisons and chemicals; in the painting of leaden soldiers and leaden
+toys. The on-laying of looking-glasses with quicksilver is simply deadly
+to the fruit of pregnant women. If, of the live-births in Prussia, 22
+per cent. on an average die during the first year, there die, according
+to Dr. Hirt, 65 per cent. of the live-births of female on-layers of
+quicksilver, 55 per cent. of those of female glass-polishers, 40 per
+cent. of those of female lead-makers. In 1890, out of 78 lying-in women,
+who had been occupied in the type foundries of the district of
+Wiesbaden, only 37 had a normal delivery. Furthermore, according to Dr.
+Hirt, the manufacture of colored paper and artificial flowers, the
+so-called powdering of Brussels lace with white lead, the preparation of
+decalcomania pictures, the on-laying of mirrors, the manufacture of
+rubber goods, in short, all occupations at which the working-women are
+exposed to the inhalation of carbonic acid gases, are especially
+dangerous from the second half of pregnancy onward. Highly dangerous is
+also the manufacture of phosphorus matches and work in the shoddy mills.
+According to the report of the Baden Trades Inspector for 1893, the
+yearly average of premature births with women engaged in industry rose
+from 1,039 in the years 1882-1886, to 1,244 in the years 1887-1891. The
+number of births that had to be aided by an operation averaged for the
+period of 1882-1886 the figures of 1,118 a year, and for the period of
+1886-1891 it averaged 1,385. Facts much graver than any of these would
+come to light if similar investigations were held also in the more
+industrially developed countries and provinces of Germany. As a rule the
+Inspectors are satisfied with stating in their reports: "No specially
+injurious effects were discovered in the employment of women in the
+factories." How could they discover any, with their short visits and
+without drawing upon medical advice? That, moreover, there are great
+dangers to life and limb, especially in the textile industry, in the
+manufacture of explosives and in work with agricultural machinery, is an
+established fact. Even a glance at the above and quite incomplete list
+will tell every reader that a large number of these occupations are
+among the hardest and most exhausting even to men. Let people say as
+they please, this work or that is not suitable for woman; what boots the
+objection if no other and more suitable occupation is furnished her?
+
+Among the branches of industry, or special occupations in the same, that
+Dr. Hirt[127] considers girls should not be at all employed in, by
+reason of the danger to health, especially with an eye to their sexual
+functions, are: The preparation of bronze colors, of velvet and glazed
+paper, hat making, glass grinding, lithography, flax combing, horsehair
+twisting, fustian pulling, iron tinning, and work in the flax and shoddy
+mill.
+
+In the following trades, young girls should be occupied only when the
+necessary protective measures (ventilation, etc.) are properly provided
+for: The manufacture of paper matting, china ware, lead pencils, shot
+lead, etherial oils, alum, blood-lye, bromium, chinin, soda, paraffin
+and ultramarine (poisonous) colored paper, wafers that contain poison,
+metachromotypes, phosphorous matches, Schweinfurt green and artificial
+flowers. Also in the cutting and sorting of rags, sorting and coloring
+of tobacco leaf, cotton beating, wool and silk carding, cleaning of bed
+feathers, sorting pencil hairs, washing (sulphur) straw hats,
+vulcanizing and melting rubber, coloring and printing calico, painting
+lead soldiers, packing snuff, wire netting, on-laying of mirrors,
+grinding needles and steel pens.
+
+Truly, it is no inspiring sight to see women, and even pregnant ones, at
+the construction of railroads, pushing heavily laden wheelbarrows in
+competition with men; or to watch them as helpers, mixing mortar and
+cement or carrying heavy loads of stone at the construction of houses;
+or in the coal pits and iron works. All that is womanly is thereby
+rubbed off from woman, her womanliness is trodden under foot, the same
+as, conversely, all manly attributes are stripped from the men in
+hundreds of other occupations. Such are the sequels of social
+exploitation and of social war. Our corrupt social conditions turn
+things topsy-turvy.
+
+It is, accordingly, easy to understand that, considering the extent to
+which female labor now prevails, and threatens to make still further
+inroads in all fields of productive activity, the men, highly interested
+in the development, look on with eyes far from friendly, and that here
+and there the demand is heard for the suppression of female labor and
+its prohibition by law. Unquestionably, with the extension of female
+labor, the family life of the working class goes ever more to pieces,
+the dissolution of marriage and the family is a natural result, and
+immorality, demoralization, degeneration, diseases of all natures and
+child mortality increase at a shocking pace. According to the statistics
+of population of the Kingdom of Saxony, child mortality has greatly
+increased in all those cities that became genuine manufacturing places
+during the last 25 or 30 years. During the period 1880-1885 there died
+in the cities of Saxony, on an average, 28.5 per cent. of the
+live-births during the first year of life. In the period of 1886-1890,
+45.0 of the live-births died in Ernsthal during the first year of their
+lives, 44.5 in Stolling, 40.4 in Zschopau, 38.9 in Lichtenstein, 38.3 in
+Thum, 38.2 in Meerane, 37.7 in Crimmitschau, 37.2 in Burgstaedt, 37.1 in
+Werdau, 36.5 in Ehrenfriedersdorf, 35.8 in Chemnitz, 35.5 in
+Frankenberg, 35.2 in Buchholz, 35.1 in Schneeberg, 34.7 in Lunzenau,
+34.6 in Hartha, 34.5 in Geithaim, etc.[128] Worse yet stood things in
+the majority of the large factory villages, quite a number of whom
+registered a mortality of 40 to 50 per cent. Yet, all this
+notwithstanding, the social development, productive of such sad results,
+is progress,--precisely such progress as the freedom to choose a trade,
+freedom of emigration, freedom to marry, and the removal of all other
+barriers, thus promoting the development of capitalism on a large scale,
+but thereby also giving the death-blow to the middle class and preparing
+its downfall.
+
+The working class is not inclined to help the small producer, should he
+attempt the re-establishment of restrictions to the freedom to choose a
+trade and of emigration, or the restoration of the guild and corporation
+restrictions, contemplated with the end in view of artificially keeping
+dwarf-production alive for a little while longer,--more than that is
+beyond their power. As little is a return possible to the former state
+of things with regard to female labor, but that does not exclude
+stringent laws for the prevention of the excessive exploitation of
+female and child labor, and of children of school age. In this the
+interests of the working class coincides with the interests of the
+State, of humanity, in general, and of civilization. When we see the
+State compelled to lower the minimum requirements for military
+service--as happened several times during the last decades, the last
+time in 1893, when the army was to be further increased--and we see such
+lowering of the minimum requirements resorted to for the reason that, as
+a result of degenerating effects of our economic system, the number of
+young men unfit for military service becomes ever larger,--when we see
+that, then, forsooth, all are interested in protective measures. The
+ultimate aim must be to remove the ills, that progress--such as
+machinery, improved means of production and the whole modern system of
+labor--has called forth, while at the same time causing the enormous
+advantages, that such progress is instinct with for man, and the still
+greater advantages it is capable of, to accrue in full measure to all
+the members of society, by means of a corresponding organization of
+human labor.[129]
+
+It is an absurdity and a crying wrong that the improvements and
+conquests of civilization--the collective product of all--accrue to the
+benefit of those alone who, in virtue of their material power, are able
+to appropriate them to themselves, while, on the other hand, thousands
+of diligent workingmen are assailed with fear and worry when they learn
+that human genius has made yet another invention able to multiply many
+fold the product of manual labor, and thereby opening to them the
+prospect of being thrown as useless and superfluous upon the sidewalks.
+Thus, that which should be greeted with universal joy becomes an object
+of hostility, that in former years occasioned the storming of many a
+factory and the demolition of many a new machine. A similar hostile
+feeling exists to-day between man and woman as workers. This feeling
+also is unnatural. The point, consequently, is to seek to establish a
+social condition in which the _full equality of all without distinction
+of sex shall be the norm of conduct_.
+
+_The feat is feasible--the moment all the means of production become
+the property of society; when collective labor, by the application of
+all technical and scientific advantages and aids in the process of
+production, reaches the highest degree of fertility; and when the
+obligation lies upon all, capable of work, to furnish a certain measure
+of labor to society, necessary for the satisfaction of social wants, in
+exchange whereof society guarantees to each and all the means requisite
+for the development of his faculties and for the enjoyment of life._
+
+Woman shall be like man, a productive and useful member of society,
+equal-righted with him. Precisely like man, she shall be placed in
+position to fully develop all her physical and mental faculties, to
+fulfil her duties, and to exercise her rights. A free being and the peer
+of man, she is safe against degradation.
+
+We shall point out how modern developments in society run out into such
+a state of things, and that it is these very crass and monstrous ills in
+modern development that compel the establishment of the New Order.
+
+Although the development of the position of woman, as above
+characterized, is palpable, is tangible to the sight of all who have
+eyes to see, the twaddle about the "natural calling" of woman is heard
+daily, assigning her to domestic duties and the family. The phrase is
+heard loudest there where woman endeavors to penetrate into the sphere
+of the so-called higher professions, as for instance, the higher
+departments of instruction and of the civil service, the medical or
+legal careers, and the pursuit of the natural sciences. The most
+laughable and absurd objections are fetched up, and are defended with
+the air of "learning." Gentlemen, who pass for learned, appeal, in this
+as in so many other things, to science in order to defend the most
+absurd and untenable propositions. Their chief trump card is that woman
+is inferior to man in mental powers and that it is folly to believe she
+could achieve aught of importance in the intellectual field.
+
+These objections, raised by the "learned," fit so well with the general
+prejudices entertained by men on the calling and faculties of woman
+that, whoever makes use of them can count upon the applause of the
+majority.
+
+New ideas will ever meet with stubborn opposition so long as general
+culture and knowledge continue at so low an ebb as at present,
+especially if it lies in the interest of the ruling classes to confine
+culture and knowledge as much as possible to their own ranks. Hence new
+ideas will at the start win over but a small minority, and this will be
+scoffed at, maligned and persecuted. But if these new ideas are good and
+sound, if they are born as the necessary consequence of existing
+conditions, then will they spread, and the one-time minority finally
+becomes a majority. So has it been with all new ideas in the course of
+history: the idea of establishing the complete emancipation of woman
+presents the same experience.
+
+Were not one time the believers in Christianity a small minority? Did
+not the Protestant Reformers and modern bourgeoisdom once face
+overpowering adversaries? And yet they triumphed. Was the Social
+Democracy crippled because gagged and pinioned by exclusion laws, so
+that it could not budge? Never was its triumph more assured than when it
+was thought to have been killed. The Social Democracy overcame the
+exclusion laws; it will overcome quite other obstacles besides.
+
+The claim regarding the "natural calling of woman," according whereto
+she should be housekeeper and nurse, is as unfounded as the claim that
+there will ever be kings because, since the start of history, there have
+been such somewhere. We know not where the first king sprang up, as
+little as we know where the first capitalist stepped upon the scene.
+This, however, we do know: Kingship has undergone material changes in
+the course of the centuries, and the tendency of development is to strip
+it ever more of its powers, until a time comes, no longer far away, when
+it will be found wholly superfluous. As with the kingship, so with all
+other social and political institutions; they are all subject to
+continuous changes and transformations, and to final and complete decay.
+We have seen, in the course of the preceding historic sketch, that the
+form of marriage, in force to-day, like the position of woman, was by no
+means such "eternally"; that, on the contrary, both were the product of
+a long process of development, which has by no means reached its acme,
+and can reach it only in the future. If 2,400 or 2,300 years ago
+Demosthenes could designate the "bringing forth of legitimate children
+and officiating as a faithful warder of the house" as the only
+occupation of woman, to-day we have traveled past that point. Who,
+to-day, would dare uphold such a position of woman as "natural" without
+exposing himself to the charge of belittling her? True enough, there are
+even to-day such sots, who share in silence the views of the old
+Athenian; but none dare proclaim publicly that which 2,300 years ago one
+of the most eminent orators dared proclaim frankly and openly as
+_natural_. Therein lies the great advance made.
+
+If, on the one hand, modern development, especially in industrial life,
+has wrecked millions of marriages, it, on the other hand, promoted
+favorably the development itself of marriage. Only a few decades ago,
+and it was a matter of course in every citizen's or peasant's house not
+only that woman sewed, knitted and washed--although even this has now
+extensively gone out of fashion--but she also baked the bread, spun,
+wove, bleached, brewed beer, boiled soap, made candles. To have a piece
+of wearing apparel made out of the house was looked upon as unutterable
+waste. Water-pipes, gaslight, gas and oil cooking ranges--to say nothing
+of the respective electric improvements--together with numberless
+others, were wholly unknown to the women of former times. Antiquated
+conditions exist even to-day, but they are the exception. The majority
+of women have discontinued many an occupation, formerly considered of
+course, the same being attended to in factory and shop better, more
+expeditiously and cheaper than the housewife could, whence, at least in
+the cities, all domestic requirements for them are wanting. Thus, in the
+period of a few decades, a great revolution for them has been
+accomplished within our family life, and we pay so little attention to
+the fact because we consider it a matter of course. Phenomena, that
+develop, so to speak, under the very eyes of man, are not noticed by
+him, unless they appear suddenly and disturb the even tenor of events.
+He bristles up, however, against new ideas that threaten to lead him out
+of the accustomed ruts.
+
+The revolution thus accomplished in our domestic life, and that
+progresses ever further, has altered the position of woman in the
+family, in other directions besides. Woman has become freer, more
+independent. Our grandmothers, if they were honest masters' wives, would
+not have dared, and, indeed the thought never crossed their minds, to
+keep their working people and apprentices from the table, and visiting,
+instead, the theatres, concerts and pleasure resorts, by day at that.
+Which of those good old women dared think of occupying her mind with
+public affairs, as is now done by many women? To-day they start
+societies for all manner of objects, establish papers, call conventions.
+As working-women they assemble in trades unions, they attend the
+meetings and join the organizations of men, and here and there--we are
+speaking of Germany--they have had the right of electing boards of labor
+arbitration, a right that the backward majority of the Reichstag took
+away again from them in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and
+ninety.
+
+What sot would seek to annul the changes just described, although the
+fact is not to be gainsaid that, there are also dark sides to the bright
+sides of the picture, consequent upon our seething and decaying
+conditions? The bright sides, however, predominate. Women themselves,
+however conservative they are as a body, have no inclination to return
+to the old, narrow, patriarchal conditions of former times.
+
+In the United States society still stands, true enough, on bourgeois
+foundations; but it is forced to wrestle neither with old European
+prejudices nor with institutions that have survived their day. As a
+consequence American society is far readier to adopt new ideas and
+institutions that promise advantage. For some time the position of
+woman has been looked upon from a viewpoint different than ours. There,
+for instance, the idea has long taken hold that it is not merely
+troublesome and improper, but not even profitable to the purse, for the
+wife to bake bread and brew beer, but that it is unnecessary for her to
+cook in her own kitchen. The private kitchen is supplanted by
+co-operative cooking, with a large central kitchen and machinery. The
+women attend to the work by turns, and the meals generally come out
+cheaper, taste better, offer a greater variety, and give much less
+trouble. Our army officers, who are not decried as Socialists and
+Communists, act on a similar plan. They establish in their casinos a
+co-operative kitchen; appoint a steward, who attends to the supply of
+victuals on a large scale; the bill of fare is arranged in common; and
+the food is prepared in the steam kitchen of the barracks. They live
+much cheaper than in a hotel, and fare at least as well. Furthermore,
+thousands of the rich families live the whole year, or part of the year,
+in boarding-houses or hotels, without in any way missing the private
+kitchen. On the contrary, they consider it a great convenience to be rid
+of it. The aversion of especially well-to-do women towards all matters
+connected with the kitchen does not seem to indicate that this function
+either belongs to the category of the "natural calling" of woman. On the
+contrary, the circumstance that princely and other prominent families do
+like the hotels, and all of them engage male cooks for the preparation
+of their food, would rather indicate that cooking is a male
+occupation.--All of which is stated for the benefit of those people who
+are unable to picture to themselves a woman not brandishing a kitchen
+ladle.
+
+It is but a step to set up, beside the central kitchen, also the central
+laundry and corresponding steaming arrangements for public use--as
+already established in all large cities by rich private persons or
+speculators, and found highly profitable. With the central kitchen may
+also be connected central heating, warm water along with cold water
+pipes, whereby a number of bothersome and time-consuming labors are done
+away with. Large hotels, many private houses, hospitals, schools,
+barracks, etc., have now these and many other such arrangements, such as
+electric light and baths. The only fault to find is that only public
+establishments and the well-to-do classes enjoy these advantages. Placed
+within the reach of all, an enormous amount of time, trouble, labor and
+material could be saved, and the standard of life and the well-being of
+all raised considerably. In the summer of 1890, the papers published a
+description of the progress made in the United States in the matter of
+centralized heating and ventilation. It was there stated:
+
+"The recent attempts, made especially in North America, to effect the
+heating of whole blocks of houses or city wards from one place have to
+record no slight success. From the constructive point of view, they have
+been carried out so carefully and effectively that, in view of the
+favorable results and the financial advantages which they offer, their
+further extension may be confidently expected. More recently the attempt
+is being made to furnish from central locations not heat alone, but also
+fresh air, either warm or cool, to certain extensive but not too wide
+areas of the city. These plans are found in execution in the so-called
+Timby System, which, according to the central organ of the Department of
+Buildings, gathered from a report of the technical attache in
+Washington, Government Architect Petri, has recently been thoroughly
+explained in Washington by the 'National Heating and Ventilating
+Company.' The said company originally planned to supply 50,000 people
+from one place. The difficulties presented by the requisite speed of
+transit and the size of the pneumatic machines, have, however, caused a
+limitation to 0.8 kilometers, and in instances of specially closely
+built business quarters, the building of a special central power place."
+
+What was then only projected, has since been in great part executed.
+Philistine narrowness in Germany lives to shrug its shoulders at these
+and such like schemes, although in Germany also we find ourselves just
+now in the midst of one of those technical revolutions, that render the
+private kitchen, together with a number of other occupations, hitherto
+appertaining to the household, as superfluous as handicraft has been
+rendered by machinery and modern technique. In the early days of the
+nineteenth century, Napoleon pronounced insane the idea of constructing
+a ship that could be set in motion by steam. The idea of building a
+railroad was declared silly by many folks who passed for sensible:
+nobody, it was argued, could remain alive on such a conveyance: the
+rapidity of motion would deprive the passengers of breath. Identical
+treatment is to-day accorded to a number of new ideas. He who sixty
+years ago would have made to our women the proposition of replacing the
+carrying of water with water-pipes, would have been exposed to the
+charge of trying to lead women and servants into idleness.
+
+Nevertheless the great revolution in technique is in full march on all
+fields; nothing can any longer hold it back; and bourgeois society,
+having conjured the same into life, has the historic mission of also
+carrying the revolution to perfection, and to promote on all fields the
+budding of the germs for radical transformations, _which a social order,
+built on new foundations, would only have to generalize on a large
+scale, and make common property_.
+
+The trend, accordingly, of our social life is not to banish woman back
+to the house and the hearth, as our "domestic life" fanatics prescribe,
+and after which they lust, like the Jews in the Desert after the
+fleshpots of Egypt. _On the contrary, the whole trend of society is to
+lead woman out of the narrow sphere of strictly domestic life to a full
+participation in the public life of the people_--a designation that will
+not then cover the male sex only--and in the task of _human
+civilization_. Laveleye fully recognized this when he wrote:[130] "In
+the measure that what we are in the habit of designating as civilization
+advances, the sentiments of piety and the family bonds weaken, and they
+exercise a decreasing influence upon the actions of men. This fact is so
+general that a law of social development may be recognized therein." Not
+only has the position of woman changed, but also the relation of son and
+daughter to the family, who have gradually attained a degree of
+independence unknown in former days,--a fact noticeable especially in
+the United States, where the self-dependent and independent education of
+the individual is carried on much further than with us. The dark sides
+that to-day accompany also this form of development, are not necessarily
+connected with it; they lie in the social conditions of our times.
+Capitalist society evokes no beneficent phenomenon unaccompanied with a
+dark side: as Fourier long ago pointed out with great perspicacity,
+capitalist society is in all its progressive steps double-faced and
+ambiguous.
+
+With Laveleye, Schaeffle also detects in the changed character of the
+family of our days the effect of social development. He says:[131] "It
+is true that the tendency described in Chapter II, to reduce and limit
+the family to its specific functions is traceable throughout history.
+The family relinquishes one provisional and temporary function after the
+other. In so far as it officiated only in a surrogate and gap-filling
+capacity it makes way to independent institutions for law, order,
+authority, divine service, education, technique, etc., as soon as these
+institutions take shape."
+
+Women are pressing even further, though as yet only in a minority, and
+only a fraction of these with clear aims. They aspire to measure their
+power with men, not on the industrial field alone; they aspire not only
+after a freer and more independent position in the family; they also
+aspire at turning their mental faculties to the higher walks of life.
+The favorite objection raised against them is that they are not fit for
+such pursuits, not being intended therefor by Nature. The question of
+engaging in the higher professional occupations concerns at present only
+a small number of women in modern society; it is, however, important in
+point of principle. The large majority of men believe in all seriousness
+that, mentally as well, woman must ever remain subordinate to them, and,
+hence, has no right to equality. They are, accordingly, the most
+determined opponents of woman's aspirations.
+
+The self-same men, who raise no objection whatever to the employment of
+woman in occupations, many of which are very exhausting, often
+dangerous, threaten the impairment of her feminine physique and
+violently compel her to sin against her duties as a mother,--these
+self-same men would exclude her from pursuits in which these obstacles
+and dangers are much slighter, and which are much better suited to her
+delicate frame.
+
+Among the learned men, who in Germany want to hear nothing of the
+admission of women to the higher studies, or who will yield only a
+qualified assent, and express themselves publicly on the subject are
+Prof. L. Bischoff, Dr. Ludwig Hirt, Prof. H. Sybel, L. von Buerenbach,
+Dr. E. Reich, and many others. Notedly has the livelier agitation,
+recently set on foot, for the admission of women to the Universities,
+incited a strong opposition against the plan in Germany. The opposition
+is mainly directed against woman's qualifications for the study of
+medicine. Among the opponents are found Pochhammer, Fehling, S. Binder,
+Waldeyer, Hegar, etc. Von Buerenbach is of the opinion that both the
+admission to and the fitness of woman for science can be disposed of
+with the argument that, until now, no genius has arisen among woman, and
+hence woman is manifestly unfit for philosophic studies. It seems the
+world has had quite enough of its male philosophers: it can, without
+injury to itself, well afford to dispense with female. Neither does the
+objection that the female sex has never yet produced a genius seem to us
+either to hold water, or to have the weight of a demonstration. Geniuses
+do not drop down from the skies; they must have opportunity to form and
+mature. This opportunity woman has lacked until now, as amply shown by
+our short historic sketch. For thousands of years she has been
+oppressed, and she has been deprived or stunted in the opportunity and
+possibility to unfold her mental faculties. It is as false to reason
+that the female sex is bereft of genius, by denying all spark of genius
+to the tolerably large number of great women, as it would be to maintain
+that there were no geniuses among the male sex other than the few who
+are considered such. Every village schoolmaster knows what a mass of
+aptitudes among his pupils never reach full growth, because the
+possibilities for their development are absent. Aye, there is not one,
+who, in his walk through life, has not become acquainted, some with
+more, others with fewer persons of whom it had to be said that, had they
+been able to mature under more favorable circumstances, they would have
+been ornaments to society, and men of genius. Unquestionably the number
+of men of talent and of genius is by far larger among the male sex than
+those that, until now, have been able to reveal themselves: social
+conditions did not allow the others to develop. Precisely so with the
+faculties of the female sex, a sex that for centuries has been held
+under, hampered and crippled, far worse than any other subject beings.
+We have absolutely no measure to-day by which to gauge the fullness of
+mental powers and faculties that will develop among men and women so
+soon as they shall be able to unfold amid natural conditions.
+
+It is with mankind as in the vegetable kingdom. Millions of valuable
+seeds never reach development because the ground on which they fall is
+unfavorable, or is taken up by weeds that rob the young and better plant
+of air, light and nourishment. The same laws of Nature hold good in
+human life. If a gardener or planter sought to maintain with regard to a
+given plant that it could not grow, although he made no trial, perhaps
+even hindered its growth by wrong treatment, such a man would be
+pronounced a fool by all his intelligent neighbors. Nor would he fare
+any better if he declined to cross one of his female domestic animals
+with, a male of higher breed, to the end of producing a better animal.
+
+There is no peasant in Germany to-day so ignorant as not to understand
+the advantage of such treatment of his trees or animals--provided always
+his means allow him to introduce the better method. Only with regard to
+human beings do even men of learning deny the force of that which with
+regard to all other matters, they consider an established law. And yet
+every one, even without being a naturalist, can make instructive
+observations in life. Whence comes it that the children of peasants
+differ from city children? It comes from the difference in their
+conditions of life and education.
+
+The one-sidedness, inherent in the education for one calling, stamps man
+with a peculiar character. A clergyman or a schoolmaster is generally
+and easily recognized by his carriage and mien; likewise an officer,
+even when in civilian dress. A shoe maker is easily told from a tailor,
+a joiner from a locksmith. Twin brothers, who closely resembled each
+other in youth, show in later years marked differences if their
+occupations are different, if one had hard manual work, for instance, as
+a smith, the other the study of philosophy for his duty. Heredity, on
+one side, adaptation on the other, play in the development of man, as
+well as of animals, a decisive _role_. Indeed, man is the most bending
+and pliable of all creatures. A few years of changed life and occupation
+often suffice to make quite a different being out of the same man.
+Nowhere does rapid external change show itself more strikingly than when
+a person is transferred from poor and reduced, to materially improved
+circumstances. It is in his mental make-up that such a person will be
+least able to deny his antecedents, but that is due to the circumstance
+that, with most of such people, after they have reached a certain age,
+the desire for intellectual improvement is rarely felt; neither do they
+need it. Such an upstart rarely suffers under this defect. In our days,
+that look to money and material means, people are far readier to bow
+_before the man with a large purse, than before a man of knowledge and
+great intellectual gifts, especially if he has the misfortune of being
+poor and rankless_. Instances of this sort are furnished every day. The
+worship of the golden calf stood in no age higher than in this,--whence
+it comes that we are living "in the best possible world."
+
+The strongest evidence of the effect exercised upon man by radically
+different conditions of life is furnished in our several industrial
+centers. In these centers employer and employe present externally such a
+contrast as if they belonged to different races. Although accustomed to
+the contrast, it struck us almost with the shock of a surprise on the
+occasion of a campaign mass meeting, that we addressed in the winter of
+1877 in an industrial town of the Erzgebirge region. The meeting, at
+which a debate was to be held between a liberal professor and ourselves,
+was so arranged that both sides were equally represented. The front part
+of the hall was taken by our opponents,--almost without exception,
+healthy, strong, often large figures; in the rear of the hall and in the
+galleries stood workingmen and small tradesmen, nine-tenths of the
+former weavers,--mostly short, thin, shallow-chested, pale-faced
+figures, with whom worry and want looked out at every pore. One set
+represented the full-stomached virtue and solvent morality of bourgeois
+society; the other set, the working bees and beasts of burden, on the
+product of whose labor the gentlemen made so fine an appearance. _Let
+both be placed for one generation under equally favorable conditions,
+and the contrast will vanish with most; it certainly is blotted out in
+their descendants._
+
+It is also evident that, in general, it is harder to determine the
+social standing of women than of men. Women adapt themselves more
+readily to new conditions; they acquire higher manners more quickly.
+Their power of accommodation is greater than that of more clumsy man.
+
+What to a plant are good soil, light and air, are to man healthy social
+conditions, that allow him to unfold his powers. The well known saying:
+"Man is what he eats," expresses the same thought, although somewhat
+one-sidedly: The question is not merely what man eats; it embraces his
+whole social posture, the social atmosphere in which he moves, that
+promotes or stunts his physical and mental development, that affects,
+favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of
+action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material
+conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because,
+beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal
+surroundings, unfavorable circumstances of a social nature operate upon
+them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on
+wrong tracks. The general conditions under which a man lives are even
+of far greater importance than those of the home and the family. If the
+conditions for social development are equal to both sexes, if to neither
+there stand any obstacles in the way, and if the social state of society
+is a healthy one, _then woman also will rise to a point of perfection in
+her being, such as we can have no full conception of, such conditions
+having hitherto been absent in the history of the development of the
+race_. That which some women are in the meantime achieving, leaves no
+doubt upon this head: these rise as high above the mass of their own sex
+as the male geniuses do above the mass of theirs. Measured with the
+scale usually applied to Princes, women have, on an average, displayed
+greater talent than men in the ruling of States. As illustrations, let
+Isabella and Blanche of Castile be quoted; Elizabeth of Hungary;
+Catharine Sforza, the Duchess of Milan and Imola; Elizabeth of England;
+Catharine of Russia; Maria Theresa, etc. Resting upon the fact that, in
+all races and all parts of the world, women have ruled with marked
+ability, even over the wildest and most turbulent hordes, Burbach makes
+the statement that, _in all probability, women are fitter for politics
+than men_.[132] For the rest, many a great man in history would shrink
+considerably, were it only known What he owes to himself, and what to
+others. Count Mirabeau, for instance, is described by German historians,
+von Sybel among them, as one of the greatest lights of the French
+Revolution: and now research has revealed the fact that this light was
+indebted for the concept of almost all of his speeches to the ready help
+of certain scholars, who worked for him in secret, and whom he
+understood to utilize. On the other hand, apparitions like those of a
+Sappho, a Diotima of the days of Socrates, a Hypatia of Alexander, a
+Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, George Sand, etc., deserve the greatest
+respect, and eclipse many a male star. The effect of women as mothers of
+great men is also known. Woman has achieved all that was possible to her
+under the, to her, as a whole, most unfavorable circumstances; all of
+which justifies the best hopes for the future. As a matter of fact, only
+the second half of the nineteenth century began to smooth the way for
+the admission of women in large numbers to the race with men on various
+fields; and quite satisfactory are the results attained.
+
+But suppose that, on an average, women are not as capable of higher
+development as men, that they cannot grow into geniuses and great
+philosophers, was this a criterion for men when, at least according to
+the letter of the law, they were placed on a footing of equality with
+"geniuses" and "philosophers?" The identical men of learning, who deny
+higher aptitudes to woman, are quite inclined to do the same to artisans
+and workingmen. When the nobility appeals to its "blue" blood and to
+its genealogical tree, these men of learning laugh in derision and shrug
+their shoulders; but as against the man of lower rank, they consider
+themselves an aristocracy, that owes what it is, not to more favorable
+conditions of life, but to its own talent alone. The same men who, on
+one field, are among the freest from prejudice, and who hold him lightly
+who does not think as liberally as themselves, are, on another
+field,--the moment the interests of their rank and class, or their
+vanity and self-esteem are concerned--found narrow to the point of
+stupidity, and hostile to the point of fanaticism. The men of the upper
+classes look down upon the lower; and so does almost the whole sex upon
+woman. The majority of men see in woman only an article of profit and
+pleasure; to acknowledge her an equal runs against the grain of their
+prejudices:--woman must be humble and modest; she must confine herself
+exclusively to the house and leave all else to the men, the "lords of
+creation," as their domain: woman must, to the utmost, bridle her own
+thoughts and inclinations, and quietly accept what her Providence on
+earth--father or husband--decrees. The nearer she approaches this
+standard, all the more is she praised as "sensible, modest and
+virtuous," even though, as the result of such constraint, she break down
+under the burden of physical and moral suffering. What absurdity is it
+not to speak of the "equality of all" and yet seek to keep one-half of
+the human race outside of the pale!
+
+Woman has the same right as man to unfold her faculties and to the free
+exercise of the same: she is human as well as he: like him, she should
+be free to dispose of herself as her own master. The accident of being
+born a woman, makes no difference. To exclude woman from equality on the
+ground that she was born female and not male--an accident for which man
+is as little responsible as she--is as inequitable, as would be to make
+rights and privileges dependent upon the accident of religion or
+political bias; and as senseless as that two human beings must look upon
+each other as enemies on the ground that the accident of birth makes
+them of different stock and nationality. Such views are unworthy of a
+truly free being. The progress of humanity lies in removing everything
+that holds one being, one class, one sex, in dependence and in
+subjection to another. _No inequality is justified other than that which
+Nature itself establishes in the differences between one individual and
+another, and for the fulfillment of the purpose of Nature. The natural
+boundaries no sex can overstep: it would thereby destroy its own natural
+purpose._
+
+The adversaries of full equality for woman play as their trump card the
+claim that woman has a smaller brain than man, and that in other
+qualities, besides, she is behind man, hence her permanent inferiority
+(subordination) is demonstrated. It is certain that man and woman are
+beings of different sexes; that they are furnished with different
+organs, corresponding to the sex purpose of each; and that, owing to the
+functions that each sex must fill to accomplish the purpose of Nature,
+there are a series of other differences in their physiologic and psychic
+conditions. These are facts that none can deny and none will deny;
+nevertheless, they justify no distinction in the social and political
+rights of man and woman. The human race, society, consists of both
+sexes; both are indispensable to its existence and progress. Even the
+greatest male genius was born of a mother, to whom frequently he is
+indebted for the best part of himself. By what right can woman be
+refused equality with man?
+
+Based upon information furnished us by a medical friend, we shall here
+sketch with a few strokes the essential differences, that, according to
+leading authorities, manifest themselves in the physical and mental
+qualities of man and woman. The bodily size of man and woman stands, on
+an average, in the relation of 100 to 93.2. The bones of woman are
+shorter and thinner, the chest smaller, wider, deeper and flatter. Other
+differences depend directly upon the sex purpose. The muscles of woman
+are not as massive. The weight of the heart is 310 grains in man, 255 in
+woman.
+
+The composition of the blood in man and woman is as follows: Water, man,
+77.19; woman, 79.11. Solid matter, man, 22.10; woman, 20.89. Blood
+corpuscles, man, 14.10; woman, 12.79. Number of blood corpuscles in a
+cubic millimeter of blood, man, 4 1/2 to 5 millions; woman, 4 to 4 1/2
+millions. According to Meynert, the weight of the brain of man is from
+1,018 to 1,925 grams; of woman, from 820 to 1,565; or in the relation of
+100 to 90.93. LeBon and Bischoff agree that, while weight of brain
+corresponds with size of body, nevertheless short people have relatively
+larger brains. With woman, the smaller size of the heart, the narrower
+system of blood vessels and probably also the larger quantity of blood,
+has a lower degree of nourishment for its effect.[133] That, however,
+the larger skulls of larger persons, coupled with the quantitative
+changes occasioned by the size of the skull promote the vigor of the
+several sections of the brain is a matter that _cannot be
+asserted_.[134]
+
+Of 107 mentally healthy men and 148 women of the ages of 20 to 59, the
+weight of the brain per thousand was:
+
+
+                                            Average
+            Medulla                        Length in
+     Sex.  Oblongata. Cerebellum.  Pons.  Centimeters.
+
+    Men        790       107.5     102       166.5
+    Women      787       110.0     103       156.0
+
+
+The absolute and relative excess in the weight of the cerebellum of
+woman has an enormous significance. With animals that run immediately
+upon birth, the cerebellum is much more powerfully developed than with
+animals that are born blind, are helpless, and that learn to walk with
+difficulty. Accordingly, and in consequence of its connection with the
+cerebrum, subcortical center and the spinal cord, the cerebellum is a
+station of the muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of
+both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive
+cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and
+tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness
+of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their
+functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding
+her way in the midst of a confusion of associations. Woman is
+furthermore aided in the latter faculty through the greater excitability
+of her cerebral cortex. Meynert says:--
+
+1. All structural anomalies associated with anaemia of the
+blood--including also a small heart and narrow arteries--should be
+considered as subject structural defects. Upon this depends not only the
+ready exhaustibility of the cortex, but also the phenomena of
+irritability, named by Meynert, localized irritable weakness.
+
+2. The branches of blood vessels, supplying the subcortical centers from
+the base, are short, thick, straight, palisade-like, while those on the
+surface of the brain, supplying the cortex, run in long tortuous lines.
+And it is because of that, since with the increased length of the blood
+vessels the resistance to the propulsive force of the heart is
+increased, that the subcortical centers, the moment fatigue supervenes,
+are better supplied with blood than the cortex, they are less readily
+fatigued than the more readily exhaustible cerebrum.
+
+3. Because of this and because of the more watery character of woman's
+blood and great extent of subcortical centers in woman in comparison
+with cerebrum, the physical equilibrium of woman is more unstable than
+of man.
+
+4. All nerves (except the optic and olfactory, which spread out directly
+in the cortex, save some of their filaments terminating in the
+subcortical centers) terminate in the subcortical center; the cortex of
+the cerebrum acts as a checking organ for the subcortical center; as the
+cerebral cortex in woman, as already stated, is at a disadvantage not
+only from the anatomical standpoint, but also in the quality of its
+blood supply, woman is not only more easily fatigued, but also more
+readily excitable (irritable, nervous).
+
+These facts explain, on the one hand, what is called the superior
+endowment of woman, and, on the other, her inclination to sudden changes
+of opinion, as well as to hallucinations and illusions. This state of
+unstable equilibrium between the _dura mater_ and the _pons_ becomes
+particularly normal during menstruation, pregnancy, lying-in, and at her
+climacteric. As a result of her physical organization, woman is more
+inclined to melancholy than man, and likewise is the inclination to
+mental derangement stronger with her; on the other hand, the male sex
+excels her in the number of cases of megalomania.
+
+Such, in substance, is the information furnished us by the authority
+whom we have been quoting.
+
+As a matter of course, in so far as the cited differences depend upon
+the nature of the sex-distinctions, they can not be changed; in how far
+these differences in the make-up of the blood and the brain may be
+modified by a change of life (nourishment, mental and physical
+gymnastics, occupation, etc.) is a matter that, for the present, lies
+beyond all accurate calculation. But this seems certain: _modern woman
+differs more markedly from man than primitive woman, or than the women
+of backward peoples, and the circumstance is easily explained by the
+social development that the last 1,000 or 1,500 years forced upon woman
+among the nations of civilization_.
+
+According to Lombroso and Ferrero, the mean capacity of the female
+skull, the male skull being assumed at 1,000, is as follows:--
+
+
+    Negro          984              Slav           903
+    Australian     967              Gipsy          875
+    Hindoo         944              Chinese        870
+    Italian        921              German         838-897
+    Hollander      919 (Tiedemann)  Englishman     860
+    Hollander      883 (Davis)      Parisian       858
+
+
+The contradictory findings for Hollanders and Germans show that the
+measurements were made on very different quantitative and qualitative
+materials, and, consequently, are not absolutely reliable. One thing,
+however, is evident from the figures: Negro, Australian and Hindoo women
+have a considerably larger brain capacity than their German, English and
+Parisian sisters, and yet the latter are all more intelligent. The
+comparisons established in the weight of the brain of deceased men of
+note, reveal similar contradictions and peculiarities. According to
+Prof. Reclam, the brain of the naturalist Cuvier weighed 1,861 grams, of
+Byron 1,807, of the mathematician Dirichlet 1,520, of the celebrated
+mathematician Gauss 1,492, of the philologist Hermann 1,358, of the
+scientist Hausmann 1,226. The last of these had a brain below the
+average weight of that of women, which, according to Bischoff, weighs
+1,250 grams. But a special irony of fate wills it that the brain of
+Prof. Bischoff himself, who died a few years ago in St. Petersburg,
+weighed only 1,245 grams, and Bischoff it was who most obstinately
+grounded his claim of woman's inferiority on the fact that woman, on the
+average, had 100 grams less brain than man. The brain of Gambetta also
+weighed considerably below the average female brain, it weighed only
+1,180 grams, and Dante, too, is said to have had a brain below the
+average weight for men. Figures of the same sort are found in Dr.
+Havelock Ellis' work. According thereto, an every day person, whose
+brain Bischoff weighed, had 2,222 grams; the poet Turgeniew 2,012; while
+the third heaviest brain on the list belonged to an idiot of the duchy
+of Hants. The brain of a common workingman, also examined by Bischoff,
+weighed 1,925 grams. The heaviest woman's brains weighed 1,742 and 1,580
+grams, two of which were of insane women.
+
+The conclusion is, accordingly, justified that as little as size of body
+justifies inferences as to strength of body, so little does the weight
+of the brain-mass warrant inferences as to mental powers. There are very
+small animals (ants, bees) that, in point of intelligence, greatly excel
+much larger ones (sheep, cows), just as men of large body are often
+found far behind others of smaller or unimposing stature. Accordingly,
+the important factor is not merely the quantity of brain matter, but
+_more especially the brain organization, and, not least of all, the
+exercise and use of the brain power_.
+
+The brain, if it is to fully develop its powers, must be diligently
+exercised, the same as any other organ, and also correspondingly fed.
+Where this is not done, or where the training is turned into wrong
+channels, instead of the sections of the understanding being developed,
+those are developed in which imagination has its seat. In such cases,
+_not only is the organ stunted, but even crippled. One section is
+developed at the expense of another._
+
+No one, approximately familiar with the history of the development of
+woman, will deny that, for thousands of years, woman has been and
+continues to be sinned against in that direction. When Prof. Bischoff
+objects that woman could have trained her brain and intelligence as well
+as man did, he reveals unpardonable and unheard of ignorance on the
+subject. The sketch, drawn in this work, of the position of woman in the
+course of the progress of civilization, explains fully how the thousands
+of years of continued male supremacy over woman are mainly responsible
+for the great differences in the mental and physical development of the
+two sexes.
+
+Our naturalists should recognize that the laws of their science are
+applicable to man also, and to his evolution. The laws of evolution, of
+heredity, of adaptation, hold good with human beings as with all other
+creatures of nature. Seeing that man is no exception in nature, the law
+of evolution must be applied to him also: forthwith light is shed upon
+what otherwise remains confused and dark, and, as such, becomes the fit
+subject for scientific mysticism, or mystic science.
+
+The training of the brain took its course with the different sexes
+wholly in conformity with the difference in the education of the two--if
+such a term as "education" is at all allowable, with regard to woman in
+particular, during long stretches of the past, and the term "bringing
+up" is not the correcter. Physiologists are agreed that the organs of
+thought are located in the front part of the brain, and those especially
+of feeling and sentiment are to be looked for in the middle of the head.
+With man the front, with woman the middle of the head is more developed.
+_The ideal of beauty, male and female, shaped itself accordingly._
+According to the Greek ideal, which is standard to this day, _woman has
+a narrow, man a high and, particularly, broad forehead_,--and this ideal
+an expression of their own degradation, is so stamped on their minds,
+that our women bewail a forehead that exceeds the average, as a
+deformity in their appearance, and seek to improve nature by art,
+drawing their hair over the sinning forehead, to make it look lower.
+
+In a polemic in Nos. 39 and 40 of the "Sozialdemokrat" for 1890, which
+appeared in London, Sophie Nadejde had two articles in which she sought
+to refute the charges concerning the great inferiority of woman. She
+says therein that Broca, a well known Parisian physiologist, measured
+the cubic contents of 115 skulls from the eleventh and twelfth
+centuries, and got an average of 1,426 cubic centimeters. The
+measurements of 125 skulls from the eighteenth century gave, however, an
+average of 1,462 cubic centimeters. According to this, the conclusion
+would be that, in the course of a few centuries, the brain had grown
+considerably. A measurement by Broca of skulls from the Stone Age
+resulted, however, in an average of 1,606 cubic centimeters for the
+skulls of men, and 1,581 for the skulls of women,--accordingly, both
+considerably larger than those of the eleventh, twelfth and eighteenth
+centuries. Mrs. Nadejde concluded therefrom that Herbert Spencer was
+right when he claimed in his physiology that brain weight depended upon
+the amount of motion and the variety of motions.
+
+The lady furthermore emphasized the point that it depends a deal less on
+the brain-mass than on the proportion in the two sexes of the
+brain-weight to the weight of the body. Proceeding from these premises,
+it appeared that _the female brain was heavier than the male_. The
+argument on this head, Mrs. Nadejde presents in these words:
+
+"Let us compare the average weights of the bodies, and let us take, as
+the difference between man and woman only 8 kilograms, although many
+naturalists, among them Gay, whom Delaunay quotes, takes 11 kilograms.
+According to the average weights of 9,157 American soldiers: 64.4
+kilograms (average weight of the male body): 56 kilograms (average
+weight of the female body) = 1,141 or 1.14, i. e., the average weight of
+woman being taken as 100, that of man is represented by 114. According
+to the average weights of 12,740 Bavarians: 65.5 kilograms (average for
+males): 57.5 (average for females) = 1,139 or 1.14 as above. Assuming
+the average weight of woman as 100, that of man is found to be 114.
+According to the average weights of 617 Englishmen, 68.8 (average for
+males): 60.8 (average for females) = 1,131, or 1.13; the average weight
+of woman being assumed as 100, that of man is found to be 113.[135]
+
+"Accordingly, it appears that, under otherwise equal conditions, women
+have 1/4 per cent. of brain-mass in excess of men. That is to say, for
+every 100 grams of female brain-mass, men should have 113 or 114 grams;
+in reality, however, they only have from 110 to 112 grams. The fact can
+be put still more plastically: According to this calculation, _the male
+brain falls short 25 to 51 grams of brain-mass_.[136]
+
+"But L. Manouvrier proves more. He says:[137] 'The influence of the
+weight of the body strikes the eye when we note the figures among the
+vertebrates. The influence is equally manifest with man, and it is a
+wonder how so many naturalists have not yet recognized this truth, even
+after it was illustrated and treated by others.
+
+"'There are a number of facts that prove the influence of the size of
+the body upon the weight of the brain. The lower races and of high
+stature, not only have a larger average weight of brain than the
+European, but also is the number of large brains greater with them. We
+must not imagine that the intelligence of a race is determined by the
+number of large brains: the Patagonians, Polynesians and Indians of
+North America (and according to the figures given above the people of
+the Stone Age may be added) greatly surpass us Parisians and all races
+of Europe, not only in the number of large brains, but also in the large
+average capacity of the skull.
+
+"'The influence of the weight of the body upon the size of the brain is
+confirmed by the fact that the small skull capacities are found among
+races of slight stature, like the Bushmen, the Andamans, and the Hindoo
+pariahs.'
+
+"All scientists who have treated the brain question in a really
+scientific manner, have expressed themselves with greatest caution on
+the difference shown by the two sexes. Other writers, on the contrary,
+especially during the last years, have treated the question with such
+levity, that it has been compromised in the public esteem. If there be
+any intellectual difference between man and woman, it must, at any rate,
+be very slight, a physiologist like Stuart Mill having declared that he
+failed to find the difference. Size of body, strength of muscle,
+mass--all of these present decided differences. Due to these differences
+woman has been termed the defective sex; and authors who were not able
+to understand these manifest differences, presumed to establish a
+physiologic difference; to solve a much more difficult and complex
+question, they raised their voices in praise of their own sex!
+
+"It follows that the difference between the sexes in point of weight of
+brain and capacity of skull, considered scientifically, can not be
+scored to the disadvantage of woman. All the facts point to the
+conclusion that the difference depends upon the weight of the body.
+There is no anatomical reason to represent woman as a backward and, in
+point of intelligence, subordinate being, compared with man. I shall
+presently prove this.
+
+"The proportion between the weight of the brain and the height of the
+body is smaller with the female than with the male sex.[138] But the
+fact is easily explained. The height of the body does not actually
+express the development, or, rather, the weight of the body.
+
+"But when we compare the proportion of the brain-weights we find that
+women have more brain than men, in childhood as well as throughout life.
+The difference is not great, but it would be much more considerable, if
+we did not include in the weight of the body the fat, which is present
+in much larger quantity with women, and which, as an inert (inactive)
+mass, has no influence whatever upon the weight of the brain."
+
+Later, in 1883, L. Manouvrier published in the seventh number of the
+"Revue Scientifique" the following results of his investigations:--
+
+"If we designate with 100 each the weight of the brain, thighbone,
+skull, and lower jawbone, we find the following weights for woman:--
+
+
+    Brain            88.9
+    Skull            85.8
+    Lower jawbone    78.7
+    Thighbone        62.5
+
+
+"It is, furthermore, an established fact that the weight of the skeleton
+(without skull) differs as with the thighbone. Hence we may compare the
+weight of the brain with that of the thighbone. It follows from the
+figures given above, that women have, relatively, 26.4 per cent. more
+brain-mass.
+
+"Let us express the figures herein given somewhat more plastically.
+
+"If a man has 100 grams of brain-mass, woman should have, instead of
+100, only 62.5 grams; but she has 88.9 grams,--an excess of 26.4 grams.
+It follows that if we accept 1,410 grams (according to Wagner) as the
+average weight of the male brain, the female brain should weigh only
+961.25 grams, instead of 1,262: woman, accordingly, has 301.75 grams
+more brain-mass than the proportion demands. If we take the figures of
+Huschel we find an excess of 372 grams; finally, the figures of Broca
+give us an excess of 383 grams. _Under otherwise equal conditions woman
+has between 300 and 400 grams more brain-mass than man."_
+
+Although it is by no means proven that, by reason of their brain-mass,
+women are inferior to men, it is no cause for wonder that, women are
+mentally such as we know them to-day. Darwin is certainly right when he
+says that a list of the most distinguished men in poetry, painting,
+sculpture, music, science and philosophy side by side with a similar
+list of the most distinguished women on the same fields will not bear
+comparison with each other. But are we to wonder at that? _Wonderful
+were it if it were otherwise._ For that reason Dr. Dodel-Zurich[139]
+says with perfect right that matters would stand otherwise if through a
+number of generations women and men were educated equally, and trained
+in the exercise of those arts and of mental discipline. On an average,
+woman is also weaker than man, which is by no means the case with many
+wild peoples.[140] What exercise and training from early youth are able
+to change in this matter, we may see in the circus women and female
+acrobats, who in courage, foolhardiness, dexterity and physical strength
+achieve marvelous feats.
+
+Seeing that such a development is a matter of the conditions of life and
+education--or, to express it in the naked language of science, of
+"breeding"--it may be taken for certain that the application of these
+laws to the physical and mental life of man would lead to the most
+brilliant results, _the moment man sets his hand to the work with full
+consciousness of his object and his aim_.
+
+As plants and animals depend upon the conditions for existence that they
+live under--promoted by favorable, checked by unfavorable ones--and as
+forcible conditions compel them to change their appearance and
+character, provided such conditions are not unfavorable enough to
+destroy them wholly, so it is with man. The manner in which a person
+makes his living influences not his external appearance only, it
+influences also his feelings, his thoughts and his actions.[141] If,
+accordingly, man's unfavorable conditions of life--defective social
+conditions--are the cause of defective individual development, it
+follows that _by changing his condition of life, man is himself
+changed_. The question, therefore, is so to change the social conditions
+that every human being shall be afforded the possibility for the full
+and unhampered development of his being; that the laws of evolution and
+adaptation, designated after Darwin as "Darwinian," be consciously
+rendered effective to humanity. But this is possible only under
+Socialism.
+
+As a thinking and intelligent being, _man must constantly, and conscious
+of his purpose, change, improve and perfect his social conditions,
+together with all that thereby hangs; and he must so proceed in this
+that equally favorable opportunities be open to all_. Every individual
+must be placed in a position to be able to develop his abilities and
+faculties to his own as well as to the advantage of the collectivity;
+but his may not be the power to injure either others or the
+collectivity. His own and the advantage of others must be mutual.
+_Harmony of interests_ must be brought about; it must substitute the
+existing _conflict of interests_ to the end that not even the thought
+may be conceived of ruling and injuring others.
+
+Darwinism, as all genuine science, is eminently democratic.[142] If any
+of its advocates holds a contrary view, he only proves himself unable to
+grasp its range. Its opponents, particularly the reverend clergy, who
+ever display a fine nose, the moment earthly benefits or injuries are
+imminent, have understood this well, and, consequently denounce
+Darwinism as Socialistic and Anarchistic. Also Prof. Virchow agrees with
+his sworn enemies in this. In 1877, at the convention of naturalists in
+Munich, he played the following trump declaration against Prof.
+Haeckel:[143] "The Darwinian theory leads to Socialism." Virchow sought
+to discredit Darwinism and to denounce it because Haeckel demanded the
+adoption of the theory of evolution in the schools. To teach natural
+science in our schools in the sense of Darwin and of recent
+investigations, that is an idea against which are up in arms all those
+who wish to cling to the present order of things. The revolutionary
+effect of these theories is known, hence the demand that they be taught
+only in the circles of the select. We, however, are of the opinion that
+if, as Virchow claims, the Darwinian theories lead to Socialism, the
+circumstance is not an argument against Darwin's theories, but in favor
+of Socialism. Never may a scientist inquire whether the conclusions from
+his science lead to this or that political system, to this or that
+social system, nor seek to justify the same. His is the duty to inquire
+whether the theory is right. _If it is that, then it must be accepted
+along with all its consequences._ He who acts otherwise, be it out of
+personal interest, be it out of a desire to curry favor from above, or
+be it out of class and party interests, _is guilty of a contemptible
+act, and is no honor to science_. Science as a guild so very much at
+home in our Universities, can only in rare instances lay claim to
+independence and character. The fear of losing their stipends, of
+forfeiting the favor of the ruler, of having to renounce titles,
+decorations and promotions cause most of the representatives of science
+to duck, to conceal their own convictions, or even to utter in public
+the reverse of what they believe and know. If, on the occasion of the
+festival of declaration of allegiance at the Berlin University, in 1870,
+a Dubois-Reymond exclaimed: "The Universities are the training places
+for the life-guards of the Hohenzollern," one may judge how the majority
+of the others, who stand both in knowledge and importance far below
+Dubois-Reymond,[144] think regarding the purpose of science. Science is
+degraded to a maid-servant of the ruling powers.
+
+We can understand how Prof. Haeckel and his disciples, such as Prof. O.
+Schmidt, v. Hellwald and others, defend themselves energetically against
+the charge that Darwinism plays into the hands of Socialism; and that
+they, in turn, maintain the contrary to be true: that Darwinism is
+aristocratic in that it teaches that everywhere in Nature the more
+highly developed and stronger organism dominates the lower. Seeing that,
+according to these gentlemen, the property and cultured classes
+represent these more highly developed and stronger organisms in society,
+they look upon the domination of these as a matter of course, being
+justified by nature.
+
+This wing among our Darwinians has not the faintest notion of the
+economic laws that sway capitalist society, whose blind will raises,
+without selecting either the best, or the ablest, or the most thorough,
+often the most scampish and corrupt; places him on top; and thus puts
+him in a position to make the conditions of life and development most
+favorable for his descendants, without these having as much as to turn
+their hands. Striking an average, under no economic system is the
+prospect poorer than under capitalism for individuals animated with good
+and noble qualities, to rise and remain above; and it may be added
+without exaggeration that the prospect grows darker in the measure that
+this economic system approaches its apogee. Recklessness and
+unscrupulousness in the choice and application of the means, are weapons
+infinitely more effective and promiseful of success than all human
+virtues put together. To consider a social system, built upon such a
+basis, a system of the "fittest and best" is a feat that only he can be
+capable of whose knowledge of the essence and nature of such a society
+equals zero; or who, swayed by dyed-in-the-wool bourgeois prejudices,
+has lost all power to think on the subject and to draw his conclusions.
+The struggle for existence is found with all organisms. Without a
+knowledge of the circumstances that force them thereto, the struggle is
+carried on unconsciously. Such a struggle for existence is found among
+men also, within all social systems in which the sense of solidarity has
+vanished, or has not yet come to the surface. This struggle changes
+according to the forms that the social relations of man to man assume in
+the course of social evolution. In the course of this evolution it takes
+on the form of a class struggle that is carried on upon an ever higher
+plane. But these struggles lead--and in this human beings differ from
+all other creatures--to an ever clearer understanding of the situation,
+and finally to the recognition of the laws that govern and control
+their evolution. _Man has in the end but to apply this knowledge to his
+social and political development, and to adapt the latter accordingly._
+The difference between man and the brute is that _man may be called a
+thinking animal, the brute, however, is no thinking man_. It is this
+that a large portion of our Darwinians can not, in their one-sidedness,
+understand. Hence the vicious circle in which they move.
+
+A work from the pen of Prof. Enrico Ferri[145] proves, especially as
+against Haeckel, that Darwinism and Socialism are in perfect harmony,
+and that it is a fundamental error on the part of Haeckel to
+characterize, as he has done down to latest date, Darwinism as
+aristocratic. We are not at all points agreed with Ferri's work, and
+especially do we not share his views with regard to the qualities of
+woman, a matter in which he is substantially at one with Lombroso and
+Ferrero. Ellis has shown in his "Man and Woman" that while the qualities
+of man and woman are very different, still they are of _equal value_,--a
+confirmation of the Kantian sentence that man and woman only together
+constitute the human being. This notwithstanding, the work of Ferri
+comes quite _apropos_.
+
+Professor Haeckel and his followers, of course, also combat the claim
+that Darwinism leads to atheism, and we find them, after themselves
+having removed the Creator by all their scientific arguments and proofs,
+making hysterical efforts to smuggle him in again by the back door. To
+this particular end, they construct their own style of "Religion," which
+is then called "higher morality," "moral principles," etc. In 1882, at
+the convention of naturalists at Eisenach, and in the presence of the
+family of the Grand Duke of Weimar, Prof. Haeckel made the attempt not
+only to "save religion," but also to represent his master Darwin as
+"religious." The effort suffered shipwreck, as all will admit who read
+the essay and the letter of Darwin therein quoted. Darwin's letter
+expressed the reverse of that which Prof. Haeckel sought to make out,
+although in cautious words. Darwin was constrained to consider the
+"religious sentiments" of his countrymen, the English, hence he never
+dared to express his opinion openly upon religion. Privately, however,
+he did so to Dr. L. Buechner, as became known shortly after the Weimar
+convention, whom he frankly informed that _since his fortieth
+year_--that is to say, since 1849--_he believed nothing, not having been
+able to find any proof for his belief_. During the last years of his
+life Darwin supported an atheist paper published in New York.
+
+Woman is to take up the competitive struggle with man on the
+intellectual field also. She does not propose to wait till it please man
+to develop her brain functions and to clear the way for her. The
+movement is well under way. Already has woman brushed aside many an
+obstacle, and stepped upon the intellectual arena,--and quite
+successfully in more countries than one. The movement, ever more
+noticeable, among women for admission to the Universities and High
+Schools, as well as for admission to the functions that correspond to
+these studies, is, in the very nature of existing conditions, confined
+to the women of the bourgeois circles. The circles of the working-women
+are not directly interested therein: to them, these studies, together
+with the posts attainable through them, are shut off. Nevertheless, the
+movement and its success are of general interest, partly, because the
+matter concerns a question of principle, affecting the position in
+general of woman towards man, partly also because it will show what
+woman is capable of achieving, even now, under conditions highly
+unfavorable to her development. Finally, the female sex has a special
+interest herein, in cases of sickness, for instance, when they may
+confide their ailments more freely to a physician of their own than to
+one of the opposite sex. To a large number of women, female
+practitioners, are a positive benefit. The necessity of having to resort
+to male doctors in cases of illness, generally connected with physical
+disturbances that flow from their sex peculiarities, frequently deters
+women from seeking timely aid, or any aid at all. Hence arise a number
+of troubles, not infrequently serious ones, not to the wives alone, but
+to their husbands as well. There is hardly a physician who has no cause
+to complain of this frequently criminal diffidence on the part of women,
+and their objection to state their complaint freely. All this is easy to
+understand; irrational, however, is the posture of the men, and of
+several physicians among them, who will not admit the justice and
+necessity of the study of medicine, in particular, by women.
+
+Female doctors are no new sight. Among most of the ancient peoples, the
+old Germans in particular, it was upon woman that the healing cares
+devolved. There were female physicians and operators of great repute
+during the ninth and tenth centuries in the Arabian Kingdom,
+particularly among the Arabians (Moors) in Spain, where they studied at
+the University of Cordova. The pursuit by women of scientific studies at
+several Italian Universities--Bologna and Palermo, for instance,--was
+likewise due to Moorish influence. Later, when the "heathen" influence
+vanished from Italy, the practice was forbidden. In 1377 the faculty of
+the University of Bologna decreed:
+
+"And whereas woman is the fountain of sin, the weapon of the devil, the
+cause of man's banishment from Paradise and the ruin of the old laws;
+and whereas for these reasons all intercourse with her is to be
+diligently avoided; therefore do we interdict and expressly forbid that
+any one presume to introduce in the said college any woman whatsoever,
+however honorable she be. And if, this notwithstanding, any one should
+perpetrate such an act, he shall be severely punished by the Rector."
+
+Indeed, down to this day, Christian clergymen, of both Protestant and
+Catholic confession, are among the most zealous enemies of the pursuit
+of scientific studies by woman. The fact was shown in the debates of the
+German Reichstag on the admission of women to the study of medicine; it
+is furthermore shown by the reports of the Evangelical convention, held
+in the spring of 1894 in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where clerical
+mouth-pieces protested sharply against allowing women equal rights in
+the discussions of the convention.
+
+The admission of women to the pursuit of University professions has,
+above all, the result of exercising a beneficent influence upon the
+industry of the male youth. As admitted from different quarters, the
+ambition of the male students leaves much to be wished for. That alone
+were a great gain. Their morals also would be greatly improved: the
+inclination to drunkenness and brawling, as well as habitual
+dissipations in taverns, so common among our students, would receive a
+severe blow: the institutions whence mainly proceed our political
+pilots, judges, district attorneys, higher police officers, clergymen
+and members of legislatures would acquire a tone better in keeping with
+the purpose for which these institutions are established and supported.
+According to the unanimous opinion of impartial people, qualified to
+judge, an improvement in this tone is a crying need of the hour.
+
+The number of the countries that admit women to the Universities and
+High Schools has been greatly on the increase during the last twenty
+years; nor can any country, that lays claim to being a member of
+civilization, shut its ears in the long run to the demand. Ahead of all
+went the United States; Russia followed--two political systems that
+present in all respects the strongest contrasts; that notwithstanding,
+both were guided by the identical views with regard to the equal rights
+of woman. In the North American Union, women are to-day admitted in all
+the States to University studies,--in Utah since 1850, Iowa since 1860,
+Kansas since 1866, Wisconsin since 1868, Minnesota since 1869,
+California and Missouri since 1870, Ohio, Illinois and Nebraska since
+1871; since then all the other States followed in rapid succession. In
+keeping with the extension of female studies, woman conquered her place
+in the United States. According to the census of 1890, there were in the
+country 2,348 female physicians and surgeons, 2,136 female architects,
+580 female journalists, 300 female writers, 165 female ministers, 110
+female lawyers.[146]
+
+In Europe, Switzerland, principally, opened its Universities to women.
+There the number of female students grew, since 1887, as follows:--
+
+
+                             Total     Female
+      Year.                Students.  Students.
+    1887                     2,229      167
+    1888                     2,339      206
+    1889                     2,412      196
+    1890                     2,552      248
+    1891                     2,889      297
+    1892                     3,076      318
+    1893                     3,307      451
+    1893-94 (Winter course)  3,609      599
+
+
+Accordingly, the participation of women in University studies increased
+considerably in the interval between 1887-1894. In 1887 the number of
+female students was 7.5 per cent. of the total number of students; in
+1893-1894, however, it had risen to 16.6 per cent. In 1887, there were,
+among 744 medical students, 79 women, or 10.6 per cent.; in the winter
+course of 1893-1894, there were, of 1,073 medical students, 210 women,
+or 19.6 per cent. In the department of philosophy, in 1887, there were,
+of 530 students, 41 women, or 7.8 per cent.; in 1893-1894, there were,
+of 1,640 students, 381 women, or 23.2 per cent. The large majority of
+the female students in Switzerland are foreigners, among them many
+Germans, whose number increases almost yearly. The example of
+Switzerland was followed in the early seventies by Sweden; in 1874 by
+England, in so far as medical colleges for women have been established.
+Nevertheless, it was not until 1881 that Oxford, and 1884 that Cambridge
+decided to admit female students. Italy followed in 1876, then Norway,
+Belgium, France and Austria. In Paris, during 1891, there were 232
+female students, mostly of medicine. Of these female students, 103 were
+Russian, 18 French, 6 English, 3 Roumanian, 2 Turk, and 1 each from
+America, Greece and Servia. In the department of philosophy there were
+82 French female students and 15 foreigners matriculated.
+
+As it will have been noticed, even Turkey is represented among the
+female students. There, more than anywhere else, are female physicians
+needed, due to the position that custom and religion assign to woman as
+against man. The same reason caused Austria also to open Universities to
+female students, in order that the Mohammedan women of Bosnia and
+Herzegovina might enjoy medical attendance. Even Germany, whose
+"pig-tail" was thickest, i. e., where the disfavor towards admitting
+women to the Universities was most bitter, has been compelled to fall in
+line with progress. In the spring of 1894, the first female student
+passed her examination in Heidelberg for the degree of Doctor of
+Philosophy, and a second one in the fall of the same year in Goettingen.
+In Karlsruhe and Berlin, High Schools were established to prepare women
+for the Universities; finally in the summer of 1894, the Prussian
+Minister of Public Worship issued regulations for the remodelling of the
+higher instruction of girls, looking for their preparation for the study
+of medicine. Also India has furnished a small contingent of female
+students. Obviously, there is progress everywhere.
+
+All medical authorities are agreed that women render the best service as
+nurses of the sick, aye, that they positively can not be got along
+without. In an address, delivered by Prof. Ziemssen a few years ago, he
+said:
+
+"Above all, see to it, gentlemen, in your practice that you have
+thorough, well trained, kind-hearted, characterful female nurses.
+Without them, all your sacrifices of time and effort are idle."
+
+In the September, 1892, issue of the "German Review", Prof. Virchow thus
+expressed himself in favor of female nurses:
+
+"That the post of real responsibility at the sick-bed shall fall to
+woman is, in my opinion, a principle that should be enforced in all our
+hospitals. In the hands of a cultivated, womanly, trained person the
+care of even a sick man is safer than in those of a man."
+
+If woman is fit for the extraordinarily difficult service of nurse, a
+service that places a heavy strain upon patience and self-sacrifice, why
+should she not be also fit for a physician?
+
+Above all, the idea must be resisted that women shall be educated for
+physicians by separate courses of study, i. e., separated from the male
+students,--a plan that Frau Mathilde Weber of Tuebingen has declared
+herself satisfied with.[147] If the purpose be to degrade the female
+physicians, from the start, to the level of physicians of second or
+third rank, and to lower them in the eyes of their male colleagues,
+then, indeed, that is the best method. If it is no violation of "ethics"
+and "morality" that female nurses assist in the presence of male
+physicians at the performance of all possible operations upon male and
+female subjects, and on such occasions render most useful service; if it
+is "ethically" and "morally" permissible that dozens of young men, as
+students and for the sake of their studies, stand as observers at the
+bed of a woman in travail, or assist at the performance of operations on
+female patients, then it is absurd and laughable to deny such rights to
+female students.
+
+Such prudery in natural things is the rage, particularly in Germany,
+this big children's play-room. The English, discredited by reason of the
+same qualities, may, nevertheless, be our teachers in the treatment of
+natural things.
+
+In this direction, it is the United States, in particular, that furnish
+the example most worthy of imitation. There, and to the utter horror of
+our learned and unlearned old fogies of both sexes, High Schools have
+existed for decades, at which both sexes are educated in common. Let us
+hear with what result. President White of the University of Michigan
+declared as early as the middle of the seventies: "The best pupil in
+Greek, for several years, among 1,300 students, has been a young lady;
+the best pupil in mathematics in one of the strongest classes of our
+Institute is, likewise, a young lady; and several among the best pupils
+in natural science and the sciences in general are likewise young
+ladies." Dr. Fairchild, President of Oberlin College in Ohio, where over
+a thousand students of both sexes are instructed in common, said at
+about the same time: "During my incumbency of eight years as professor
+of ancient languages--Latin, Greek, and Hebrew--also in the ethical and
+philosophic studies, and during my incumbency of eleven years in
+abstract and applied mathematics, I have never noticed any difference in
+the two sexes except in the manner of reciting." Edward H. Machill,
+President of Swarthmore College in Delaware County, Pa., and author of a
+pamphlet,[148] from which these facts are taken, says that, after an
+experience of four years, he had arrived at the conclusion that, with an
+eye to both manners and morals, the education of the two sexes in common
+had given the best results. Many a pig-tail has yet to be cut off in
+Germany before common sense shall have broken its way through here.
+
+More recently, lively controversies have arisen in the literature of
+almost all countries of civilization on the question whether woman could
+achieve intellectually as much as man. While some, by dint of great
+acumen and with the aid of facts supposed to be proofs, deny that such
+is possible, others maintain that, on many fields, it undoubtedly is the
+case. It is claimed that, generally speaking, woman is endowed with
+qualities that man is deficient in, and _vice versa_: the male method of
+reasoning is reflective and vigorous, woman's, on the contrary,
+distinguishes itself by swiftness of perception and quickness of
+execution. Certain it is that woman finds her way more quickly in
+complicated situations, and has more tact than man. Ellis, who gathered
+vast materials upon this question, turned to a series of persons, who
+had male and female students under their guidance for many years, and
+questioned them on their opinion and experience. McBendrick of Glasgow
+answered him: "After having taught female students for twenty years, I
+would sum up my observations with the statement that many women
+accomplish as much as men in general, and that many men do not
+accomplish as much as the female average." Other opinions in Ellis' book
+are less favorable, but none is unfavorable. According to the Yearbook
+of Berlin for 1870, pp. 69-77, investigation showed girls to be stronger
+in the sense of space, boys at figures; the girls excelled in the
+telling of stories, the boys in the explaining of religious principles.
+Whatever the way these questions may be turned and twisted, the fact
+appears that the two sexes supplement each other; the one is superior on
+one, the other on some other field, while on a number of others there
+is no difference in point of sex, but only in point of individual.
+
+_It follows, furthermore, that there is no reason for confining one sex
+to a certain field, and prescribing to it the course of development that
+it shall pursue, nor that, based on differences in natural bent, in
+advantages and in defects, which mutually equalize themselves,
+privileges may be deducted for one sex, hindrances for another.
+Consequently--equality for all, and a free field for each, with a full
+swing according to their capacity and ability._
+
+Based upon the experience made during the last decades in the higher
+studies of woman, there is no longer any valid reason against the same.
+The teacher can do much, by the manner in which he teaches, to affect
+the attitude of his male and female pupils. Women, who devote themselves
+to a science, are often animated with an earnestness and will-power in
+which they excel most other students. The zeal of the female students
+is, on an average, greater than that of the male.
+
+In reality, it is wholly different reasons that cause most professors of
+medicine, University teachers, in general, to take a hostile stand
+towards female students. They see in it a "degradation" of science,
+which might lose in the esteem of the narrow-minded masses, if the fact
+were to transpire that female brains also could grasp a science, which,
+until then, was confined to the select of the male sex only.
+
+All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, our Universities, along with
+our whole system of education, are in poor plight. As, at the public
+school, the child is robbed of valuable time by filling his brain with
+matters that accord neither with common sense nor scientific experience;
+as a mass of ballast is there dumped into him that he can not utilize in
+life, that, rather, hampers him in his progress and development; so
+likewise is it done in our higher schools. In the preparatory schools
+for the Universities a mass of dry, useless matter is pounded into the
+pupils. These matters, that the pupils are made to memorize, take up
+most of their time and engage their most precious brain-power;
+whereupon, at the University, the identical process is carried on
+further. They are there taught a mass of antiquated, stale, superfluous
+lore, along with comparatively little that is valuable. The lectures,
+once written, are reeled off by most of the professors year after year,
+course after course, the interlarded witticisms included. The high
+ministry of education becomes with many, an ordinary trade; nor need the
+students be endowed with great sagacity to find this out. Furthermore,
+tradition regarding University life sees to it that the young folks do
+not take their years of study too seriously, and many a youth, who would
+take them seriously, is repelled by the pedantic and unenjoyable style
+of the professors. The decline in the zeal to learn and to study is a
+fact generally noticed at all our Universities and higher schools, and
+is even cause for serious concern with those in authority. Intimately
+connected therewith is the "grafting" tendency, which, in these days of
+ours, so poor in character, makes great progress and grows ever ranker
+in the higher schools. To have "safe views" takes the place of
+knowledge, and the poison spreads. To be a "patriot," that is to say, a
+person without a mind of his own, who carefully takes his cue from
+above, sees how the wind blows there, and trims his sails accordingly,
+bends and crawls,--such a person is more considered than one of
+character and knowledge. When the time for examination approaches, the
+"grafter" crams for a few months what seems most indispensible, in order
+to squeeze through. When, finally, examination has been happily passed
+and an office or professional post is secured, most of these
+"ex-students" work along in a merely mechanical and journeyman style,
+and are then highly offended if one, who was not a "student," fails to
+greet them with the greatest respect, and to treat them as specimens of
+some other and higher race. The majority of the members of our so-called
+higher professions--district attorneys, judges, doctors, professors,
+Government officials, artists, etc.,--_are mere journeymen at their
+trades, who feel no need of further culture, but are happy to stand by
+the crib_. Only the industrious man discovers later, but only then, how
+much trash he has learned, often was not taught the very thing that he
+needed most, and has to begin to learn in good earnest. During the best
+time of his life he has been pestered with useless or even harmful
+stuff. He needs a second part of his life to rub all this off, and to
+work himself up to the height of his age. Only then can he become a
+useful member of society. Many do not arrive beyond the first stage;
+others are stranded in the second; only a few have the energy to reach
+the third.
+
+But "decorum" requires that the mediaeval trumpery and useless
+curriculum be retained; and, seeing, moreover, that women, as a
+consequence of their sex, are from the start excluded from the
+preparatory schools, the circumstance furnishes a convenient pretext to
+shut the doors of the University lecture rooms in their faces. In
+Leipsic, during the seventies, one of the most celebrated professors of
+medicine made the undisguised confession to a lady: _"The gymnasium
+(college) training is not necessary to the understanding of medicine.
+This is true. Nevertheless, it must be made a condition precedent for
+admission, in order that the dignity of science may not suffer."_
+
+Gradually is the opposition to the necessity of a "classical" education
+for the study of medicine being felt in Germany also. The immense
+progress made in the natural sciences, together with their importance to
+life, require an early initiation. Collegiate education, with its
+preference for the classic languages, Greek and Latin, looks upon the
+natural sciences as subordinate and neglects them. Hence, the students
+are frequently devoid of the necessary and preparatory knowledge in
+natural science that are of decided importance in certain studies,
+medicine, for instance. Against such a one-sided system of education
+opposition begins to spring up even in the circles of teachers, as
+proven by a declaration published in the autumn of 1894 by about 400
+teachers of the German High Schools. Abroad, in Switzerland, for
+instance, the leading place has long since been given to the studies in
+natural science, and any one, even without a so-called classic
+education, is admissible to the study of medicine, provided otherwise
+sufficiently equipped in natural science and mathematics. Similarly in
+Russia and the United States.
+
+In one of his writings, the late Pro. Bischoff gave "_the rudeness of
+the students_" as the reason why he did not recommend the study of
+medicine to women. He certainly was a good judge of that. In another
+place, and also quite characteristically, he says: "Why should not one
+(as professor) now and then allow some interesting, intelligent and
+handsome woman to attend a lecture upon some simple subject?"--an
+opinion that v. Sybel evidently shares and even expresses: "Some men
+there are who have rarely been able to refuse their assistance and help
+to a female pupil, greedy of knowledge and not uncomely."
+
+Pity the words spent in the refutal of such "reasons" and views! The
+time will come, when people will trouble themselves about the rudeness
+of the "cultured" as little as about the old fogyism and sensuous lusts
+of the learned, but will do what common sense and justice bid.
+
+In Russia, after much pressure, the Czar gave his consent in 1872 to the
+establishment of a female faculty in medicine. The medical courses were
+attended in the period of 1872-1882 by 959 female students. Up to 1882
+there were 281 women who had filled the medical course; up to the
+beginning of 1884, there were 350; about 100 came from St. Petersburg.
+Of the female students who visited the faculty up to 1882, there were 71
+(9.0 per cent.) married and 13 (1.6 per cent.) widows; of the rest, 116
+(15.9 per cent.) married during their studies. Most of the female
+students, 214, came from the ranks of the nobility and government
+officials; 138 from the merchant and privileged bourgeois class; 107
+from the military, 59 from the clergy, and 54 from the lower classes of
+the population. Of the 281 female physicians, who, up to 1882, had
+finished their studies, 62 were engaged by several Zemstvos; 54 found
+occupation in clinics; 12 worked as assistants at medical courses; and
+46 took up private practice. It is noteworthy that, of these female
+students, more than 52 per cent. had learned neither Latin nor Greek,
+and yet they did as good work as the men. This notwithstanding, female
+study was far from being a favorite among the Russian Government
+circles, until the great services rendered by the female physicians on
+the theater of war in Turkey during the Russo-Turkish campaign of
+1877-1878, broke the ice. At the beginning of the eighties, female
+studies took great increment in Russia: thousands of female pupils
+devoted themselves to several branches. Due thereto, and due especially
+to the fact that thereby free ideas were breaking through, threatening
+to endanger despotism, the female courses were suppressed by an imperial
+ukase of May 1, 1885, after the lives of the female students had for
+some time been made as hard as possible.[149] Since then, resolutions
+have been adopted at several Russian conventions of physicians to
+petition for the re-opening of the medical courses for women,--more than
+a German convention of physicians would do. As yet the attempt in Russia
+has remained unsuccessful.
+
+In Finland, a country that, although belonging to Russia, occupies an
+exceptionally privileged position in the Russian system, 105 female
+students were at the University of Helsingfors during the winter course
+of 1894-1895, as against 73 in the summer course of 1894. Of these 105
+female students, 47 were entered in the faculty of philosophy of history
+and 45 in that of mathematics; 5 studied medicine, a strikingly small
+figure compared with elsewhere; 7 law; and 1 theology.
+
+Among the women who distinguished themselves in their studies, belong
+the late Mrs. v. Kowalewska, who received in 1887 from the Academy of
+Sciences in Paris the first prize for the solution of a mathematical
+problem, and since 1884 occupied a professorship of mathematics at the
+University of Stockholm. In Pisa, Italy, a lady occupies a professorship
+in pathology. Female physicians are found active in Algiers, Persia and
+India. In the United States there are about 100 female professors, and
+more than 70 who are superintendents of female hospitals. In Germany
+also the ice has been broken to the extent that in several
+cities--Berlin, Dresden, Leipsic, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, etc.,--female
+physicians, especially dentists, are in successful practice.
+
+With regard to energy and capacity in the scientific studies, England,
+in particular, can cite a series of handsome results. At the
+examinations in 1893, six women and six men held the highest marks. The
+examinations on art and on the theory and history of pedagogy were
+passed by nine women and not one man. At Cambridge, ten women sustained
+the severest test in mathematics. According to the sixteenth report of
+examinations of female students in Oxford, it appears that 62 women
+sustained the test of the first class, and 82 that of the second class;
+moreover the honorary examinations were sustained by more than one-half
+of the female candidates. Surely extraordinarily favorable results.
+
+Hostility to competition with women is particularly pronounced in
+Germany, because here the military turns out every year such a large
+number of mustered-out officers and under-officers as aspirants for the
+Civil Service, where there is little room for applicants from other
+sources. If, however, women are employed, and then at lower salaries,
+they appear to the already jealous men in a light that is doubly
+bad,--first, as cheap labor; then as lowerers of wages. An extensive
+field of activity have women gained as teachers, a field for which, on
+the whole, they are well fitted. This is particularly the case in the
+United States, where, in 1890, of 363,000 teachers, 238,000 were
+female.[150] In Berlin there were on January 1, 1892, along with 194
+Rectors and 2,022 teachers, 1,024 pedagogically educated and 642
+technical female teachers, inclusive of their helpers. In England,
+France and the United States there are, furthermore, since several
+years, women successfully engaged in the important service of Factory
+Inspectors, a move that, in view of the enormous proportions that female
+labor is assuming ever more in the trades and industries, is well
+justified and becomes everywhere a necessity.
+
+At the Chicago Exposition of 1893 women, furthermore, distinguished
+themselves in that, not only did female architects draw the plan and
+superintend the execution of the magnificent building for the exhibition
+of female products, but that women also appeared as independent
+operators in a number of products of art, which provoked general
+applause, and even astonishment. Also on the field of invention have
+women distinguished themselves, a subject on which, as early as 1884, a
+publication in the United States imparted information to the world by
+producing a list of female inventors. According to the list, the
+following inventions were made or improved by women: an improved
+spinning machine; a rotary loom, that produces three times as much as
+the ordinary loom; a chain elevator; a winch for screw steamers; a
+fire-escape; an apparatus for weighing wool, one of the most sensitive
+machines ever invented and of priceless value in the woolen industry; a
+portable water-reservoir to extinguish fires; a device for the
+application of petroleum in lieu of wood and coal as fuel on steamers;
+an improved catcher of sparks and cinders on locomotives; a signal for
+railroad crossings; a system for heating cars without fire; a
+lubricating felt to reduce friction on railroad cars; a writing machine;
+a signal rocket for the navy; a deep-sea telescope; a system for
+deadening noise on railroads; a smoke-consumer; a machine to fold paper
+bags, etc. Many improvements in the sewing machines are due to women, as
+for instance: an aid for the stretching of sails and heavy stuffs; an
+apparatus to wind up the thread while the machine is in motion; an
+improvement for the sewing of leather, etc. The last of these inventions
+was made by a woman who for years kept a saddle and harness shop in New
+York. The deep-sea telescope, invented by Mrs. Mather, and improved by
+her daughter, is an innovation of great importance: it makes possible
+the inspection of the keel of the largest ship, without bringing the
+same on the dry-dock. With the aid of this glass, sunken wrecks can be
+inspected from the deck of a ship, and search can be made for
+obstructions to navigation, torpedoes, etc. Along with these practical
+advantages, its application in science is full of promise.
+
+Among the machines, the extraordinary complexity and ingenuity of whose
+construction excited great admiration in America and Europe, is one for
+making paper bags. Many men, leading mechanics among them, had until
+then vainly sought to construct such a machine. A woman, Miss Maggie
+Knight, invented it. Since then, the lady invented also a machine to
+fold paper bags, that does the work of 30 persons. She herself
+superintends the construction of the machine in Amherst, Mass. That
+German women have made similar inventions is not yet known.
+
+The movement among women has spread even to Japan. In the autumn of
+1892, the Japanese Parliament decided that it was forbidden to women to
+figure as publishers or editors of newspapers, also of such papers as
+are devoted to fashions, cooking, education of children, etc. In Japan,
+even the unheard-of sight has been seen of a woman becoming the
+publisher of a Socialist paper. That was a little too much for the
+Japanese legislators, and they issued the above stated decree. It is,
+however, not forbidden to women to act as reporters for newspapers. The
+Japanese Government will succeed as little in denying their rights to
+women as its European rivals of equal mental make-up.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[124] On this subject, the law for protection of working-women, adopted
+by the people of the canton of Zurich in August, 1894, with 49,909 votes
+against 12,531, contains an excellent provision. The law makes it a
+penal offence for working-women to take from the shop, where they are
+employed during the day, work to be done at home. This law goes further
+than any other known to us for the protection of working-women. It also
+prescribes an extra pay of 25 per cent. for the extra hours fixed by
+law: the most effective means to check the evil of overwork.
+
+[125] The census of 1890 gives 3,914,571 women of at least 10 years of
+age engaged in gainful occupations in the United States; that is 17.6
+per cent. of the total population engaged in gainful occupations, and
+12.7 per cent. of the total female population of the country.
+
+According to the census of 1900 there were 5,319,912 women of at least
+10 years of age engaged in gainful occupations in the United States;
+that is 18.2 per cent. of the total population engaged in gainful
+occupations, and 14.3 per cent. of the total female population of the
+country.
+
+Classified by kinds of occupation, the census of 1900 shows: 977,336
+women engaged in agricultural pursuits; 430,576 in professional service;
+2,095,449 in domestic and personal service; 503,347 in trade and
+transportation; 1,313,204 in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits.--THE
+TRANSLATOR.
+
+[126] For the sake of verification, and especially with the view of
+avoiding any serious discrepancy that might arise from a translation
+back into English from a German translation of the original English, an
+attempt was made to secure a transcript of the original of the above
+interesting article. A serious difficulty was encountered. Besides the
+indefinite date, the abbreviated form, in which the German text gives
+the name of the Maine paper quoted from--"Levest. Journ."--and as
+reproduced in this translation, forced a recourse to guess work. The
+nearest that any Maine paper, given in the American Newspaper Directory,
+came to the abbreviation was the "Lewiston Evening Journal." The below
+correspondence tells its tale:
+
+
+"Daily People, 2, 4 and 6 New Reade street,
+"New York, May 18th, 1903.
+
+"Editor 'Lewiston Evening Journal,' Lewiston, Me.:
+
+"Dear Sir--The within is a translation from the German of what purports
+to be a German translation of an article, or part of an article, that
+appeared in the 'Journal.' The only date given is 1893.
+
+"I shall esteem it a favor if you will let me have an accurate
+transcript of the passage in the original. If the 'Journal' had such an
+article, the enclosed re-translation back into English may help to
+identify the article. Thanking you in advance,
+
+Yours truly, "D. DeLeon,
+"Ed. 'The People.'"
+
+
+"D. DeLeon, Esq., New York City:
+
+"My Dear Sir--I regret that I can not find the article of which the
+enclosed is a transcript.
+
+"I have no doubt of its correctness, for such is frequently the case in
+cities like these, where the woman is the six-loom weaver, and by her
+deftness is the better wage-earner.
+
+"Very truly yours,
+"Arthur G. Staples,
+"Managing Ed. 'Lewiston Journal.'"
+
+
+Though success was not complete, the letter of the managing editor of
+the "Lewiston Journal" is a corroboration of the substance of the
+passage quoted.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[127] "Die gewerbliche Thaetigkeit der Frauen."
+
+[128] Statistisches Jahrbuch fuer das Koenigreich Sachsen auf das Jahr,
+1894.
+
+[129] Factory Inspector A. Redgrave delivered in the end of December,
+1871 an address in Bradford, in the course of which he said: "I have
+been struck for some time past by the altered appearance of the wool
+factories. Formerly they were filled with women and children, now
+machinery seems to be doing all the work. On Inquiry a manufacturer gave
+me the following information; 'Under the old system I employed 63
+persons; after the introduction of improved machinery I reduced my hands
+to 33, and, later, in consequence of new and extensive alterations, I
+was able to reduce them from 33 to 13.' Thus, within a few years, a
+reduction of labor, amounting to almost 80 per cent. took place, with an
+output at least as large as before." Many interesting items of
+information on this subject are found in Marx's "Capital."
+
+[130] "Original Property," chap. 20.
+
+[131] "Bau und Leben des sozialen Koerpers," Tuebingen, 1878.
+
+[132] "Husband and Wife," Dr. Havelock Ellis.
+
+[133] Possibly the opposite is the case. We repeat what we explained
+above more extensively, that it is a widely diffused fact that women and
+girls nourish themselves worse and are worse nourished than men and
+boys. There was a time when the fashion prevailed for woman to eat as
+little as possible; she was to have as "etherial" an appearance as
+possible; the conception of beauty in our upper class, even to-day, is
+to the effect that it is "vulgar" if a young girl or young woman have a
+blooming complexion, red cheeks and a vigorous frame. It is also known,
+that with numberless women, under otherwise equal social conditions with
+men, the food is greatly inferior. Out of ignorance and acquired
+prejudices, women expect incredible things of themselves, and the men
+encourage them therein. Such neglect and maltreatment of physical
+nutrition must have the very worst consequences, if carried on through
+many generations by the very sex that, by reason of the heavy monthly
+losses of blood and of the expenditure of energies, required by
+pregnancy, child-birth and nursing, has its physique heavily taxed.
+
+[134] "Men of genius are, as a rule, of inferior size and massive brain.
+These are also the leading features of the child, and the general facial
+expression as well as the temperament of such men recall the
+child."--Dr. Havelock Ellis, "Husband and Wife."
+
+[135] The corporal weights are taken from Taupinard's "Anthropologie."
+
+[136] If, with the authority quoted by Delaunay, we assume 11 kilograms
+as the difference in weight between men and women, we would have found
+35 to 70 grams.
+
+[137] L. Manouvrier, "Revue Scientifique," No. 23, June 3, 1882.
+
+[138] Quatrefages found the proportion to be slightly larger with woman
+than with men. Thurman found the reverse, just as L. Manouvrier.
+
+[139] "Die neuere Schoepfungsgeschichte."
+
+[140] Dr. Havelock Ellis furnishes a number of proofs of this fact in
+his frequently quoted book. According thereto, woman, among wild and
+half-wild people, is not only equal to man in physical strength and size
+of body, but she is partly superior. On the other side, Ellis agrees
+with others that, in consequence of our progress in civilization, the
+difference in the capacity of the skull of the two sexes has steadily
+become more marked.
+
+[141] This is a discovery, first made by Karl Marx, and classically
+demonstrated by him in his works, especially in "Capital." The
+Communistic Manifesto, that appeared in 1848, and was composed by K.
+Marx and Frederick Engels, is grounded upon this fundamental principle,
+and must be considered, to this day, as the norm for all agitational
+work, and the most excellent of all.
+
+[142] "The Hall of science is the Temple of democracy," Buckle, "History
+of Civilization in England."
+
+[143] Ziegler, quoted above, denies that such is the meaning of
+Virchow's argument. His own quotation of Virchow's argument, however,
+confirms the interpretation. Virchow said: "Now, only picture to
+yourselves _how the theory of the descent of man presents itself in the
+head of a Socialist_! (Laughter.) Yes, gentlemen, that may seem funny to
+some; it is, however, a serious matter, and I hope that the theory of
+the descent of man _may not bring upon us all the horrors that similar
+theories have actually brought upon our neighboring country. At any
+rate, this theory, if consistently carried out, has a side of
+extraordinary gravity; and that Socialism has shown its sympathy
+therewith, will, it is to be hoped, not have escaped you. We must be
+perfectly clear upon that._" Now, then, we have simply done what Virchow
+feared: we have drawn the conclusions from the Darwinian theories,
+conclusions that Darwin himself and a large portion of his followers
+either did not draw at all, or drew falsely. And Virchow warned against
+the gravity of these theories, just because he foresaw that Socialism
+would _and was bound to draw the conclusions that are involved in them_.
+
+[144] Dubois-Reymond repeated this sentence in February, 1883, to the
+attacks directed upon him, on the occasion of the anniversary
+celebration of Frederick the Great.
+
+[145] "Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin-Spencer-Marx)."
+
+[146] According to the census of 1900, the figures for these respective
+occupations were: 7,387 female physicians and surgeons, 1,041 female
+architects, designers and draftsmen, 2,193 female journalists, 5,984
+female literary and scientific persons, 3,373 female ministers, 2,193
+female lawyers.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[147] "Aerztinnen fuer Frauenkrankheiten, eine ethische und sanitaere
+Nothwendigkeit," Berlin, 1893.
+
+[148] "An Address upon the Co-education of the Sexes."
+
+[149] Neue Zelt, 1884, "Das Frauenstudium In Russland."
+
+[150] The census of 1900 gives 327,614 female teachers and professors in
+colleges, out of a total force of 446,133, leaving, accordingly, only
+118,519 men on this field.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WOMAN'S CIVIC AND POLITICAL STATUS.
+
+
+The social dependence of a rank or a class ever finds its expression in
+the laws and political institutions of a country. Laws are the mirror in
+which is reflected a country's social condition, to the extent that the
+same has been brought within definite rules. _Woman, as a subject and
+oppressed sex, constitutes no exception to the principle._ Laws are
+negative or positive. Negative in so far as they ignore the oppressed in
+the distribution of privileges and rights, as though he did not exist;
+positive, in so far as they expressly assign his dependent position to
+the oppressed, and specify possible exceptions in his favor.
+
+Our common law rests upon the Roman law, which, recognized persons only
+as property-holding beings. The old German law, which treated woman more
+worthily, has preserved its force only partially. In the French
+language, the human being and the man are designated by the same word,
+"_l'homme_"; likewise in the English language,--"_man_." French law
+knows the human being only as _man_; and so was it also until recently
+in England, where woman found herself in slavish dependence upon man. It
+was similarly in Rome. There were Roman citizens, and wives of Roman
+citizens, but no female citizens.
+
+Impossible were it to enumerate the numberless laws found on the motley
+map of German common rights. Let a few instances suffice.
+
+According to the common law of Germany, the wife is a minor towards her
+husband; the husband is her master, to whom she owes obedience. If the
+woman is "disobedient," then, according to the law of Prussia, the
+husband of "low" estate has the right of "moderate castigation." Men of
+"high" estate also there are said to be who arrogate such a right to
+themselves. Seeing that nowhere is the force or number of the blows
+prescribed, the husband is the sovereign judge. The old city law of
+Hamburg declares: "For the rest, the right of _moderate castigation of
+the wife by her husband_, of children by their parents, of pupils by
+their teachers, or servants by their masters and mistresses, is hereby
+adjudged just and permissible."
+
+Similar provisions are numerous in Germany. According to the law of
+Prussia, the husband may prescribe to the wife _how long she shall
+suckle her child_. In cases of disposing of the children, the father
+alone decides. If he dies, the wife is in most German States compelled
+to accept a guardian for her children: she herself is considered a
+minor, and is held unfit to attend to their education herself, even when
+she supports her children by her property or labor. As a rule, her
+husband administers her property, and, in cases of bankruptcy, the same
+is considered and disposed of as his own, unless a pre-marital contract
+secures the property to her. Wherever the right of primogeniture
+attaches to landed property, a woman, even if she be the first born, can
+not enter into possession if there be younger brothers. She can step in
+only when she has no brothers. In most German States, a married woman
+can contract only with the consent of her husband, unless she owns a
+business in her own name, such as, according to more recent law, she is
+allowed to start. She is shut off from all public function. The Prussian
+law on associations forbids pupils and apprentices under 18 years of age
+and women to join political organizations. Until a few decades ago, the
+attendance of women among the public at open trials was forbidden by
+several German codes of criminal procedure. If a woman gives birth to an
+illegitimate child, it has no claim to support from its father if its
+mother accepted any presents from him during her pregnancy. If a woman
+is divorced from her husband, she continues to carry his name as a
+lasting memento, unless she marry again.
+
+In Germany, hundreds of frequently contradictory laws are met with.
+According to the bill for the new civil laws of Germany, the
+administration of the wife's property falls to the husband, unless the
+wife has secured her property to herself by special contract. This is a
+reactionary attitude, long since discarded by many other countries. On
+the other hand, the wife is allowed to retain what she has earned by her
+own personal labor, and without assistance of her husband, or by the
+independent conduct of a business enterprise.
+
+In England, and down to 1870, the common law of the land gave to the
+husband all the personal property of the wife. Only with regard to real
+estate were her proprietary rights safeguarded; the husband,
+nevertheless, had the right of administration and of use. At the bar of
+law, the English woman was a zero: she could perform no legal act, not
+even execute a valid testament; she was a veritable serf of her husband.
+A crime committed by her in his presence, he was answerable for: she was
+at all points a minor. If she injured any one, damage was assessed as if
+done by a domestic animal: the husband was held. According to an address
+delivered in 1888 by Bishop J. N. Wood in the chapel of Westminster, as
+recently as a hundred years ago the wife was not allowed to eat at table
+or to speak before she was spoken to: above the bed hung a stout whip,
+that the husband was free to use when the wife displayed ill temper:
+only her daughters were subject to her orders: her sons saw in her
+merely a female servant. Since 1870 and 1882, the wife is not merely
+secured in the sole possession of the property that she brings with her,
+she is also the proprietor of all she earns, or receives by inheritance
+or gift. These rights can be altered only by special contract between
+the husband and wife. English legislation followed the example of the
+United States.
+
+Particularly backward is the civil law of France, of most of the Swiss
+cantons, of Belgium, etc., in the matter of woman's civic rights.
+According to the _Code Civil_, the husband could sue for divorce upon
+the adultery of the wife; she, however, could institute such an action
+only if the husband kept his concubine at his own home (Article 230).
+This provision has been repealed by the divorce law of July 27, 1884,
+but the difference continues in force in the French criminal code,--a
+characteristic manoeuvre on the part of the French legislator. If the
+wife is convicted of adultery, _she is punished with imprisonment for
+not less than two months nor more than three years. The husband is
+punished only when, according to the spirit of the former Article 230 of
+the Code Civil, he keeps a concubine under the domestic roof against the
+wish of his wife. If found guilty, he is merely fined not less than 100
+and not more than 1,000 francs._ (Arts. 337 and 339 _Code Penal_.) Such
+inequality before the law were impossible if but one woman sat in the
+French Parliament. A similar law exists in Belgium. The punishment for
+adultery by the wife is the same as in France; the husband is liable
+only if the act of adultery is committed at the home of the married
+couple: he may then suffer imprisonment for not less than one month, or
+more than one year. Slightly juster is, accordingly, the law in Belgium
+than in France; nevertheless, in the one place as in the other, there
+are two different standards of right, one for the husband, another for
+the wife. Similar provisions exist, under the influence of French law,
+in Spain and Portugal. The civil law of Italy of 1865 enables the wife
+to obtain a divorce from her husband only if the husband keeps his
+concubine at his own home, or at such other place where the concubine's
+presence must be considered in the light of a grave insult to the wife.
+
+In France, Belgium and Switzerland, woman falls, as in Germany, under
+the guardianship of her husband, the moment she marries. According to
+section 215 of the _Code Civil_, she is not allowed to appear in Court
+without the consent of her husband and of two of her nearest male
+relations, not even if she conducts a public business. According to
+section 213 the husband must protect the wife, and she must yield
+obedience to him. There is a saying of Napoleon I. that typifies his
+idea concerning the status of woman: "One thing is utterly un-French--a
+woman that can do what she pleases."[151] In these countries,
+furthermore, woman may not appear as a witness in the execution of
+contracts, testaments or any notarial act. On the other hand--odd
+contradiction--she is allowed to act as a witness in all criminal
+trials, where her testimony may lead to the execution of a person.
+_Within the purview of the criminal code, she is on all hands considered
+of equal value, and she is measured for every crime or offense with the
+same yard-stick as man._ The contradiction, however, does not penetrate
+the wool of our legislators. As a widow, she may dispose of her
+property by testament; as witness to a testament, however, she is not
+admissible in a number of countries; all the same, according to Art.
+1029 of the _Code Civil_, she may be appointed the executor of a will.
+In Italy, since 1877, woman is qualified to appear as a witness in civil
+actions also.
+
+According to the law of the canton of Zurich, the husband is the
+guardian of his wife; he administers her property; and he represents her
+before third parties. According to the _Code Civil_, the husband
+administers the property that the wife brings with her, he can sell her
+property, alienate it, load it with mortgages without requiring her
+consent, or signature. Similar provisions exist in several other cantons
+of Switzerland besides Zurich, in France, Belgium, Luxemburg, the
+Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and also in a large part
+of Germany. Countries in which community of property may be excluded in
+marriage are, besides parts of Germany, and a large part of Switzerland,
+Austria, Poland and the Baltic provinces. Countries in which the
+absolute independence of married women exist with respect to their
+property are: Italy, Russia, Great Britain and Ireland. In Norway, a law
+of the year 1888, on the administration of the property of married
+persons, provides that a married woman has the same power to dispose of
+her property as unmarried women, only the law specifies a few
+exceptions. In this law the expression is used that _woman becomes
+un-free in marriage_. Who could blame her if, there also, as happens
+frequently in France, women are seen to waive formal matrimonial
+contracts?
+
+According to the law of Berne, what the married woman earns belongs to
+her husband. Similarly with most cantons of Switzerland, also in France
+and Belgium. The consequence is that the wife often finds herself in a
+state of virtual slavery: the husband squanders with lewd women or in
+the grog-shop what his wife makes: he incurs debts: gambles away his
+wife's earnings: leaves her and her children in want. He even has the
+right to demand from her employer the wages due her.
+
+By the law of December 11, 1874, Sweden secures to the married woman the
+right to dispose freely of that which she earns by her personal effort.
+Denmark has raised the same principle to the force of a law; nor can,
+according to Danish law, the property of the wife be seized to cover the
+debts of the husband. Similarly runs the law of Norway of 1888.[152] The
+right of educating the children and of deciding thereupon is, according
+to the legislation of most countries, the attribute of the father: here
+and there a subordinate co-operation is granted the mother. The old
+Roman maxim, that stood in sharp contradiction to the principles
+prevalent during the mother-right, and that clothed the father alone
+with rights and powers over the child, is to this day the key-note of
+legislation on the subject.
+
+Among the continental countries, woman holds the freest position in
+Russia,--due to the communistic institutions there still in existence,
+or to reminiscences of the same. In Russia, woman is the administrator
+of her property: she enjoys equal rights in the administration of the
+community. Communism is the most favorable social condition to woman.
+The fact transpired from the sketch of the age of the mother-right,
+given on previous pages.[153] In the United States women have conquered
+full civil equality; they have also prevented the introduction of the
+English and similar laws regulating prostitution.
+
+The civic inequality of woman has provoked among the more advanced
+members of the female sex demand for political rights, to the end of
+wielding the power of legislation in behalf of their civic equality. It
+is the identical thought that moved the working class everywhere to
+direct their agitation towards the conquest of the political powers.
+What is right for the working class can not be wrong for woman.
+Oppressed, disfranchised, relegated everywhere to the rear, woman has
+not the right only, she has the duty to defend herself, and to seize
+every means she may deem fit to conquer a more independent position for
+herself. Against these efforts also the reactionary mob, of course,
+bristles up. Let us see how.
+
+The great French Revolution, that, as is well known, started in 1789 and
+threw all old institutions out of joint, conjured up a freedom of
+spirits such as the world had never seen before. Woman also stepped upon
+the stage. During the previous decades immediately preceding the
+outbreak of the Revolution, many of them had taken part in the great
+intellectual struggle that then raged throughout French society. They
+flocked in swarms to the great scientific discussions, attended
+political and scientific meetings, and did their share in preparing the
+Revolution, where theory was to crystalize into fact. Most historians
+have noted only the excesses of the Revolution,--and as always happens
+when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror
+against them--have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the
+more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling
+class. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and
+greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long
+as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, it will ever
+be thus.
+
+In October, 1789, a number of women petitioned the National Assembly
+"that equality be restored between man and woman, work and occupation be
+given them free, places be left for them that their faculties were fit
+for."
+
+When in 1793 the Convention proclaimed "_le droit de l'homme_" (the
+Rights of Man), the more far-seeing women perceived that these were only
+the rights of males. Olympe de Gouges, Louise Lecombe and others
+paralleled these "Rights of Man" with 17 articles on the "Rights of
+Woman," which, on the 28th Brumaire (November 20, 1793) they defended
+before the Commune of Paris upon the principle: "If woman has the right
+to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the
+tribune." Their demands remained unheeded. When, subsequently, upon the
+march of monarchic Europe against the Republic, the Convention declared
+the "Fatherland in danger," and called upon all men, able to carry arms,
+to defend the Fatherland and the Republic, inspired Parisian women
+offered to do what twenty years later inspired Prussian women likewise
+did against the domination of Napoleon,--defend the Fatherland, arms in
+hand. The radical Chaumette rose against those Parisian women and
+addressed them, asking: "Since when is it allowed to women to renounce
+their sex and become men? Since when is it usage for them to abandon the
+sacred cares of their households, the cradles of their children, and to
+appear at public places, to speak from the tribunes, to step in the
+files of the troops,--in short, to fill duties that Nature has devolved
+upon man alone? Nature said to man: 'Be thou _man_! Racing, the chase,
+the cultivation of the fields, politics and violent labors of all sorts
+are thy _privilege_!' It said to woman: 'Be thou _woman_! The care of
+thy children, the details of thy household, the sweet inquietudes of
+motherhood,--that is thy _work_!' Unwise women, why wish you to become
+men? Is not mankind properly divided? What more can you want? In the
+name of Nature, remain what you are; and, far from envying us the perils
+of so stormy a life, rest satisfied to make us forget them in the lap of
+our families, by allowing our eyes to rest upon the fascinating
+spectacle of our children, made happy by your tender care."
+
+The women allowed themselves to be silenced, and went away. There can be
+no doubt that the radical Chaumette voiced the innermost sentiments of
+most of our men, who otherwise abhor him. We also hold that it is a
+proper division of work to leave to men the defense of the country, and
+to women the care of the home and the hearth. In Russia, late in the
+fall of the year and after they have tended the fields, the men of whole
+village districts move to distant factories, and leave to the women the
+administration of the commune and the house. For the rest, the
+oratorical gush of Chaumette is mere phrases. What he says concerning
+the labors of the men in the fields is not even correct: since time
+immemorial down to to-day, woman's was not the easy part in agriculture.
+The alleged labors of the chase and the race course are no "labors" at
+all: they are amusements of men; and, as to politics, it has perils for
+him only who swims _against_ the stream, otherwise it offers the men at
+least as much amusement as labor. It is the egoism of man that speaks in
+that speech.
+
+At about the same time when the French Revolution was under way, and
+engaged the attention of all Europe, a woman rose on the other side of
+the Channel also, in England, to labor publicly in behalf of equal
+rights for her sex. She was Mary Wollstoncraft, born in 1759, and who,
+in 1790, published a book against Edmund Burke, the most violent enemy
+of the French Revolution. She later, 1792, wrote a second book--"A
+Vindication of the Rights of Woman"--in which she took the stand for
+absolute equality of rights for her sex. In this book she demands the
+suffrage for women in the elections for the Lower House. But she met in
+England with even less response than did her sisters in France.
+Ridiculed and insulted by her contemporaries, she went under after
+trying ordeals. Before the Revolution it was the encyclopedist Condorcet
+who principally took the field for the equal rights of both sexes.
+
+To-day, matters lie somewhat differently. Since then, conditions have
+changed mightily,--the position of woman along with them. Whether
+married or unmarried, more than ever before woman now has a deep
+interest in social and political conditions. It can not be a matter of
+indifference to her whether the Government chains every year to the army
+hundreds of thousands of vigorous, healthy men; whether a policy is in
+force that favors wars, or does not; whether the necessaries of life are
+made dearer by taxes, that promote, besides, the adulteration of food,
+and are all the harder upon a family in the measure of its size, at a
+time, at that, in which the means of life are most stingily measured for
+the large majority. Moreover, woman pays direct and indirect taxes out
+of her support and her income. Again, the system of education is of
+highest interest to her: it goes far towards determining the position of
+her sex: as a mother, she has a double interest therein.
+
+Furthermore, as has been shown, there are to-day millions of women, in
+hundreds of pursuits, all of them with a lively personal interest in the
+manner that our laws are shaped. Questions concerning the hours of work;
+night, Sunday and child-labor; payment of wages and notice of discharge;
+safety appliances in factory and shop; etc.--all are political questions
+that concern them as well as the men. Workingmen know little or nothing
+about conditions in many branches of industry, where women are mainly,
+or exclusively, engaged. Employers have all the interest in the world to
+hush up evils that they are responsible for. Factory inspection
+frequently does not extend to branches of industry in which women are
+exclusively employed: such as it is, it is utterly inadequate: and yet
+these are the very branches in which protective measures frequently are
+most needed. It suffices to mention the workshops in which seamstresses,
+dressmakers, milliners, etc., are crowded together in our larger cities.
+From thence, hardly a complaint issues; thither no investigation has as
+yet penetrated. Finally, as a trader, woman is also interested in laws
+on commerce and tariffs. There can, accordingly, be no doubt that woman
+has an interest and a right to demand a hand in the shaping of things by
+legislation, as well as man. Her participation in public life would
+impart a strong stimulus thereto, and open manifold new vistas.
+
+Such demands, however, are met with the curt rebuff: "Women know nothing
+of politics, and most of them don't want to, either; neither do they
+know how to use the ballot." True, and not true. True enough, until now,
+very few women, in Germany at least, have ventured to demand political
+equality also. The first woman, who, as a writer, came out in its favor
+in Germany was, as far as we know, Frau Hedwig Dohm. More recently, it
+is mainly the Socialist working-women, who are vigorously agitating for
+the idea; and their number is ever larger.
+
+Nothing is proved with the argument that women have, until now, shown
+little interest in the political movement. The fact that, hitherto,
+women have troubled themselves little about politics, is no proof that
+they should continue in the same path. The same reasons, advanced to-day
+against female suffrage, were advanced during the first half of the
+sixties in Germany against manhood suffrage. Even as late as 1863, the
+author of this book himself was of those who opposed manhood suffrage;
+four years later he owed to it his election to the Reichstag. Thousands
+of others went through the same mill: from Sauls they became Pauls. Many
+are the men, who either do not care or do not know how to use their
+important political rights. And yet that fact was no reason to withhold
+the suffrage from them, and can be none to now deprive them of it. At
+the Reichstag elections in Germany, 25 to 30 per cent. of the qualified
+voters do not vote at all. These non-voters are recruited from _all_
+classes: among them are scientists and laborers. Moreover, of the 70 to
+75 per cent. of those who participate in the election, the majority,
+according to our judgment, vote in a way that they would not, if they
+realized their true interests. That as yet they have not realized them
+comes from defective political training, a training, however, that these
+70 to 75 per cent. possess in a higher degree than the 25 to 30 per
+cent., who stay away altogether. Among the latter, those must be
+excepted who remain away from the hustings because they cannot, without
+danger, vote according to their convictions.
+
+Political education is not gained by keeping the masses from public
+affairs; it is gained by admitting them to the exercise of political
+rights. Practice makes perfect. The ruling classes have hitherto found
+their account in keeping the large majority of the people in political
+childhood. Hence it has ever been the task of a class-conscious minority
+to battle with energy and enthusiasm for the collective interest of
+society, and to shake up and drag the large inert mass after them. Thus
+has it been in all great Movements: it is neither astonishing nor
+discouraging that the experience made with the Movement of the working
+class is repeated in the Movement for the emancipation of woman.
+Previous successes prove that pains, labor and sacrifices are rewarded;
+the future brings triumph.
+
+The moment woman acquires equal rights with man, the sense of her duties
+will be quickened. Called upon to cast her ballot, she will ask, What
+for? Whom for? Immediately, emulation in many directions will set in
+between man and woman that, so far from injuring, will materially
+improve their mutual relations. The less posted woman will naturally
+turn to the better posted man. Interchange of ideas and mutual
+instruction follows,--a condition of things until now found most rarely
+between husband and wife: it will impart a fresh charm to life. The
+unhappy differences in education and view-points between the two
+sexes,--differences, that so frequently lead to dissensions between
+husband and wife, that place the husband at variance with his many-sided
+duties, and that injure the well-being of all, will be wiped out.
+Instead of a clog, the husband will gain a supporter in a compatible
+wife; whenever prevented by other duties from personal participation,
+she will spur her husband to fulfil his own. She will find it legitimate
+that a fraction of his earnings be spent in a newspaper, for agitational
+purposes, because the paper serves to educate and entertain her also,
+and because she realizes the necessity of the sacrifice, a sacrifice
+that helps to conquer that which she, her husband and her children
+lack,--an existence worthy of human beings.
+
+Thus, the joining of hands by husband and wife for the common weal, so
+closely connected with the weal of the individual, will exert a most
+ennobling influence. The very reverse is called into life of that which
+is claimed by near-sighted people, or by the foes of a commonwealth
+based upon the equality of all. Nor would it end there. The relation
+between the two sexes would be beautiful in the measure that the social
+institutions will liberate husband and wife from material cares and from
+excessive work. Practice and education will, here as in all other cases,
+give further aid. If I go not in the water, I shall never learn to swim;
+if I study no foreign language and do not practice it, I shall never
+learn to speak it. Everyone finds that natural; and yet many fail to
+realize that the same holds good in the affairs of government and
+society. Are our women unfitter than the far lower negroes, to whom full
+political equality was conceded in North America? And shall a highly
+intellectual woman be vested with lesser rights than the rudest, least
+cultured man,--an ignorant day-laborer of the backwoods of Pomerania, or
+an ultramontane canalman, for instance, and all because accident let
+these come into the world as men? The son has greater rights than his
+mother, from whom, perchance, he derives his best qualities, the very
+qualities that alone make him what he is. Truly wonderful!
+
+Moreover, we in Germany would no longer be running the risk of being the
+first to take the leap in the dark and the unknown. The United States,
+England and other countries have opened the way. In the State of Wyoming
+in the United States, woman suffrage has been tested since 1869. On
+November 12, 1872, writing from Laramie City, Wyo., on the subject,
+Judge Kingman says in the Chicago "Women's Journal":
+
+"Three years ago to-day women obtained the right of electing and of
+being elected to office in our Territory, in the same manner as the
+other electors. During this period they have voted and have been voted
+for; they have exercised the functions of jurors and arbiters; they have
+taken part in large numbers at our elections, and although I believe
+that some among us oppose the admission of women from motives of
+principle, no one, I think, can refuse to recognize that their influence
+on the elections has been an elevating one. It caused them to be
+conducted in a more peaceable and orderly manner, and at the same time
+enabled our courts of justice to discover and punish various kinds of
+crime that had until then remained unpunished.
+
+"For instance, when the Territory was first organized, there was
+scarcely a man who did not carry a revolver and make use of it in the
+slightest dispute. I cannot remember a single case in which a jury
+composed of men brought in a verdict of guilty against one of those who
+had shot with a revolver, but when two or three women were among them,
+they have invariably attended to the instructions of the Court."
+
+In what esteem woman suffrage was held in Wyoming twenty-five years
+after its introduction, may be gathered from the address issued on
+November 12, 1894, to the Parliaments of the world by the Legislature of
+that State. It says:
+
+"The possession and exercise of suffrage by the women in Wyoming for the
+past quarter of a century has wrought no harm and has done great good in
+many ways; it has largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice
+from this State, and that without any violent or oppressive legislation;
+it has secured peaceful and orderly elections, good government, and a
+remarkable degree of civilization and public order; and we point with
+pride to the facts that after nearly twenty-five years of Woman Suffrage
+not one county in Wyoming has a poorhouse, that our jails are almost
+empty, and crime, except that committed by strangers in the State,
+almost unknown; and as the result of experience we urge every civilized
+community on earth to enfranchise its women without delay."[154]
+
+While giving fullest credit to the political activity of the women of
+Wyoming, we cannot go to the extreme, reached by the enthusiastic
+defenders of woman suffrage in the Legislature of that State, of
+ascribing exclusively to the ballot in woman's hands the enviable
+conditions, which, according to the account of the address, Wyoming
+rejoices in. A number of social causes of other nature contribute
+thereto. Nevertheless, the fact is unquestionable that female suffrage
+has been accompanied by the most beneficent results for that State, and
+without one disadvantage. That is the most brilliant justification of
+its introduction.
+
+The example of Wyoming found followers. To-day there are a number of
+countries in which woman enjoys political rights to greater or less
+extent. In the United States, women obtained several years ago the
+ballot in Colorado, and in 1894 they elected a number of
+representatives; likewise in Arizona, and still more recently in
+Minnesota. In New Zealand, they took a lively part in the parliamentary
+elections of 1893, livelier, in fact, than the men, although they were
+only qualified to elect: only men were qualified to be elected. In
+March, 1894, the Prime Minister declared to a deputation of women that
+he would advocate their qualification to be elected. In 1893, there were
+twenty-two States in the North American Union where women were qualified
+both to elect and be elected for the School Boards. In Kansas, Nebraska,
+Colorado, Oregon, Arizona, Dakota, Idaho, Minnesota and Montana they are
+fully qualified electors for municipal officers, provided they are
+resident citizens. In Argonia, Kans., the wife of a physician was
+elected Mayor;[155] the same thing happened in Onehunga, New Zealand.
+Since more than ten years ago, women in Sweden have the suffrage for
+departmental and municipal elections, under the same restrictions as
+men.
+
+In England, the struggle, for woman's political rights has a regular
+history behind it. According to the old custom of the Middle Ages,
+women, seized of landed property, were also vested with the suffrage,
+and, as such also filled judicial functions. In the course of time they
+lost these rights. In the bill for Parliamentary Reform in 1832, the
+word "person" was used, a term that, according to English conceptions,
+includes the members of both sexes, men and women. This notwithstanding,
+the law was interpreted adversely to women and they were turned back
+wherever they made the effort to vote. In the electoral reform Act of
+1867, the word "man" was substituted for the word "person." John Stuart
+Mill moved the re-insertion of "person" in place of "man," with the
+express purpose that women shall be vested with the suffrage under the
+same conditions as men. The motion was defeated by 196 votes against 83.
+Sixteen years later, 1883, the attempt was again made in the Lower House
+to grant women the suffrage. A motion to that effect was defeated by a
+majority of 16. A further attempt in 1884 was defeated in a fuller House
+by more than 136 votes. But the minority did not evacuate the field. In
+1886 it succeeded in carrying to a second reading a motion to grant
+women the suffrage; but the dissolution of Parliament prevented a final
+vote being taken. Again, on April 27, 1892, the Lower House defeated
+with 175 votes against 152, the second reading of a motion on the
+subject presented by Sir A. Rollit, and which provided as follows:
+
+"Every woman who in Great Britain is registered or entitled to be
+registered as an elector for a Town Council or County Council or who in
+Ireland is a rate payer entitled to vote in the election of Guardians of
+the Poor, shall be entitled to be registered as a Parliamentary elector,
+and when registered, to vote at any Parliamentary election for the
+county, borough, or division wherein the qualifying property is
+situate."
+
+On November 29, 1888, Lord Salisbury held a speech in Edinburgh, in the
+course of which he said: "I earnestly hope that the day is not far
+distant when women also will bear their share in voting for members in
+the political world and in the determining the policy of the country."
+And Alfred Russell Wallace, celebrated as a naturalist and follower of
+Darwin, expressed himself upon the same question this wise: "When men
+and women shall have freedom to follow their best impulses, when both
+shall receive the best possible education, when no false restraints
+shall be imposed upon any human being by the reason of the accident of
+sex, and when public opinion shall be regulated by the wisest and best
+and shall be systematically impressed upon youth, then shall we find
+that a system of human selection will arise that is bound to have a
+reformed humanity for its result. So long as woman is compelled to
+regard marriage as a means by which to escape poverty and avoid neglect,
+she is and remains at a disadvantage with man. Hence, the first step in
+the emancipation of woman is the removal of all restraints that prevent
+her from competing with man on all the fields of industry and in all
+pursuits. But we must go further, and allow woman the exercise of her
+_political rights_. Many of the restraints, under which woman has
+suffered until now, would have been spared to her, had she had direct
+representation in Parliament."
+
+In most sections of England, married women have the same political
+rights as men in the elections for the School Boards and Guardians of
+the Poor, and in many places are themselves qualified for election. At
+the county elections, _unmarried_ women have the right to vote under the
+same restrictions as men, but are not themselves qualified for election.
+Likewise did all independent tax-paying women obtain the right to vote
+by the Reform Act of 1869, but are not qualified for election. _Married
+women_ are in virtue of a court decision, rendered in 1872, excluded
+from the suffrage, because _in English law woman loses her independence
+by marriage_--a decided encouragement for women to keep away from the
+legal formality of legitimate marriage. Seeing that also in other
+respects unmarried or divorced women in England and Scotland are clothed
+with rights denied to married women, the temptation is not slight for
+women to renounce legitimate unions. It is not exactly the part of
+wisdom for the male representatives of bourgeois society to degrade
+bourgeois marriage into a sort of slave status for woman.[156]
+
+In Austria, women who are landed proprietors, or conduct a business, to
+which the suffrage is attached, have the right to exercise the privilege
+_by attorney_. This holds both for local and Reichstag elections. If the
+woman is proprietor of a mercantile or industrial establishment, which
+gives the right to vote for the Chamber of Commerce, her franchise must
+be exercised by a business manager. In France, on the contrary, a woman
+who conducts a business, has a right to vote at the election of members
+for the tribunals of commerce, but she cannot herself be elected.
+According to the law of 1891 of the old Prussian provinces, women have
+the suffrage, if the landed property that belongs to them conveys the
+right to vote, nevertheless they must exercise the privilege through a
+male representative, neither are they eligible themselves. Likewise
+according to the laws of Hanover, Brunswick, Schleswig-Holstein,
+Sachsen-Weimar, Hamburg and Luebeck. In Saxony, the law allows women the
+suffrage if they are landed proprietors and are _unmarried_. If married,
+the woman's vote goes to her husband. In all these cases, accordingly,
+the right of suffrage does not attach to persons but to property--quite
+a light upon existing political and legal morality: Man, thou art zero
+if moneyless or propertyless; knowledge, intellect are secondary
+matters. Property decides.
+
+We see that the principle of denying woman the suffrage on the theory of
+her not being "of age" is broken through in fact; and yet objection is
+raised to granting her the right in full. It is said that to grant woman
+the suffrage is dangerous because she yields easily to religious
+prejudices, and is conservative. She is both only because she is
+ignorant. Let her be educated and taught where her interests lie. For
+the rest, the influence of religion on elections is exaggerated.
+Ultramontane agitation has hitherto been so successful in Germany only
+because it knew how to join _social with religious interests_. The
+ultramontane chaplains long vied with the Socialists in uncovering the
+social foulness. Hence their influence with the masses. With the close
+of the Kulturkampf, the influence of the Catholic clergymen upon the
+masses waned. The clergy is forced to discontinue its opposition to the
+Government; simultaneously therewith, the rising class struggle compels
+it to consider the Catholic capitalist class and Catholic nobility; it
+will, accordingly, be compelled to observe greater caution on the social
+field. Thus the clergy will forfeit its influence with the workingmen,
+especially at such critical junctures when considerations for the
+Government and the ruling classes drive it to approve of, or tolerate
+actions and laws directed against the interests of the working class.
+The same causes will, in the end, have their influence upon woman. When
+at public meetings, through newspapers and from personal observation she
+will have learned where her own interest lies, woman will emancipate
+herself from the clergy, the same as man has done. The fiercest opponent
+of female suffrage is the clergy, and it knows the reason why. Its rule
+and its domains are endangered.
+
+That the movement for the political rights of woman has not been
+promptly crowned with greater success is no reason to withhold the
+ballot from her. What would the workingmen say if the Liberals proposed
+abolishing manhood suffrage--and the same is very inconvenient to
+them--on the ground that it benefits the Socialists in particular? A
+good law does not become bad by reason of him who wields it not yet
+having learned its right use.
+
+Naturally, the right to be elected should go together with the right to
+elect. "A woman in the tribune of the Reichstag, that would be a
+spectacle!" we hear people exclaim. Our generation has grown accustomed
+to the sight of women in the speaker's tribune at their conventions and
+meetings; in the United States, also in the pulpit and the jury box--why
+not, then, also in the tribune of the Reichstag? The first woman elected
+to the Reichstag, would surely know how to impose respect. When the
+first workingmen entered the Reichstag it was also believed they could
+be laughed down, and it was claimed that the working class would soon
+realize the foolishness it had committed in electing such people. Its
+representatives, however, knew how to make themselves quickly respected;
+the fear to-day is lest there be too many of them. Frivolous witlings
+put in: "Just imagine a pregnant woman in the tribune of the Reichstag;
+how utterly unesthetic!" The identical gentlemen find it, however, quite
+in order that pregnant women work at the most unesthetic trades, at
+trades in which female dignity, health and decency are undermined. In
+the eyes of a Socialist, that man is a wretch who can crack jokes over a
+woman with child. The mere thought that his own mother once looked like
+that before she brought him into the world, should cause his cheeks to
+burn with shame; the thought that he, rude jester, expects from a
+similar condition on the part of his wife the fulfillment of his dearest
+wishes should cause him, furthermore, to hold his tongue in shame.
+
+_A woman who gives birth to children renders, at least, the same service
+to the commonwealth as the man who defends his country and his hearth
+with his life against a foe in search of conquests._ Moreover, the life
+of a woman trembles in the scales at child-birth. All our mothers have
+looked death in the face at our births, and many succumbed. _The number
+of women who die as a result of child-birth, or who as a consequence
+pine away in sickness, is greater than that of the men who fall on the
+field of battle, or are wounded._ In Prussia, between 1816-1876, not
+less than 321,791 women fell a prey to child-birth fever--a yearly
+average of 5,363. This is by far a larger figure than that of the
+Prussians, who, during the same period, were killed in war or died of
+their wounds. Nor must, at the contemplation of this enormous number of
+women who died of child-birth fever, the still larger number of those be
+lost sight of, who, as a consequence of child-birth, are permanently
+crippled in health, and die prematurely.[157] These are additional
+reasons for woman's equal rights with man--reasons to be held up
+especially to those, who play man's duty to defend the Fatherland as a
+decisive circumstance, entitling them to superior consideration to
+women. For the rest, in virtue of our military institutions, most men do
+not even fill this duty: to the majority of them it exists upon paper
+only.
+
+All these superficial objections to the public activity of woman would
+be unimaginable were the relations of the two sexes a natural one, and
+were there not an antagonism, artificially raised side by side with the
+relation of master and servant between the two. From early youth the two
+are separated in social intercourse and education. Above all, it is the
+antagonism, for which Christianity is responsible, that keeps the sexes
+steadily apart and the one in ignorance about the other, and that
+hinders free social intercourse, mutual confidence, a mutual
+supplementing of traits of character.
+
+One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized
+society must be to end this unhallowed split, and to reinstate Nature in
+its rights. The violence done to Nature starts at school: First, the
+separation of the sexes; next, mistaken, or no instruction whatever, in
+matters that concern the human being as a sexual entity. True enough,
+natural history is taught in every tolerably good school. The child
+learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them out: he also learns when the
+mating season begins: that males and females are needed: that both
+jointly assume the building of the nests, the hatching and the care of
+the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth live young: he learns
+about the rutting season and about the fights of the males for the
+females during the same: he learns the usual number of young, perhaps
+also the period of pregnancy. But on the subject of the origin and
+development of his own stock he remains in the dark; that is veiled in
+mystery. When, thereupon, the child seeks to satisfy his natural
+curiosity with questions addressed to his parents, to his mother in
+particular--he seldom ventures with them to his teacher--he is saddled
+with the silliest stories that cannot satisfy him, and that are all the
+more injurious when he some day does ascertain the truth. There are
+probably few children who have not made the discovery by the twelfth
+year of their age. In all small towns, in the country especially,
+children observe from earliest years the mating of birds, the copulation
+of domestic animals; they see this in closest proximity, in the yard, on
+the street, and when the cattle are turned loose. They see that the
+conditions under which the heat of the cattle is gratified, as well as
+the act of birth of the several domestic animals are made the subject of
+serious, thorough and undisguised discussion on the part of their
+parents, elder brothers and servants. All that awakens doubts in the
+child's mind on the accounts given him of his own entry into life.
+Finally the day of knowledge does come; but it comes in a way other than
+it would have come under a natural and rational education. The secret
+that the child discovers leads to estrangement between child and
+parents, particularly between child and mother. The reverse is obtained
+of that which was aimed at in folly and shortsightedness. He who
+recalls his own youth and that of his young companions knows what the
+results frequently are.
+
+An American woman says, among other things in a work written by her,
+that wishing to answer the repeated questions of her eight-year-old son
+on his origin, and unwilling to saddle him with nursery tales, she
+disclosed the truth to him. The child listened to her with great
+attention, and, from the day that he learned what cares and pains he had
+caused his mother, he clung to her with a tenderness and reverence not
+noticed in him before, and showed the same reverence toward other women
+also.[158] The authoress proceeds from the correct premises that only by
+means of a natural education can any real improvement--more respect and
+self-control on the part of the male toward the female sex--be expected.
+He who reasons free from prejudice will arrive at no other conclusion.
+
+Whatever be the point of departure in the _critique_ of our social
+conditions, the conclusion is ever the same--their _radical
+transformation_; thereby a radical transformation in the position of the
+sexes is inevitable. Woman, in order to arrive all the quicker at the
+goal, must look for allies whom, in the very nature of things, the
+movement of the working class steers in her direction. Since long has
+the class-conscious proletariat begun the storming of the fortress, the
+Class-State, which also upholds the present domination of one sex by the
+other. That fortress must be surrounded on all sides with trenches, and
+assailed to the point of surrender with artillery of all calibre. The
+besieging army finds its officers and munitions on all sides. Social and
+natural science, jointly with historical research, pedagogy, hygiene and
+statistics are advancing from all directions, and furnish ammunition and
+weapons to the movement. Nor does philosophy lag behind. In
+Mainlaender's "The Philosophy of Redemption,"[159] it announces the
+near-at-hand realization of the "Ideal State."
+
+The ultimate conquest of the Class-State and its transformation is
+rendered all the easier to us through the divisions in the ranks of its
+defenders, who, despite the oneness of their interests against the
+common enemy, are perpetually at war with one another in the strife for
+plunder. Further aid comes to us from the daily-growing mutiny in the
+ranks of the enemies, whose forces to a great extent are bone of our
+bone, and flesh of our flesh--elements that, out of misunderstanding and
+misled, have hitherto fought against us and thus against themselves, but
+are gradually becoming clearsighted, and pass over to us. Finally we are
+aided by the desertion of the honorable elements from the ranks of the
+hitherto hostile men of thought, who have perceived the truth, and whose
+higher knowledge spurs them to leap their low class interests, and,
+following their ideal aspirations after justice, join the masses that
+are thirsting for freedom.
+
+Many do not yet realize the stage of dissolution that State and Society
+are in. Hence, and although the dark blotches have been frequently
+pointed out in the preceding chapters, a separate treatment of the
+subject is requisite.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[151] Louis Bridel, "La Puissance Maritale," Lausanne, 1879.
+
+[152] In the presentation of these civil rights we have merely followed
+Louis Bridel's work: "Le Droit des Femmes et le Marriage," Paris, 1893.
+
+[153] How correct this view is transpires also from the comedy of
+Aristophanes: "The Popular Assembly of Women." In that comedy,
+Aristophanes depicts how the Athenian government had reached the point
+when everything was going at sixes and sevens. The Prytaneum put the
+question to the popular assembly of the Athenian citizens: "How is the
+State to be saved?" Thereupon a woman, disguised as a man, made the
+proposition to entrust the helm of State to the women, and the
+proposition was accepted without opposition "because it was the only
+thing that had never before happened in Athens." The women seized the
+helm, and forthwith instituted _communism_. Of course, Aristophanes
+turns this condition into ridicule, but the significant point in the
+play is that, the moment the women had a decisive word in public
+affairs, they instituted communism as the only rational political and
+social condition from the standpoint of their own sex. Aristophanes
+little dreamed how he hit the truth while meaning to joke.
+
+[154] The above two paragraphs are left as they appear in the text,
+although they seem to be subject to corrections.
+
+A diligent search in the libraries of this city for the original of the
+above "Address to the Parliaments of the World," stated to have been
+issued by the Legislature of Wyoming in 1894, having proved vain, the
+Secretary of the State of Wyoming was written to. His answer was:
+
+
+The State of Wyoming,
+Office of the Secretary of State.
+Cheyenne, June 5, 1903.
+
+Mr. Daniel DeLeon, New York City:
+
+Dear Sir--Replying to your letter of June 1st, would say that the
+Legislature of Wyoming was not in session in 1894, and did not pass any
+resolutions on Woman Suffrage in 1893 or 1895.
+
+I enclose herewith the resolutions adopted by the Legislature of 1901,
+and also Senate and House resolutions adopted in 1903 on the subject of
+Woman Suffrage. Yours truly,
+
+F. Chatterton,
+Secretary of State.
+
+
+The resolutions enclosed in the above letter were these:
+
+[House Joint Resolution No. 8, adopted February, 1901.]
+
+Whereas, Wyoming was the first state to adopt equal suffrage and equal
+suffrage has been in operation since 1869; was adopted in the
+constitution of the State of Wyoming in 1890, during which time women
+have exercised the privilege as generally as men, with the result that
+better candidates have been selected for office, methods of election
+have been purified, the character of legislation improved, civic
+intelligence increased and womanhood developed to greater usefulness by
+political responsibility;
+
+Therefore, Resolved, by the House of Representatives, the Senate
+concurring, That, in view of these results, the enfranchisement of women
+in every state and territory of the American Union is hereby recommended
+as a measure tending to the advancement of a higher and better social
+order.
+
+That an authenticated copy of these resolutions be forwarded by the
+Governor of the state to the legislature of every state and territory,
+and that the press be requested to call public attention to these
+resolutions.
+
+                          Edward W. Stone,
+                            President of Senate.
+J. S. Atherly,
+  Speaker of House.
+                   Approved February 13th, 1901.
+                                     DeF. Richards,
+                                            Governor.
+
+
+[Senate and House Resolution, Seventh Legislature, 1903.]
+
+Whereas, The question of equal suffrage is being seriously considered in
+many States of the Union; and,
+
+Whereas, Equal suffrage has been in operation in Wyoming ever since
+Territorial days in 1869, during which time women have exercised the
+privilege of voting generally and intelligently, with the result that a
+higher standard of candidates have usually been selected for office;
+elections have been made peaceful, orderly and dignified; the general
+character of legislation improved; intelligence in political, civic and
+social matters greatly increased; and,
+
+Whereas, Under the responsibilities incident to suffrage the women of
+Wyoming have not in any sense been deprived of any of their womanly
+qualities, but on the contrary the womanhood of Wyoming has developed to
+a broader usefulness; therefore, be it
+
+Resolved by the Senate of the Wyoming Legislature, That in view of the
+beneficence and practical results of equal suffrage for men and women in
+Wyoming, the enfranchisement of women is hereby endorsed as a great
+national reform and a measure that will improve and advance the
+political and social conditions of the country at large.
+
+Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to Mrs. Carrie
+Chapman Catt, President National Women Suffrage Association, 2008
+American Tract Society Building, New York, and to Mrs. Harriet Taylor
+Upton, National Treasurer, Warren, Ohio.
+
+                                       G. A. Guernsey,
+Approved February 19th, 1903.       President of the Senate.
+  DeF. Richards,
+    Governor.
+                                         J. S. Atherly,
+                                     Speaker of the House.
+
+
+Agitational literature on woman suffrage, furnished by the Boston,
+Mass., "Woman's Journal," after the above note was in print, gives the
+address cited in the text, but not as issued by the Legislature of
+Wyoming, nor in 1894. The address was adopted in March, 1893, by the
+House of Representatives of the Wyoming Legislature, just before the
+final adjournment of the body, and was not acted upon by the
+Senate.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[155] In Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming women have full suffrage, and
+vote for all officers, including Presidential electors. In Utah and
+Wyoming woman suffrage is a constitutional provision.
+
+In Indiana women may hold any office under the school laws, but can not
+vote for any such office.
+
+In Kansas women exercise the suffrage largely in municipal elections.
+
+In some form, mainly as to taxation or the selection of school officers,
+woman suffrage exists in a limited way in Arizona, Connecticut,
+Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
+Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota,
+Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington and
+Wisconsin.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[156] On September 5, 1902, the Trades Union Congress of England--made
+up, of course, of the British style of Trades Unionism, known in America
+as "Pure and Simple" Trades Unionism--rejected a resolution introduced
+for the purpose of giving the franchise to women on the same terms as
+men.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[157] "To every woman who to-day dies in child-bed, from 15 to 20 must
+be added who remain more or less seriously injured, and subject to womb
+troubles and general ill health, often for life."--Dr. H. B. Adams.
+
+[158] Isabella Beecher-Hooker, "Womanhood, Its Sanctities and
+Fidelities."
+
+[159] "Philosophie der Erloesung."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE STATE AND SOCIETY.
+
+
+During the last few decades and in all countries of civilization, the
+economic life of society has assumed an uncommonly rapid pace of
+development, a development that every progress on any field of human
+activity adds swing to. Our social relations have thereby been thrown
+into a state of unrest, fermentation and dissolution never known before.
+The ruling classes no longer feel the ground safe under them, nor do
+existing institutions any longer possess the firmness requisite to
+breast the storm, that is approaching from all sides. A feeling of
+uneasiness, of insecurity and of dissatisfaction has seized upon all
+circles, high and low. The paroxysmal efforts put forth by the ruling
+classes to end this unbearable state of things by means of tinkering at
+the body social prove themselves vain and inadequate. The general sense
+of increasing insecurity, that comes from these failures, increases
+their uneasiness and discomfort. Hardly have they inserted a beam in the
+shape of some law into the rickety structure, than they discover ten
+other places where shoring is still more urgent. All along they are at
+perpetual strife among themselves and deeply rent by differences of
+opinion. What one set deems necessary, in order somewhat to calm and
+reconcile the increasingly discontented masses, the other considers as
+going too far, and unpardonable weakness and pliancy, only calculated to
+prick the longing after greater concessions. Striking evidences thereof
+are the debates in the 1894-5 sessions of the Reichstag, both on the
+floor of the house and in committee, on the so-called "revolutionary
+bill," as well as numerous other discussions in all parliaments. Within
+the ruling classes themselves there exist unbridgeable contrasts, and
+they sharpen the social conflicts.
+
+Governments--and not in Germany alone--are shaking like reeds in the
+wind. They must lean on something: without support they cannot exist:
+they now lean on this side, then on that. In no progressive country of
+Europe is there a Government with a lasting parliamentary majority, on
+which it can count with safety. Majorities are breaking up and
+dissolving; and the ever changing course, in Germany, especially,
+undermines the last vestige of confidence that the ruling class had in
+themselves. To-day one set is anvil, the other the hammer; to-morrow it
+is the other way. The one tears down what the other painfully builds up.
+The confusion is ever greater; the discontent ever more lasting; the
+causes of friction multiply and consume in a few months more energies
+than years did formerly. Along with all that, material sacrifices,
+called for by manifold taxes, swell beyond all measure.
+
+In the midst of all this, our sapient statesmen are lulling themselves
+in wondrous illusions. With an eye to sparing property and the rich,
+forms of taxation are selected that smite the needy classes heaviest,
+and they are decreed with the belief that, seeing a large portion of the
+masses have not yet discovered their real nature, neither will they be
+felt. This is an error. The masses to-day understand fully the nature of
+indirect imports and taxes upon the necessaries of life. Their growing
+political education and perspicuity disclose to them the gross injustice
+of the same; and they are all the more sensitive to these burdens by
+reason of the wretchedness of their economic conditions, especially
+where families are large. The rise of prices in the necessaries of
+life--due to indirect imposts, or to causes that bring on similar
+results, such as the premiums on brandy and sugar that, to the amount of
+dozens of millions, a part of the ruling class pockets yearly at the
+expense of the poor of the kingdom, and that it seeks to raise still
+higher--are realized to be a gross injustice, a heavy burden, measures
+that stand in odd contradiction with the nature of the so-called
+Christian State, the State of Social Reform. These measures extinguish
+the last spark of faith in the sense of justice of the ruling classes,
+to a degree that is serious to these. It changes nothing in the final
+effect of these measures that the draining is done in pennies. The
+increase in the expenditure is there, and is finally sensible to the
+feeling and the sight of all. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions cannot
+be squeezed out of practically empty pockets, without the owners of the
+pockets becoming aware of the lifting. The strong pressure of direct
+taxation, directs the dissatisfaction among the poor against the State;
+the still stronger indirect taxation, _directs the discontent against
+society also, the evil being felt to be of a social as well as political
+character_. In that there is progress. Him whom the gods would destroy,
+they first make blind.
+
+In the endeavor to do justice to the most opposed interests, laws are
+heaped upon laws; but no old one is thoroughly repealed, nor new one
+thoroughly enforced. Everything is done by halves, giving satisfaction
+in no direction. The requirements of civilization that spring from the
+life of the people, demand some attention, unless everything is to be
+risked; even the fractional way they are attended to, demands
+considerable sacrifice, all the more seeing that our public institutions
+are overrun by parasites. At the same time, not only are all the
+unproductive institutions, wholly at variance with the trend of
+civilization, continued in force, but, due to the existing conflicts of
+interests, they are rather enlarged, and thus they become all the more
+burdensome and oppressive in the measure that increasing popular
+intelligence ever more loudly pronounces them superfluous. Police,
+armies, courts of law, prisons, the whole administrative apparatus--all
+are enlarged ever more, and become ever more expensive. And yet neither
+external nor internal security is obtained. The reverse follows.
+
+A wholly unnatural state of things has gradually arisen in the
+international relations of the several nations. The relations between
+nation and nation multiply in the measure that the production of goods
+increases; that, thanks to improved transportation, the exchange of this
+mass of merchandise is facilitated; and that the economic and scientific
+achievements of each become the public possession of all. Treaties of
+commerce are concluded; expensive routes of traffic--Suez Canals, St.
+Gotthard Tunnels--are opened with international funds. Individual
+countries support with heavy subsidies steamship lines that help to
+promote intercourse between several nations. The Postal Union--a step of
+first rank in civilization--is established; international conventions
+are convoked for all imaginable practical and scientific purposes; the
+literary products of genius of any nation are spread abroad by
+translations into the leading languages. Thus the tendency is ever more
+strongly marked toward the internationalizing, the fraternizing of all
+peoples. Nevertheless, the political, the military state of the nations
+of Europe stands in strange contrast to this general development. The
+hatred of nation against nation, Chauvinism, is artificially nourished
+by all. The ruling classes seek everywhere to keep green the belief that
+it is the peoples who are hostilely inclined toward one another, and
+only wait for the moment when one of them may fall upon another and
+destroy it. The competitive struggle between the capitalists of several
+countries, together with their jealousy of one another, assume upon the
+international field the character of a struggle between the capitalists
+of one country against those of another, and, backed by the political
+blindness of the large masses, it conjures into existence a contest of
+military armaments such as the world has never seen before. This contest
+has brought forth armies of magnitudes that never were known; it
+produced implements of murder and destruction for land and naval warfare
+of such perfection as is possible only in an age of such advanced
+technique as ours. The contest drives these antagonisms to a head, it
+incites a development of means of destruction that finally destroy
+themselves. The support of the armies and navies demand sacrifices that
+yearly become larger, and that finally ruin the richest nation. Germany,
+for instance, had, according to the imperial budget of 1894-95, a
+regular army and navy outlay of nearly 700 million marks--inclusive of
+pensions and of interest on the national debt, which amounts in round
+figures to two milliards, incurred mainly for purposes of war. Under
+these war expenses, the appropriations for educational and other
+purposes of culture suffer severely; the most pressing needs in this
+direction are neglected; and that side of the State, devoted to
+so-called external defence, acquires a preponderance that undermines the
+original purpose of the State itself. The increasing armies absorb the
+healthiest and most vigorous portion of the nation; for their
+improvement all mental and physical forces are enlisted in a way as if
+education in mass-murder were the highest mission of our times.
+Furthermore, implements of war as of murder are continuously improved:
+they have attained--in point of swiftness, range and power--a perfection
+that renders them fearful to friend and foe. If some day this tremendous
+apparatus is set in operation--when the hostile forces of Europe will
+take the field with twelve or fourteen million men--the fact will appear
+that it has become uncontrollable. There is no general who could command
+such masses; there is no field vast enough to collect and set them up;
+no administrative apparatus that could nourish them for any length of
+time. If battles are delivered, hospitals would be lacking to shelter
+the wounded: the interment of the numerous dead would be an
+impossibility.
+
+When to all this is added the frightful disturbances and devastations,
+produced to-day by a European _war on the economic-field_, there is no
+exaggeration in the saying: "_the next war is the last war_." The number
+of bankruptcies will be unparalleled; export stops--and thereby
+thousands of factories are condemned to idleness; the supply of food
+ceases--and thereby the prices of the means of life rise enormously. The
+number of families whose breadwinner is in the field runs up into the
+millions, and most of them must be supported. Whence shall the means
+come for all that?
+
+The political and military state of Europe has taken a development that
+cannot choose but end in a catastrophe, which will drag capitalist
+society down to its ruin. Having reached the height of its development,
+it produces conditions that end with rendering its own existence
+impossible; it digs its own grave; it slays itself with the identical
+means that itself, as the most revolutionary of all previous social
+systems, has called into life.
+
+Gradually a large portion of our municipalities are arriving at a
+desperate pass: they hardly know how to meet the increasing demands upon
+themselves. It is more particularly upon our rapidly growing large
+cities, and upon the localities situated in industrial districts, that
+the quickened increase of population makes a mass of demands, which the
+generally poor communities can come up to only by raising taxes and
+incurring debts. The budgets leap upward from year to year for school
+buildings, and street paving, for lighting, draining and water works;
+for sanitary, public and educational purposes; for the police and the
+administration. At the same time, the favorably situated minority makes
+the most expensive demands upon the community. It demands higher
+institutions of education, theatres, the opening of particularly fine
+city quarters with lighting, pavement, etc., to match. However justly
+the majority may complain of the preference, it lies in the very nature
+of modern affairs. The minority has the power and uses it to satisfy its
+social wants as much as possible at the expense of the collectivity. In
+and of themselves nothing can be said against these heightened social
+wants: they denote progress; the fault is only that their satisfaction
+falls mainly to the lot of the property classes, while all others should
+share them. A further evil lies in that often the administration is not
+the best, and yet is expensive. The officials often are inadequate; they
+are not sufficiently equipped for the many-sided demands made upon them,
+demands that often presuppose thorough knowledge. The members of
+Aldermanic Boards have generally so much to do and to attend to in their
+own private affairs that they are unable to make the sacrifices demanded
+for the full exercise of these public duties. Often are these posts used
+for the promotion of private interests, to the serious injury of those
+of the community. The results fall upon the taxpayers. Modern society
+cannot think of undertaking a thorough change in these conditions. It is
+powerless and helpless. It would have to remove itself, and that, of
+course, it will not. Whatever the manner in which taxes be imposed,
+dissatisfaction increases steadily. In a few decades, most of our
+municipalities will be unable to satisfy their needs under their present
+form of administration and of raising revenues. On the municipal as well
+as on the national field, the need of a radical change is manifest: it
+is upon the municipalities that the largest social demands are made: it
+is society _in nuce_: it is the kernel from which, so soon as the will
+and the power shall be there, the social change will radiate. How can
+justice be done to-day, when private interests dominate and the
+interests of the commonweal are made subservient?
+
+Such, in short, is the state of things in the nation and in the
+municipality. They are both but the reflection of the economic life of
+society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The struggle for existence in our economic life grows daily more
+gigantic. The war of all against all has broken out with virulence; it
+is conducted pitilessly, often regardless of the weapon used. The
+well-known French expression: "_ote-toi de la, que je m'y mette_." (Get
+away, that I may step in) is carried out in practice with vigorous
+elbowings, cuffings, and pinchings. The weaker must yield to the
+stronger. Where physical strength--which here is the power of money, of
+property--does not suffice, the most cunning and unworthy means are
+resorted to. Lying, swindle, deceit, forgery, perjury--the very blackest
+crimes are often committed in order to reach the coveted object. As in
+this struggle for existence one individual transgresses against the
+other, the same happens with class against class, sex against sex, age
+against age. Profit is the sole regulator of human feelings; all other
+considerations must yield. Thousands upon thousands of workingmen and
+working-women are, the moment profit demands it, thrown upon the
+sidewalk, and, after their last savings have been spent, turned to
+public charity or forced to emigrate. Workingmen travel, so to speak, in
+herds from place to place, criss-cross across the country, and are
+regarded by "decent" society with all the more fear and horror, seeing
+that the continuity of their enforced idleness deteriorates their
+external appearance, and, as a consequence, demoralizes them internally.
+Decent society has no inkling of what it means to be forced, for months
+at a stretch, to be denied the simplest exigencies of order and
+cleanliness, to wander from place to place with a hungry stomach, and to
+earn, generally, nothing but ill-concealed fear and contempt, especially
+from those quarters that are the very props of this system. The families
+of these wretches suffer all along utmost distress--a distress that not
+infrequently drives the parents, out of desperation, to frightful crimes
+upon their own children and themselves. The last years have furnished
+numerous shocking instances of whole families falling a prey to murder
+and suicide. Let one instance do for many. The private correspondent,
+S----, in Berlin, 45 years of age, with a still handsome wife 39 years
+old, and a daughter of 12, is without work and starving. The wife
+decides, with the consent of her husband, to turn prostitute. The police
+gets wind thereof. The wife is placed under moral control. The family,
+overcome with shame and desperate, agree, all three, to poison
+themselves, and carry out their resolve on March 1, 1883.[160] A few
+days before, the leading circles of Berlin celebrated great court
+festivities at which hundreds of thousands were squandered.
+
+Such are the shocking contrasts of modern society--and yet we live in
+"the best of all possible worlds." Berlin has since then often witnessed
+the holocaust of whole families due to material want. In 1894 the
+spectacle was frequent, to an extent that called forth general horror;
+nor are the instances few, reported from large and small towns within
+and without Germany. This murder and suicide of whole families is a
+phenomenon peculiar to modern times, and an eloquent sign of the sorry
+economic state that society is in.
+
+This general want also drives women and girls in increasing numbers into
+the arms of prostitution. Demoralization and crime are heaped up, and
+assume the most manifold forms. The only thing that prospers is the
+jails, penitentiaries and so-called houses of correction, no longer able
+to accommodate the mass that is sent to them. The crimes of all sorts
+and their increase are intimately connected with the economic state of
+society--a fact, however, that the latter will not have. Like the
+ostrich, it sticks its head in the sand, to avoid having to admit the
+incriminating state of things, and it lies to the point of deceiving
+itself into the belief that the fault lies with the laziness of the
+workingmen, with their love of pleasure, and with their irreligiousness.
+This is a self-deception of the most dangerous, or a hypocrisy of the
+most repulsive, sort. The more unfavorable the state of society is for
+the majority, all the more numerous and serious are the crimes
+committed. The struggle for existence assumes its rudest and most
+violent aspect: it transfers man into conditions where each sees a
+mortal enemy in the other. The social bonds become looser every
+day.[161]
+
+The ruling classes, who do not probe matters to the bottom, or do not
+like to, seek to meet the evil after their own fashion. If poverty and
+want, and, as a result therefrom, demoralization and crime increase, the
+source of the evil is not searched after, so that it may be stopped; no;
+the products of the conditions are punished. The more gigantic the evils
+grow, and the numbers of evil-doers multiply in proportion,
+proportionately severe penalties and persecutions are deemed necessary.
+It is sought to drive out the devil with Beelzebub. Prof. Haeckel also
+considers it proper to proceed against criminals with the severest
+punishments possible, and that capital punishment, in particular, be
+stringently applied.[162] By this stand the Professor places himself in
+sweet accord with the re-actionists of all shades, who otherwise are
+mortally opposed to him. Haeckel is of the opinion that incorrigible
+scape-graces must be uprooted like weeds that take from plants light,
+air and space. Had Haeckel turned his mind slightly toward social,
+instead of engaging it wholly with natural science, he would know that
+these criminals could, in most instances, be transformed into useful
+members of human society, provided society offered them the requisite
+conditions of existence. He would also find that the annihilation of
+individual criminals or the rendering of them harmless, prevents as
+little the commission of fresh crimes in society, as the removal of
+weeds on a field would prevent their returning if the roots and seeds
+are not likewise destroyed. Absolutely to prevent the forming of harmful
+organisms in Nature is a feat man never will be able to achieve but _to
+so improve his own social system, a system produced by himself, that it
+may afford favorable conditions of life for all, and furnish to each
+equal freedom to unfold, to the end that they no longer need suffer
+hunger, or be driven to satisfy their desire for property, or their
+ambition at the expense of others--that is possible_. Let the cause of
+the crimes be studied, and let that be removed; then will the crimes
+themselves be wiped out.[163]
+
+Those who would remove crimes by removing the causes thereof, cannot, as
+a matter of course, sympathize with a plan of brutal suppression. They
+cannot prevent society from protecting itself after its own fashion
+against the criminals, whom it cannot allow a free hand; but we demand
+all the more urgently the radical reformation of society, i. e., the
+removal of the causes of crime.
+
+The connection between social conditions, on the one hand, and evildoing
+and crimes, on the other, has been frequently established by
+statisticians and sociologists. One of the misdemeanors nearest at
+hand--one that, all Christian charitable tenets to the contrary
+notwithstanding, modern society regards as a misdemeanor--is begging,
+especially during hard times. On that subject, the statistics of the
+Kingdom of Saxony inform us that, in the measure in which the last
+industrial crisis increased--a crisis that began in Germany in 1890, and
+whose end is not yet in sight--the number of persons also increased who
+were punished for begging. In 1889, there were 8,566 persons punished
+for this crime in the Kingdom of Saxony; in 1890, there were 8,815; in
+1891, there were 10,075; and in 1892 the figures rose to 13,120--quite
+an increase. Mass-impoverishment on one side, swelling affluence on the
+other--such is the sign-manual of our age. In Austria, in 1873, there
+was one pauper to every 724 persons; in 1882, to every 622 persons.
+Crimes and misdemeanors show similar tendency. In Austria-Hungary, in
+1874, there were 308,605 persons sentenced in the criminal courts; in
+1892, their number was 600,000. In the German Empire, in 1882, there
+were 329,968 persons sentenced for crimes and misdemeanors under the
+laws of the land; that is to say, to every 10,000 inhabitants of twelve
+years and over there were 103.2 criminals; in 1892, the number of
+criminals was 422,327, or 143.3--an increase of 39 per cent. Among the
+persons punished, there were, for crimes and misdemeanors against
+property:--
+
+
+                          To Every 10,000
+                          Inhabitants,
+                          12 Years of Age
+      Year.      Total.    and Over.
+    1882        169,334      53.0
+    1891        196,437      55.8
+
+
+We think these figures speak volumes. They show how the deterioration of
+social conditions intensify and promote poverty, want, misdemeanors and
+crimes.
+
+The basis of our social state is the capitalist system of production. On
+it modern society rests. All social, all political institutions are
+results and fruits of that system. It is the ground from which the whole
+social and political superstructure, together with its bright and dark
+sides, have sprung up. It influences and dominates the thoughts and
+feelings and actions of the people who live under it. Capital is the
+leading power in the State and in Society: the capitalist is the ruler
+of the propertyless, whose labor-power he buys for his use, and at a
+price, that, like all other merchandise, is governed by supply and
+demand and oscillates now above, then below the cost of reproduction.
+But the capitalist does not buy labor-power out of "sweet charity," in
+order to do a favor to the workingmen, although he often so pretends. He
+buys it for the purpose of obtaining surplus wealth from the labor of
+the workingmen, which he then pockets under the name of profit,
+interest, house and ground rent. This surplus wealth, squeezed out of
+the workingmen, and which in so far as the capitalist does not squander
+it in dissipation, crystallizes in his hands into more capital, puts him
+in a condition to steadily enlarge his plant, improve the process of
+production, and occupy increased labor forces. That, at the same time,
+enables him to step up before his weaker competitors, like a mailed
+knight before an unarmed pedestrian, and to destroy them. This unequal
+struggle between large and small capital spreads amain, and, as the
+cheapest labor-power, next to that of children and lads, woman plays
+therein a _role_ of increasing importance. The result is the ever
+sharper division of a smaller minority of mighty capitalists and a mass
+of capital-less male and female lack-alls whose only resource is the
+daily sale of their labor-power. The middle class arrives hereby at a
+plight that grows ever graver. One field of industry after another,
+where small production still predominated, is seized and occupied to
+capitalist ends. The competition of capitalists among themselves compels
+them to explore ever newer fields of exploitation. Capital goes about
+"like a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour." The smaller and
+weaker establishments are destroyed; if their owners fail to save
+themselves upon some new field--a feat that becomes ever harder and less
+possible--then they sink down into the class of the wage earners, or of
+Catilinarians. All efforts to prevent the downfall of handicraft and of
+the middle class by means of institutions and laws, borrowed from the
+lumber-room of the musty past, prove utterly ineffective. They may
+enable one or another to deceive himself on his actual condition; but
+soon the illusion vanishes under the heavy weight of facts. The process
+of absorption of the small by the large takes its course with all the
+power and pitilessness of a law of Nature, and the process is sensible
+to the feeling and the sight of all.
+
+In the period between 1875-1882, the number of small industries
+decreased in Prussia by 39,655,[164] although the population increased
+in this period by about two million heads. The number of workmen
+employed in small industries sank, during that time, from 57.6 per
+cent., to 54.9 per cent. The industrial statistics for 1895 will furnish
+much more drastic figures. The development of large production stands in
+close relation to the development of steam machine and steam
+horse-power. And what is the picture presented by these? Prussia had:--
+
+
+                               1878.   1893.
+    Stationary steam boilers  32,411  53,024 +  63.6 per cent.
+    Stationary steam engines  29,895  53,092 +  77.6 per cent.
+    Movable machines           5,536  15,725 + 184   per cent.
+
+
+The Kingdom of Saxony had:--
+
+
+                               1861.    1891.
+    Stationary steam engines   1,003    8,075 + 700 per cent.
+    Horse-power               15,633  160,772 + 922 per cent.
+
+
+In 1861, a steam engine in Saxony had, on an average, a 15.5
+horse-power; in 1891, it had 19. All Germany had in 1878 about three
+million horse-power in operation in industry; in 1894, about five
+million. Austria had in 1873 in round figures 336,000 horse-power; in
+1888, about 2,150,000. Steam power spreads daily, and stronger steam
+machines drive out weaker ones--large production drives out small. The
+fact is shown emphatically in the industries in which steam has become
+the general power, the brewery industry, for instance. In the German
+brewery tax department, exclusive of Bavaria, Wuertemburg, Baden and
+Alsace-Lorraine, there were:--
+
+
+               Breweries       Industrially
+      Year.  in Operation.      Operated.          Output.
+    1873         13,561          10,927          19,654,900 hl.
+    1891-2        8,460           7,571          33,171,100 hl.
+                 ------          ------          ----------
+                  5,101           3,356          13,516,200 hl.
+                Decrease        Decrease          Increase
+             = 38 per cent.  = 31.1 per cent.  = 68.8 per cent.
+
+
+The breweries in general, this table shows, had decreased during this
+period 38 per cent., the industrially operated ones 31.1 per cent.; the
+output, however, had increased 68.8 per cent. The giant concerns
+increased at the expense of the middle and small ones. The identical
+development is going on _in all countries of civilization, in all
+industries capitalistically operated_. Let us now take up the brandy
+distilleries. In all the eight provinces of Prussia, there were in
+operation:--[165]
+
+
+                               Consumed in Distillery,
+      Year.  Distilleries.    Brandy (Double Quintal).
+    1831       13,806        1,736,458          5,418,217
+    1886-87     5,814        2,518,478         24,310,196
+               ------        ---------         ----------
+                7,992          782,020         18,891,979
+              Decrease        Decrease          Increase
+           = 38 per cent.  = 31.1 per cent.  = 68 per cent.
+
+
+Similar results are revealed in the coal and the mineral mining
+industries of the German Empire. In the former, the number of leading
+concerns--623 in number between the years 1871-1875--dropped to 406 in
+1889, but the output increased simultaneously from 34,485,400 tons to
+67,342,200 tons, and the average number of employees rose from 172,074
+to 239,954. In the latter, the average number of leading establishments
+between 1871-1875, was 3,034, with an average force of 277,878 hands,
+that turned out 51,056,900 tons; in 1889, the number of leading
+establishments had _dropped to 1,962, while the average force had risen
+to 368,896 hands, and the output to 99,414,100 tons_.[166] We see that
+in the coal mine industry the number of concerns decreased during that
+period 35 per cent., while the number of employees rose 40 per cent.,
+and production as much as 95.2 per cent. Similarly in the mineral mining
+industry. Here the number of establishments decreased 35.3 per cent.,
+while the number of workingmen employed rose 33 per cent., and
+production 94.7 per cent. A smaller but much richer number of employers
+now confronted a greatly swollen number of proletarians. Nor does this
+technical revolution proceed in industry alone: it is also going on in
+the department of transportation and communication. German commerce had
+upon the seas:--
+
+
+              Sailing
+      Year.   Vessels.   Tonnage.   Crews.
+    1871       4,372     900,361    34,739
+    1893       2,742     725,182    17,522
+               -----     -------    ------
+               1,630     175,179    17,217
+             Decrease.  Decrease.  Decrease.
+
+
+Sail navigation, we see, declines perceptibly, but in so far as it
+continues to exist, _the tonnage of vessels increases, and the force of
+the crews decreases_. In 1871, there came to every one sailing vessel
+205.9 tons and 7.9 crew; in 1893, however, the average tonnage per
+sailing vessel was 271.7 and only a crew 6.4 strong. A different picture
+is offered by the German ocean steamship navigation. Germany had:--
+
+
+    Year.        Steamers.  Tonnage.   Crews.
+    1871            147      81,994    4,736
+    1893            986     786,397   24,113
+                    ---     -------   ------
+        Increase    839     704,403   19,377
+
+
+We see that, not only did the number of steamers rise considerably, but
+that their tonnage increased still more; on the other hand, the force of
+the crews had relatively decreased. In 1871, steamers had on an average
+a 558 tonnage, with a 32.1 crew; in 1893 they had a 797.5 tonnage and
+only a 24.5 crew. It is an economic law that the number of workingmen
+_decreases_ everywhere with the concentration of industry, while,
+relatively to the whole population, wealth concentrates in ever fewer
+hands, and the number of employers, rendered unable to hold their own
+and driven into bankruptcy by the process of concentration, mounts ever
+higher.
+
+In the eight old provinces of Prussia, the population increased 42 per
+cent. during 1853-1890. But the incomes in the several grades rose in
+the following rates:--[167]
+
+
+      Incomes.                 Increased
+    Up to     3,000 marks     42 per cent.
+    3,000--  36,000 marks    333 per cent.
+    36,000-- 60,000 marks    590 per cent.
+    60,000--120,000 marks    835 per cent.
+    Over    120,000 marks    942 per cent.
+
+
+The number of incomes up to 3,000 marks increased exactly with the
+population; it would, however, have lagged behind it if, within the
+period of 1853-1890, there had not been an extraordinary increase of
+national, State, municipal and private officials, the large majority of
+whose incomes falls below 3,000 marks. On the other hand, the number of
+large incomes has risen beyond all proportion, although, during the
+period under consideration, there was not yet any provision in Prussia
+making the correct estimate of incomes obligatory. This was introduced
+in 1891. The actual increase of incomes was, accordingly, much larger
+than the figures indicate. As stated before, the concentration of
+wealth, on the one side, is paralleled with mass-proletarianization, on
+the other, and also with swelling figures of bankruptcy. During the
+period of 1880-1889, the number of bankruptcy cases, adjudicated by law,
+averaged, in Germany, 4,885 a year; it rose to 5,908 in 1890; to 7,234
+in 1891; and to 7,358 in 1892. These figures do not include the large
+number of bankruptcies that did not reach the courts, the assets not
+being large enough to cover the costs; neither are included among them
+those that were settled out of court between the debtors and their
+creditors.
+
+The same picture that is presented by the economic development of
+Germany is presented by that of all industrial countries of the world.
+All nations of civilization are endeavoring to become industrial States.
+They wish to produce, not merely for the satisfaction of their own
+domestic wants, but also for exportation. Hence the absolute propriety
+of no longer speaking of "national" but of "international" economy. It
+is the world's market that now regulates the price of numberless
+products of industry and agriculture, and that controls the social
+position of nations. The productive domain, that, in the near future,
+will dominate the world's market is that of the United States--a quarter
+from which is now proceeding the principal impetus toward
+revolutionizing the relations of the world's market, and, along
+therewith, all bourgeois society. According to the census of 1890, the
+capital invested in industry in the United States has risen to 6,524
+million dollars, as against 2,790 million in 1880, an increase of 136
+per cent. The value of the industrial products rose during that period
+from 5,369 million dollars to 9,370 million, or 75 per cent. in round
+figures, while the population increased only 25 per cent.[168] The
+United States has reached a point of development where it must export a
+large mass of products in order to be able to continue producing in
+sufficient quantities. Instead of importing articles of industry from
+Europe, these will henceforth be exported in large volumes, thereby
+upsetting commercial relations everywhere. What pass has been reached
+there is indicated by the mammoth struggles between Capital and Labor,
+by the distress of the masses that has lasted years, and by the colossal
+increase of bankruptcy during the last crisis. In 1879, 1880 and 1881
+the sum absorbed in bankruptcies ran up to 82 million dollars in round
+figures; in 1890 the amount was 190 million dollars, and in 1891 it rose
+to 331 million dollars. An instance will illustrate the gigantic measure
+of the concentration of capital in that country. In 1870, there were in
+the United States 2,819 woolen mills, in which 96 million dollars were
+invested as capital; in 1890 the number of these mills had sunk to
+1,312, but the capital invested had risen to 136 million. In 1870, on an
+average, $34,000 sufficed to establish a woolen mill; in 1890, not less
+than $102,000 was requisite. The increased demands upon capital forces
+the building of stock corporations, which, in turn, promote the
+concentration still more. Where the powers of a single capitalist do not
+suffice, several of them join; they appoint technical overseers, who are
+well paid, and they pocket, in the form of dividends, the profits which
+the workingmen must raise. The restlessness of industry reaches its
+classic form in the stock corporation, which demonstrates how useless
+the person of the capitalist has become as a leader of industry.
+
+Seeing that this process of development and concentration is proceeding
+equally in all leading countries, the inevitable results of the anarchic
+method of production is "over-production," the stoppage of trade, the
+crisis.
+
+Accordingly, the crisis is a consequence of the absence of any means
+whatever whereby at any time the actual demand for certain goods can be
+gauged and controlled. There is no power in bourgeois society able to
+regulate production as a whole; the customers are spread over too vast
+an area; then also, their purchasing power, upon which depends their
+power of consumption, is affected by a number of causes, beyond the
+control of the individual producer. Moreover, along with each individual
+producer, are a number of others, whose productive powers and actual
+yield also are unknown to him. Each strives, with all the means at his
+command--cheap prices, advertisements, long credit, drummers, also
+secret and crafty detraction of the quality of the goods of his
+competitor, the last of which is a measure that flourishes particularly
+at critical moments--to drive all other competitors from the field.
+Production is wholly left to accident and to the judgment of
+individuals. Accident often is more unfavorable than otherwise. Every
+capitalist must produce a certain quantity of goods, in order that he
+may exist; he is, however, driven to increase his output, partly because
+his increase of revenues depends upon that, partly also because upon
+that depend his prospects of being able to overcome his competitors, and
+keep the field all to himself. For a while, the output is safe; the
+circumstance tends to expansion and increased production. But prosperous
+times do not tempt one capitalist alone; they tempt them all. Thus
+production rises far above demand, and suddenly the market is found
+overstocked. Sales stop; prices fall; and production is curtailed. The
+curtailment of production in any one branch implies a diminished demand
+for workingmen, the lowering of wages and a retrenchment of consumption
+in the ranks of labor. A further stoppage of production and business in
+other departments is the necessary consequence. Small producers of all
+sorts--trademen, saloonkeepers, bakers, butchers, etc.,--whose
+customers are chiefly workingmen, lose the profitable sale of their
+goods and likewise land in distress.
+
+The way in which such a crisis works appears from a census on the
+unemployed which the Social Democratic Party of Hamburg undertook on
+February 14, 1894. Of 53,756 workingmen who were interrogated, and of
+whom 34,647 were married, with an aggregate family dependence of
+138,851, there were 18,422 who, during the last year, had been idle a
+total of 191,013 weeks; 5,084 persons had been idle from 1 to 5 weeks;
+8,741 from 6 to 10 weeks; 1,446 from 11 to 15 weeks; 984 from 16 to 20
+weeks; 2,167 more than 20 weeks. These are workingmen, who wished to
+work, but who, in this best of all possible worlds, could find no work.
+The sorry plight of these people may be imagined.
+
+Again, one industry furnishes its raw material to another; one depends
+upon the other; it follows that all must suffer and pay for the blows
+that fall upon any. The circle of participants and sufferers spreads
+ever wider. A number of obligations, assumed in the hope of a long
+continuance of prosperity, cannot be met, and thus new fuel is added to
+the conflagration of the crisis, whose flames rise higher from month to
+month. An enormous mass of stored-up goods, tools, machinery, becomes
+almost worthless. The goods are got rid of at great sacrifices. Not only
+their proprietor is thereby ruined, but also dozens of others who are
+thereby likewise forced to give up their goods under cost. During the
+crisis itself, the method of production is all along improved with the
+view of meeting future competition; but this only prepares the ground
+for new and still worse crises. After the crisis has lasted years, after
+the surplusage of goods has been gradually done away with through sales
+at ruinous prices, through retrenchment of production, and through the
+destruction of smaller concerns, society slowly begins to recover again.
+Demand rises, and production follows suit--slowly at first and cautious,
+but, with the continuance of prosperity, the old vertigo sets in anew.
+Everyone is anxious to recover what he lost, and expects to be under
+cover before the next crisis breaks in. Nevertheless, seeing that all
+capitalists foster the identical thought, and that each one improves his
+plant so as to head off the others, the catastrophe is soon brought on
+again and with all the more fatal effect. Innumerable establishments
+rise and fall like balls at a game, and out of such continuous ups and
+downs flows the wretched state of things that is witnessed at all
+crises. These crises crowd upon one another in the measure that large
+production increases, and the competitive struggle--not between
+individuals only, but between whole nations--becomes sharper. The
+scampering for customers, on a small scale, and for markets on a large
+one, gains in fierceness, and ends finally in great losses. Goods and
+implements are heaped mountain high, yet the masses of the people suffer
+hunger and want.
+
+The autumn of the year 1890 brought new proof of the correctness of
+this outline. After a long series of years of business depression,
+during which, however, large capitalist development was steadily
+progressing, an improvement in our economic life set in during 1887-8,
+stimulated in no slight degree by the extensive changes introduced in
+our army and navy systems. The upward movement continued during 1889 and
+up into the first quarter of 1890. During this period, a number of new
+establishments began to crop up everywhere in several fields of
+industry; a large number of others were enlarged and improved to the
+highest point of technical perfection, and their capacity greatly
+increased. In the same measure that this large capitalist development
+progressed, a larger and ever larger number of establishments passed
+from the hands of individual capitalists into stock corporations--a
+change that ever is more or less connected with an increase of
+production. The new issues, that, as a result of these combinations and
+due also to the increase of the public debt, were contracted in the
+international money market, ran up in 1887 to about 4,000 million marks;
+in 1888, to 5,500 million; and in 1889, to even 7,000 million. On the
+other hand, the capitalists of all countries were endeavoring to
+"regulate" prices and production by means of national and international
+agreements. Rings and Trusts sprang up like mushrooms over night. The
+majority, often all the capitalists concerned in the more important
+branches of production, formed syndicates, by means of which prices were
+fixed, and production was to be regulated by the light of accurate
+statistical information. Over-production was thus to be prevented. A
+marvelous monopolization of industry, such as had never been seen, was
+thus achieved in the interest of the capitalists and at the expense of
+the workingmen, and of the consumers in general. For a while it seemed
+as if capital had come into possession of the means that enabled it to
+control the market in all directions, to the injury of the public and to
+its own greater glory. But appearances deceived. The laws of capitalist
+production proved themselves stronger than the shrewdest representatives
+of the system who imagined they held in their hands the power to
+regulate it. The crisis set in. One of the largest international
+business houses of England fell and involved a number of others in its
+fall. All exchanges and markets--of London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, as
+far as St. Petersburg, New York and Calcutta--shook and trembled. It had
+again been shown that the profoundest calculations prove deceptive, and
+that capitalist society cannot escape its fate.
+
+All this notwithstanding, capitalism proceeds on its course: it can be
+no other than it is. By means of the forms that its course dictates, it
+throws all the laws of capitalist economics overboard. "Free
+competition," the Alpha and Omega of bourgeois society, is to bring the
+fittest to the top of the enterprises; but the stock corporation
+removes all individuality, and places the crown upon that combination
+that has the longest purse and the strongest grip. The syndicates,
+Trusts and rings carry the point still further. Whole branches of
+industry are monopolized; the individual capitalist becomes but a pliant
+link in a chain, held by a capitalist committee. _A handful of
+monopolists set themselves up as lords of the world and dictate to it
+the price of goods, to the workingmen their wages and conditions of
+life._
+
+The whole course of this development brings out how utterly superfluous
+the individual capitalist has become, and that production, conducted
+upon a national and international scale, is the goal toward which
+society steers--with this difference, that, in the end, this organized
+production will redound to the benefit, not of a class, but of the
+collectivity.
+
+The economic revolution just sketched, and which is driving bourgeois
+society with great swiftness to its apogee, becomes more pointed from
+year to year. While Europe finds itself pressed more and more in its
+foreign markets, and finally on its own territory, by the competition of
+the United States, latterly enemies have risen in the East also,
+rendering still more critical the plight of Europe, and at the same time
+threatening the United States also. This danger proceeds from the
+progress of English India toward becoming a great agricultural and
+industrial State--a progress that, in the first place, looks to the
+meeting of the wants of India's own two hundred million strong
+population, and, in the second place, develops into a mortal enemy of
+English and German industry in particular. And still another industrial
+State is beginning to rise in the East--_Japan_. According to the
+"Kreuzzeitung" of February 20, 1895, "during the last ten years, Japan
+has imported from Europe the best perfected machinery for setting up
+industrial plants, especially in cotton spinning. In 1889, she had only
+35,000 spindles; now she has over 380,000. In 1889, Japan imported 31
+million pounds of raw cotton; in 1891, she imported 67 million. She is
+steadily decreasing her importations of manufactured articles, and
+increasing her importations of raw material, which she then retransports
+in the shape of manufactures. During the last year Hongkong, a European
+colony, bought over two million marks of Japanese cotton goods. The
+Japanese are providing their own markets with goods that formerly were
+imported from Europe and the United States. They are also exporting to
+Oriental markets, that were formerly provided from western sources. They
+are exporting matches and soap; they are manufacturing clothing, felt
+hats and hosiery; they have glass-blowing establishments, breweries,
+tileries, tan-yards and rope-walks."
+
+The further expansion of Japan's industry steadily reduces importations
+from Europe and the United States, and simultaneously places it in
+condition to turn up in the world's market as a competitor. Should
+China also, as a result of the Japanese-Chinese war, be compelled to
+open her immense territory to European culture, then, in view of the
+great adaptability and marvelous unpretentiousness of the Chinese
+workingman, another competitive power will have risen, more dangerous
+than any that the world's market has yet had to reckon with. Truly, the
+future of bourgeois society is threatened from all sides with grave
+dangers, and there is no way to escape them.
+
+Thus _the crisis becomes permanent and international_. It is a result of
+all the markets being overstocked with goods. And yet, still more could
+be produced; but the large majority of people suffer want in the
+necessaries of life because they have no income wherewith to satisfy
+their wants by purchase. They lack clothing, underwear, furniture,
+homes, food for the body and mind, and means of enjoyment, all of which
+they could consume in large quantities. But all that does not exist to
+them. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen are even thrown upon the
+sidewalk, and rendered wholly unable to consume because their
+labor-power has become "_superfluous_" to the capitalists. Is it not
+obvious that our social system suffers of serious ailments? How could
+there be any "over-production" when there is no lack of capacity to
+consume, i. e., of wants that crave satisfaction? Obviously, it is not
+production, in and of itself, that breeds these unhallowed conditions
+and contradictions: _it is the system under which production is carried
+on, and the product is distributed_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In human society, all its members are bound to one another by a thousand
+threads; and these threads are all the more numerous in proportion to a
+people's grade of culture. If disturbances set in, they are forthwith
+felt by all. Disturbances in production affect distribution and
+consumption; and _vice versa_. The feature of capitalist production is
+the concentration of property into ever fewer hands and into ever larger
+establishments. In distribution, on the contrary, an opposite current is
+noticeable. Whoever, due to the destructive effect of competition, is
+stricken from the list of independent producers, seeks, in nine cases
+out of ten, to squeeze himself as a dealer between the producer and the
+consumer, and thus to earn his livelihood.
+
+Hence the striking phenomenon of the increase of the middleman--dealers,
+shopkeepers, hucksters, commissioners, brokers, agents, saloonkeepers,
+etc. Most of these, among whom women are strongly represented, lead a
+life of worries and a needy existence. Many are compelled, in order to
+keep their heads above water, to speculate upon the lowest passions of
+man and to promote them in all manner of ways. Hence the marvelous swing
+of the most repulsive advertisements, particularly in all matters the
+object of which is the gratification of sexual pleasures.
+
+It is undeniable, and, viewed from a higher viewpoint, it is also
+cheering, that the current for a greater enjoyment of life runs deep in
+modern society. Man begins to understand that, in order to be human, a
+life worthy of human beings is requisite, and the feeling is expressed
+in such form as corresponds with the respective conceptions of the
+enjoyment of life. As far as the distribution of its wealth is
+concerned, society has become much more _aristocratic_ than at any
+previous period. Between the richest and the poorest, the chasm is wider
+to-day than ever before. On the other hand, with regard to its ideas and
+laws, society has become more _democratic_.[169] Hence the masses strive
+after greater equality; and, seeing that in their ignorance they know
+not yet the path by which to attain their wishes, they seek equality in
+the imitation of the upper classes by furnishing themselves with
+whatever pleasures are within their reach. All possible artificial means
+are resorted to in order to exploit this tendency; the consequences are
+often serious. The gratification of a justified desire thus leads in a
+number of cases to wrong paths, often to crime; and society intervenes
+in its own way, without thereby improving matters in the least.
+
+The increasing mass of the middlemen draws many evils in its wake.
+Although this class toils arduously and works under the load of heavy
+cares, _the majority are parasites, they are unproductively active, and
+they live upon the labors of others, just the same as the capitalist
+class_. Higher prices is the inevitable consequence of this industry.
+Food and other goods rise in price in such manner that they often cost
+twice or many times as much as the producer received for them.[170] If
+it is thought unadvisable or impossible to materially raise the price of
+the goods, lest consumption decline, they are artificially deteriorated,
+and recourse is had _to adulteration of food, and to false weights and
+measures_, in order to make the requisite profits. The chemist Chevalier
+reports that he knows, among the several adulterations of food, 32 for
+coffee, 30 for wine, 28 for chocolate, 24 for meal, 23 for brandy, 20
+for bread, 19 for milk, 10 for butter, 9 for olive oil, 6 for sugar,
+etc. The Chamber of Commerce of Wesel reported in 1870 that an extensive
+system of swindle was practiced in the shops in the sale of
+ready-weighed articles: for 1 pound, 24 or 26 pennyweights were given,
+and in that way twice as much was gained as the difference in the price.
+Workingmen and small traders who get their goods on credit and who must,
+accordingly, submit, even when the fraud is obvious, fare worst of all.
+Grave abuses are also perpetrated in bakeries. Swindling and cheating
+are inseparable from our modern conditions, and certain government
+institutions, such as high indirect taxes, are direct incentives
+thereto. The laws against the adulteration of food alter matters but
+little. The struggle for existence compels the swindlers to resort to
+ever shrewder means, nor is there any thorough and strict inspection.
+Leading and influential circles of our ruling classes are even
+interested in the system of swindle. Under the pretext that, in order to
+discover adulterations a more comprehensive and more expensive
+administrative apparatus is required, and that "legitimate business"
+would suffer thereby, almost all inspection, worthy of the name, is
+lamed. If, however, laws and measures of inspection do actually
+intervene, they affect a considerable rise in the price of the
+unadulterated products, seeing that the lower price was made possible
+only by adulteration.
+
+With the view of avoiding these evils of trade, evils that, as ever and
+everywhere, are hardest on the masses, "Consumers' Associations" have
+been set up. In Germany, the "Consumers' Association" plan, especially
+among the military and civil service employees, reaches such a point
+that numerous business houses have been ruined, and many are not far
+from the same fate. These Associations demonstrate the superfluousness
+of trade in a differently organized society.[171] In that consists their
+principal merit. The material advantages are not great for the members;
+neither are the facilities that they offer enough to enable the members
+to discover any material improvement in their condition. Not
+infrequently is their administration poor, and the members must pay for
+it. In the hands of capitalists, these Associations even become an
+additional means to chain the workingman to the factory, and they are
+used as weapons to depress wages. The founding of these "Consumers'
+Associations" is, however, a symptom that the evils of trade and at
+least the superfluousness of the middlemen have been realized in wide
+circles. Society will reach that point of organization at which trade
+becomes wholly superfluous; the product will reach the consumer without
+the intervention of any middlemen other than those who attend to its
+transportation from place to place, and who are in the service of
+society. A natural demand, that flows from the collective procurement of
+food, _is its collective preparation for the table upon a large scale,
+whereby a further and enormous saving would be made of energy, space,
+material and all manner of expenditures_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The economic revolution in industry and transportation has spread to
+agriculture also, and in no slight degree. Commercial and industrial
+crises are felt in the country as well. Many relatives of families
+located in the country are partially or even wholly engaged in
+industrial establishments in cities, and this sort of occupation is
+becoming more and more common because the large farmers find it
+convenient _to convert on their own farms a considerable portion of
+their produce_. They thereby save the high cost of transporting the raw
+product--potatoes that are used for spirits, beets for sugar, grain for
+flour or brandy or beer. Furthermore, they have on their own farms
+cheaper and more willing labor than can be got in the city, or in
+industrial districts. Factories and rent are considerably cheaper, taxes
+and licenses lower, seeing that, to a certain extent, the landed
+proprietors are themselves lawgivers and law officers: from their midst
+numerous representatives are sent to the Reichstag: not infrequently
+they also control the local administration and the police department.
+These are ample reasons for the phenomenon of increasing numbers of
+funnel-pipes in the country. Agriculture and industry step into ever
+closer interrelation with each other--an advantage that accrues mainly
+to the large landed estates.
+
+The point of capitalist development reached in Germany also by
+agriculture has partially called forth conditions similar to those found
+in England and the United States. As with the small and middle class
+industries, so likewise with the small and middle class farms, they are
+swallowed up by the large. A number of circumstances render the life of
+the small and middle class farmer ever harder, and ripen him for
+absorption by the large fellow.
+
+No longer do the one-time conditions, as they were still known a few
+decades ago, prevail in the country. Modern culture now pervades the
+country in the remotest corners. Contrary to its own purpose, militarism
+exercises a certain revolutionary influence. The enormous increase of
+the standing army weighs, in so far as the blood-tax is concerned,
+heaviest of all upon the country districts. The degeneration of
+industrial and city life compels the drawing of by far the larger
+portion of soldiers from the rural population. When the farmer's son,
+the day laborer, or the servant returns after two or three years from
+the atmosphere of the city and the barracks, an atmosphere not exactly
+impregnated with high moral principles;--when he returns as the carrier
+and spreader of venereal diseases, he has also become acquainted with a
+mass of new views and wants whose gratification he is not inclined to
+discontinue. Accordingly, he makes larger demands upon life, and wants
+higher wages; his frugality of old went to pieces in the city.
+Transportation, ever more extended and improved, also contributes toward
+the increase of wants in the country. Through intercourse with the city,
+the rustic becomes acquainted with the world from an entirely new and
+more seductive side: he is seized with new ideas: he learns of the wants
+of civilization, thitherto unknown to him. All that renders him
+discontented with his lot. On top of that, the increasing demands of the
+State, the province, the municipality hit both farmer and farmhand, and
+make them still more rebellious.
+
+True enough, many farm products have greatly risen in value during this
+period, but not in even measure with the taxes and the cost of living.
+On the other hand, transmarine competition in food materially
+contributes toward reducing prices: this reduces incomes: the same can
+be counterbalanced only by improved management: and nine-tenths of the
+farmers lack the means thereto. Moreover, the farmer does not get for
+his product the price paid by the city: he has to deal with the
+middlemen: and these hold him in their clutches. The broker or dealer,
+who at given seasons traverses the country and, as a rule, himself sells
+to other middlemen, wants to make his profits: the gathering of many
+small quantities gives him much more trouble than a large invoice from a
+single large holder: the small farmer receives, as a consequence, less
+for his goods than the large farmer. Moreover, the quality of the
+products from the small farmer is inferior: the primitive methods that
+are there generally pursued have that effect: and that again compels the
+small farmer to submit to lower prices. Again, the farm owner or tenant
+can often not afford to wait until the price of his goods rises. He has
+payments to meet--rent, interest, taxes; he has loans to cancel and
+debts to settle with the broker and his hands. These liabilities are due
+on fixed dates: he must sell however unfavorable the moment. In order to
+improve his land, to provide for co-heirs, children, etc., the farmer
+has contracted a mortgage: he has no choice of creditor: thus his plight
+is rendered all the worse. High interest and stated payments of arrears
+give him hard blows. An unfavorable crop, or a false calculation on the
+proper crop, for which he expected a high price, carry him to the very
+brink of ruin. Often the purchaser of the crop and the mortgagee are one
+and the same person. The farmers of whole villages and districts thus
+find themselves at the mercy of a few creditors. The farmers of hops,
+wine and tobacco in Southern Germany; the truck farmers on the Rhine;
+the small farmers in Central Germany--all are in that plight. The
+mortgagee sucks them dry; he leaves them, apparent owners of a field,
+that, in point of fact, is theirs no longer. The capitalist vampire
+often finds it more profitable to farm in this way than, by seizing the
+land itself and selling it, or himself doing the farming. Thus many
+thousand farmers are carried on the registers as proprietors, who, in
+fact, are no longer such. Thus, again, many a large farmer--unskilled in
+his trade, or visited by misfortune, or who came into possession under
+unfavorable circumstances--also falls a prey to the executioner's axe of
+the capitalist. The capitalist becomes lord of the land; with the view
+of making double gains he goes into the business of "butchering
+estates:" he parcels out the domain because he can thereby get a larger
+price than if he sold it in lump: then also he has better prospects of
+plying his usurious trade if the proprietors are many and small holders.
+It is well known that city houses with many small apartments yield the
+largest rent. A number of small holders join and buy a portion of the
+parcelled-out estate: the capitalist benefactor is ready at hand to pass
+larger tracts over to them on a small cash payment, securing the rest by
+mortgage bearing good interest. This is the milk in the cocoanut. If the
+small holder has luck and he succeeds, by utmost exertion, to extract a
+tolerable sum from the land, or to obtain an exceptionally cheap loan,
+then he can save himself; otherwise he fares as shown above.
+
+If a few heads of cattle die on the hands of the farm-owner or tenant, a
+serious misfortune has befallen him; if he has a daughter who marries,
+her outfit augments his debts, besides his losing a cheap labor-power;
+if a son marries, the youngster wants a piece of land or its equivalent
+in money. Often this farmer must neglect necessary improvements: if his
+cattle and household do not furnish him with sufficient manure--a not
+unusual circumstance--then the yield of the farm declines, because its
+owner cannot buy fertilizers: often he lacks the means to obtain better
+seed. The profitable application of machinery is denied him: a rotation
+of crops, in keeping with the chemical composition of his farm, is often
+not to be thought of. As little can he turn to profit the advantages
+that science and experience offer him in the conduct of his domestic
+animals: the want of proper food, the want of proper stabling and
+attention, the want of all other means and appliances prevent him.
+Innumerable, accordingly, are the causes that bear down upon the small
+and middle class farmer, drive him into debt, and his head into the
+noose of the capitalist or the large holder.
+
+The large landholders are generally intent upon buying up the small
+holdings, and thereby "rounding up" their estates. The large capitalist
+magnates have a predilection for investments in land, this being the
+safest form of property, one, moreover, that, with an increasing
+population, rises in value without effort on the part of the owners.
+England furnishes the most striking instance of this particular increase
+of value. Although due to international competition in agricultural
+products and cattle-raising, the yield of the land decreased during the
+last decades, nevertheless, seeing that in Scotland two million acres
+were converted into hunting grounds, that in Ireland four million acres
+lie almost waste, that in England the area of agriculture declined from
+19,153,900 acres in 1831, to 15,651,605 in 1880, a loss of 3,484,385
+acres, which have been converted into meadow lands, rent increased
+considerably. The aggregate rent from country estates amounted, in
+pounds sterling, to:--
+
+
+      Countries.          1857.       1875.       1880.     Increase.
+    England and Wales  41,177,200  50,125,000  52,179,381  11,002,181
+    Scotland            5,932,000   7,493,000   7,776,919   1,844,919
+    Ireland             8,747,000   9,293,000  10,543,000   1,796,700
+                       ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------
+        Total          55,856,200  67,911,000  70,499,300  14,643,800
+
+
+Accordingly, an increase of 26.2 per cent. within 23 years, and that
+without any effort on the part of the owners. Although, since 1880, due
+to the ever sharper international competition in food, the agricultural
+conditions of England and Ireland have hardly improved, the large
+English landlords have not yet ventured upon such large demands upon the
+population as have the continental, the German large landlords in
+particular. England knows no agricultural tariffs; and the demand for a
+minimum price, fixed by government, of such nature that they have been
+styled "price raisers" and as the large landlords of the East Elbe
+region together with their train-bands in the German Reichstag are
+insisting on at the cost of the propertyless classes, would raise in
+England a storm of indignation.
+
+According to the agricultural statistics gathered in Germany on June 2,
+1882, the farms fell into the following categories according to size:--
+
+
+                                       Percentage of
+     Area.                    Farms.   Total Farms.
+    Under 1 hectare         2,323,316     44.03
+      1 to     5 hectares   1,719,922     32.54
+      5 to    10 hectares     554,174     10.50
+     10 to    20 hectares     372,431      7.06
+     20 to    50 hectares     239,887      4.50
+     50 to   100 hectares      41,623      0.80
+    100 to   200 hectares      11,033      0.21
+    200 to   500 hectares       9,814      0.18
+    500 to 1,000 hectares       3,629      0.07
+           1,000 hectares         515      0.01
+                            ---------     -----
+           Total            5,276,344     99.90
+
+
+According to Koppe, a minimum of 6 hectares are requisite in Northern
+Germany for a farmer's family to barely beat itself through; in order
+to live in tolerable circumstances, 15 to 20 hectares are requisite. In
+the fertile districts of Southern Germany, 3 to 4 hectares are
+considered good ground to support a peasant family on. This minimum is
+reached in Germany by not four million farms, and only about 6 per cent.
+of the farmers have holdings large enough to enable them to get along in
+comfort. Not less than 3,222,270 farmers conduct industrial or
+commercial pursuits besides agriculture. It is a characteristic feature
+of the lands under cultivation that the farms of less than 50
+hectares--5,200,000 in all--contained only 3,747,677 hectares of grain
+lands, whereas the farms of more than 50 hectares--66,000 in round
+figures--contained 9,636,246 hectares. One and a quarter per cent. of
+the farms contained 2 1/2 times more grain land than the other 98-3/4 per
+cent. put together.
+
+And yet the picture presented by these statistics falls by far short of
+the reality. It has not been ascertained among how many owners these
+5,276,344 farms are divided. The number of owners is far smaller than
+that of the farms themselves: many are the owners of dozens of farms: it
+is in the instance of large farms, in particular, that many are held by
+one proprietor. A knowledge of the concentration of land is of the
+highest socio-political importance, yet on this point the agricultural
+statistics of 1882 leave us greatly in the lurch. A few facts are,
+nevertheless, ascertained from other sources, and they give an
+approximate picture of the reality. The percentages of large landed
+property--over 100 hectares--to the aggregate agricultural property was
+as follows:--
+
+
+      Provinces.  Percentage.         Provinces.    Percentage.
+    Pomerania        64.87          Brandenburg        42.60
+    Posen            61.22          Silesia            42.14
+    West Prussia     54.41          Saxony             30.89
+    East Prussia     41.79          Schleswig-Holstein 18.03
+
+
+According to the memorial of the Prussian Minister of Agriculture,
+published in the bulletin of the Prussian Bureau of Statistics, the
+number of middle class farms sank, from 354,610 with 35,260,084 acres,
+in 1816, to 344,737 with 33,498,433 acres, in 1859. The number of these
+farms had, accordingly, decreased within that period by 9,873, and
+peasant property had been wiped out to the volume of 1,711,641 acres.
+The inquiry extended only to the provinces of Prussia, Posen (from 1823
+on), Pomerania, exclusive of Stralsund; Brandenburg, Saxony, Silesia,
+and Westphalia.
+
+What disappears as peasant property usually goes into large estates. In
+1885, in the province of Pomerania, 62 proprietors held 118 estates; in
+1891, however, the same number of proprietors held 203 estates with an
+area of 147,139 hectares. Altogether, there were in the province of
+Pomerania, in 1891, 1,353 noble and bourgeois landlords, owning 2,258
+estates with 1,247,201 hectares.[172] The estates averaged 551 hectares
+in size.
+
+Our eastern provinces give this table of landlords for the year 1888:--
+
+
+    Prince of Hohenlohe-Oehringen   39,365 hectares
+    Prince of Sigmaringen           29,611    "
+    Prince of Thurn and Taxis       24,482    "
+    Prince Bismarck                 18,600    "
+    Prince Radziwill                16,398    "
+    Duke of Milzinski               13,933    "
+    Representative Kennemann        10,482    "
+    Duke Serg. v. Czarnecki          9,263    "
+    v. Hansemann                     7,734    "
+        Etc., etc., etc.
+
+
+We see that we here have to do with owners of latifundia of first rank;
+and a portion of these gentlemen own also large estates in Southern
+Germany and Austria.
+
+According to Conrad,[173] there were in the year 1888, in East Prussia,
+547 entails, of which 153 were instituted before the beginning of the
+nineteenth century. Entailed land is property that an heir can neither
+mortgage, divide nor alienate. The owner may go into bankruptcy through
+a dissolute life, but the entail and the income that flows therefrom
+remain unseizable. These entails, which only the very rich can
+institute, are steadily increasing in number since the last decades. The
+547 entails in existence in the eastern provinces of Prussia in 1888,
+held by 529 persons, 20 of whom were bourgeois, embraced 1,408,860
+hectares, or 2,454 hectares on an average. According to the statistical
+figures, submitted in the spring of 1894 by the Prussian Minister of
+Agriculture to the Agrarian Commission, the entails of Prussia embraced
+at that time 1,833,754 hectares with a net income of 22,992,000 marks.
+Estimating the holders of entails at 550, each has an unseizable income
+of 41,800 marks. Assuming, however, that these entails are concentrated
+in one province, it would mean that the whole province of
+Schleswig-Holstein, with an area of 1,890,000 hectares, belonged to 550
+owners. In 1888 there were in the eastern provinces of Prussia 154
+persons--among them 15 ruling Princes (the Kings of Prussia, Saxony,
+etc.); 89 Dukes, other Princes and Counts; 40 noblemen and 10
+bourgeois--who alone owned 1,830 estates aggregating 1,768,648 hectares
+of land. Probably, the property of these persons has in the meantime
+increased considerably, seeing that a good portion of the net incomes
+from these estates is expended in acquiring new ones. The nobility of
+the first and second rank are the principal elements engaged in this
+gigantic concentration of landed property; but they are closely followed
+by the aristocracy of finance, who, with increasing predilection, invest
+their wealth in land, consisting mainly in magnificent woods, stocked
+with roe, deer and wild boar, that the owners may gratify their passion
+for the hunt. A large number of the baronial manors consist of the
+estates of dispossessed peasants, who were driven from their homes and
+reduced to day laborers. According to Neumann, in the provinces of East
+and West Prussia alone, there were from twelve to thirteen thousand
+small holdings appropriated in that way between 1825 to 1859. This
+process of dispossessing, proletarianizing the country population by the
+capitalist landlords, has the laying waste of the land as a natural
+consequence. The population emigrates, or moves to the cities and
+industrial centers. Woods and meadows gain upon cultivated lands, the
+remaining territories are operated with machinery, that render human
+labor superfluous, or that need such only for short periods during the
+plowing and sowing seasons, or when the crops are gathered. The rapidly
+increasing number of movable steam engines, already mentioned, consists
+mainly of engines employed in the cultivation of the land. The decrease
+of the rural population, resulting upon these and other causes of
+secondary nature, is sharply expressed in the statistics on population.
+Within the eight old provinces of Prussia, the proportion between the
+rural and the city population revealed, between 1867 and 1890, the
+following progression:--
+
+
+      Year.      City Population.  Country Population.
+    1867             7,452,000        16,568,000
+    1890            11,783,000        18,173,000
+                    ----------        ----------
+        Increase     4,331,000         1,605,000
+                  = 58 per cent.    = 9.7 per cent.
+
+
+The rapidity is obvious with which the city is surpassing the country
+population. But the situation is still more unfavorable to the country
+if the fact is considered that 148 communities, with from 5,000 to
+40,000 inhabitants, and aggregating a population of 1,281,000 strong,
+are included in the rural but really belong to the industrial districts.
+They are essentially proletarian villages, located near large cities.
+Furthermore, 647 communities, with from 2,000 to 5,000 inhabitants, and
+aggregating a population of 1,884,000, are likewise included in the
+rural, while, to a perceptible degree, they belong to the industrial
+districts.
+
+Similar conditions exist in Saxony and Southern Germany. In Baden and
+Wurtemberg also the population of many districts is on the decline. The
+small farmer can no longer hold his head above water; to thousands upon
+thousands of them the fate of a factory hand is inevitable; they enter
+the field of industry; and, with the help of their families, they
+cultivate during leisure hours the plot of land that may still be
+theirs. At the same time the large landlord's hunger for land knows no
+bounds; his appetite increases the more peasant lands he devours.
+
+As in Germany so are things developing in neighboring Austria, where
+large landed property has long ruled almost unchecked. The difference
+there is that the Catholic Church shares the land with the nobility and
+the bourgeoisie. The process of smoking-out the farmer is in full swing
+in Austria. All manner of efforts are put forth in order to push the
+peasants and mountaineers of Tyrol, Salzburg, Steiermark, Upper and
+Lower Austria, etc., off their inherited patrimony and to drive them to
+relinquish their property. The spectacle, once presented to the world by
+England and Scotland, is now on the boards of the most beautiful and
+charming regions of Austria. Enormous tracts of land are bought in lump
+by rich men, and what cannot be bought outright is leased. Access to the
+valleys, manors, hamlets and even houses is thus barred by these new
+masters, and stubborn owners of separate small holdings are driven by
+all manner of chicaneries to dispose of their property at any price to
+these wealthy owners of the woodlands. Old farmlands, on which numerous
+generations have been supported for thousands of years, are being
+transformed into wilderness, in which the roe and the deer house, while
+the mountains, that the noble or bourgeois capitalist calls his own,
+become the abode of large herds of chamois. Whole communities are
+pauperized, the turning of their cattle upon the Alpine pastures being
+made impossible to them, or their right to do so being even disputed.
+And who is it that thus raises his hand against the peasant's property
+and independence? Princes, noblemen and rich bourgeois. Side by side
+with Rothschild and Baron Mayer-Melnhof are found the Dukes of Koburg
+and Meiningen, the Princes of Hohenlohe, the Prince of Lichtenstein, the
+Duke of Braganza, Prince Rosenberg, Prince Pless, the Counts of
+Schoenfeld, Festetics, Schafgotsca, Trautmannsdorff, the hunting
+association of the Count of Karolysche, the hunting association of Baron
+Gustaedtsche, the noble hunting association of Bluehnbacher, etc.
+
+Large landed property is everywhere on the increase in Austria. The
+number of large landlords rose 9.5 per cent. from 1873 to 1891, and that
+means a considerable decrease of small holders: land cannot be
+increased.
+
+In Lower Austria, of a total area embracing 3,544,596 yokes, 521,603
+were taken up by large estates (247 owners), and 94,882 yokes by the
+Church. Nine families alone owned, in the middle of the eighties,
+157,000 yokes, among these owners was the Count of Hoyos, with 54,000
+yokes. The area of Moravia is 2,222,190 hectares. Of these, the Church
+held 78,496, 3.53 per cent.; 145 private persons held 525,632, and one
+of these alone held 107,247 hectares. Of Austrian Silesia's area of
+514,085 hectares, the Church owned 50,845, or 9.87 per cent.; 36
+landlords owned 134,226, or 26.07 per cent. The area of Bohemia is
+5,196,700 hectares: of these the clergy owned 103,459 hectares; 362
+private persons owned 1,448,638. This number is distributed among Prince
+Colloredo-Mansfeld with 58,239 hectares; Prince Fuerstenberg with
+39,814; Imperial Duke Waldstein with 37,989; Prince Lichtenstein with
+37,937; the Count of Czerin with 32,277; the Count of Clam-Gallas with
+31,691; Emperor Franz Joseph with 28,800; the Count von Harrach with
+28,047; Prince von Lobkowitz with 27,684; Imperial Count Kinsky with
+26,265; the Count of Buquoy with 25,645; the Prince of Thurn and Taxis
+with 24,777; Prince Schwarzenberg with 24,037; Prince
+Metternich-Winneburg with 20,002; Prince Auersperg with 19,960; Prince
+Windischgraetz with 19,920 hectares, etc.[174]
+
+The absorption by the large landlords of the small holdings in land
+frequently proceeds in "alarming manner." For instance, in the judicial
+district of Aflenz, community of St. Ilgen, an Alpine hill of over 5,000
+yokes, with pasture ground for 300 head of cattle, and a contiguous
+peasant estate of 700 yokes, was all converted into a hunting ground.
+The same thing happened with Hoellaep, located in the community of
+Seewiesen, which had pasture land for 200 head of cattle. In the same
+judicial district of Aflenz, 47 other pieces of land, holding 840 head
+of cattle, were gradually absorbed and turned into hunting grounds.
+Similar doings are reported from all parts of the Alps. In Steiermark, a
+number of peasants find it more profitable to sell the hay to the lordly
+hunters as _feed for the game in winter_, than give it to their own
+cattle. In the neighborhood of Muerzzuschlag, some peasants no longer
+keep cattle, but sell all the feed for the support of the game.
+
+In the judicial district of Schwarz, 7, and in the judicial district of
+Zell, 16 Alpine hills, formerly used for pasture, were "cashiered" by
+the new landlords and converted into hunting grounds. The whole region
+of the Karwendel mountain has been closed to cattle. It is generally the
+high nobility of Austria and Germany, together with rich bourgeois
+upstarts, who bought up Alpine stretches of land of 70,000 yokes and
+more at a clip and had them arranged for hunting parks. Whole villages,
+hundreds upon hundreds of holdings are thus wiped out of existence; the
+inhabitants are crowded off; and in the place of human beings, together
+with cattle meet for their sustenance, roes, deer and chamois put in
+their appearance. Oddest of all, more than one of the men, who thus lay
+whole provinces waste, is seen rising in the parliaments and declaiming
+on the "distress of landed property," and abuses his power to secure the
+protection of Government in the shape of duties on corn, wood and meat,
+and premiums on brandy and sugar,--all at the expense of the
+propertyless masses.
+
+According to the census of the eighties, there were 8,547,285 farms in
+France; 2,993,450 farm owners had an average annual income of 300
+francs, the aggregate income of these being 22.5 per cent. of the total
+income from farms; 1,095,850 farm owners had an average annual income of
+1,730 francs, the aggregate income of these being 47 per cent. of the
+total income from farms; 65,525 large landlords, owning 109,285 farms,
+drew 25.4 per cent. of the total agricultural revenues:--_their
+possessions embraced more than one-half of the agricultural lands of
+France_.
+
+Large agricultural property is becoming the standard in all countries of
+civilization, and, in virtue of its political influence, it sways
+legislation without regard to the welfare of the commonwealth.
+Nevertheless, the tenure of agricultural land and its cultivation is of
+high importance to social development. Upon land and its productivity
+depends first of all the population and its subsistence. Land can not be
+multiplied at will, hence the question is of all the greater magnitude
+to everyone how the land is cultivated and exploited. Germany, whose
+population increases yearly by from 5,600,000 heads, needs a large
+supply of breadstuffs and meat, if the prices of the principal
+necessaries of life shall remain within the reach of the people.
+
+At this point an important antagonism arises between the industrial and
+the agricultural population. The industrial population, being
+independent of agriculture, has a vital interest in cheap food: the
+degree in which they are to thrive both as men and as workers depends
+upon that. Every rise in the price of food leads, either to further
+adulterations, or to a decline of exports, and thereby of wages as a
+consequence of increased difficulties of competition. The question is
+otherwise with the cultivator of the soil. As in the instance of the
+industrial producer, the farmer is bent upon making the largest gains
+possible out of his trade, whatever line that may be in. If the
+importation of corn and meat reduces the high prices for these articles
+and thereby lowers his profits, then he gives up raising corn and
+devotes his soil to some other product that may bring larger returns: he
+cultivates sugar-beet for the production of sugar, potatoes and grain
+for distilleries, instead of wheat and rye for bread. He devotes the
+most fertile tracts to tobacco instead of vegetables. In the same way,
+thousands of hectares are used as horse pastures because horses for
+soldiers and other purposes of war fetch good prices. On the other hand,
+extensive forests, that can be made fertile, are kept at present for the
+enjoyment of the hunting lords, and this often happens in neighborhoods
+where the dismantling of a few hectares of woodland and their conversion
+to agricultural purposes could be undertaken without thereby injuriously
+affecting the humidity of the neighborhood.
+
+Upon this particular point, forestry to-day denies the influence of
+woodlands upon moisture. Woods should be allowed in large masses only at
+such places where the nature of the soil permits no other form of
+cultivation, or where the purpose is to furnish mountain regions with a
+profitable vegetation, or with a check to the rapid running down of
+water in order to prevent freshets and the washing away of the land.
+From this point of view, thousands of square kilometers of fertile land
+could be reclaimed in Germany for agriculture. But such an alteration
+runs counter as well to the interests of the hierarchy of
+office-holders--foresters--as to the private and hunting interests of
+the large landlords, who are not inclined to forfeit their hunting
+grounds and pleasures of the chase.
+
+To what extent the process of rendering "hands" superfluous is
+progressing in agriculture and in the industries therewith connected has
+been shown in the palpable depopulation of the rural districts of
+Germany. It may, furthermore, be specified that in the period between
+1885 and 1890, the decrease of the rural population in 74 districts east
+of the Elbe was above 2 per cent.; in 44 of these 74 districts it was
+even above 3 per cent. In western Prussia, a decrease was established of
+over 2 per cent. in 16 districts, in two of which the decrease exceeded
+3 per cent. Especially high was the percentage of decrease in those
+neighborhoods where large landlords figure as special dispensations of
+Providence. In Wurtemberg, during the period between 1839 and 1885, the
+population of 22 peasant districts declined from 29,907 heads to
+19,213,--not less than 35.7 per cent. In East and West Prignitz, the
+rural population declined during the period of 1868-1885 from 100,000
+heads to 85,000,--15 per cent.
+
+The decrease of the rural working population is marked also in England
+where, as well known, latifundia property reigns supreme. The
+progression in the decrease of agricultural workers was there as
+follows:--
+
+
+      Sexes.        1861.         1871.      Decrease.
+    Males        1,833,652     1,328,151      505,501
+    Females        376,797       186,450      193,127
+                 ---------     ---------      -------
+        Total    2,210,449     1,514,601      698,628
+
+
+Since then the decrease has proceeded further. According to Dr. B. J.
+Brock, in the year 1885 there was the following yield per acre in
+bushels:--
+
+
+      Countries.      Wheat.   Barley.
+    Great Britain      35.2     37.8
+    Germany            18.7     23.6
+    France             16.0     19.5
+    Austria            15.5     16.8
+    Hungary            11.7     16.0
+
+
+The difference in productivity between Great Britain and the other
+countries is, we see, considerable, and it is attained through a more
+extensive operation of the soil. In Hungary also the number of persons
+engaged in agriculture has decreased considerably:--
+
+
+    1870          4,417,514
+    1880          3,669,177
+
+
+a decrease of 748,457, or more than 17 per cent. in ten years. The
+agricultural lands passed into the hands of large magnates and
+capitalists, who employed machines instead of human workers, and thus
+rendered the latter "superfluous." These phenomena manifest themselves
+everywhere in agriculture,--just as in large industrial production. The
+productivity of labor increases, and in the same measure a portion of
+the working class is promoted to the sidewalk.
+
+As a matter of course, this process has its evil consequences for woman
+also. Her prospects of being a proprietor and housewife decline, and the
+prospects increase of her becoming a servant, a cheap hand for the large
+landlord. As a sexual being she is more exposed even than in the city to
+the illicit wishes and cravings of the master or his lieutenants. More
+so than in industry, on the land proprietary rights in the labor-power
+frequently expand to proprietary rights over the whole person. Thus, in
+the very midst of "Christian" Europe a quasi Turkish harem system has
+developed. In the country, woman is isolated to a higher degree than in
+the city. The magistrate or a close friend of his is her employer:
+newspapers and a public opinion, to which she otherwise might look for
+protection, there are none: furthermore, male labor itself is generally
+in a disgraceful state of dependence. But "the heavens are away up, and
+the Tsar is away off."
+
+The census of occupation of 1882 established that, out of 5,273,344
+farms, only 391,746, or 7 1/2 per cent., employ machinery. Out of the
+24,999 large farms, however, containing over 100 hectares of land,
+machinery was in use on 20,558, or 82 1/4 per cent. Naturally, it is the
+larger farms only that can utilize machinery. The application of
+machinery on a large surface, all of one product, engages labor only a
+comparatively short time, the number of male and female hands,
+absolutely needed on the place and for tending the cattle, is reduced,
+and after the field work is done, the day laborers are discharged. Thus
+with us, just as in England and in a still higher degree in the United
+States, a rural proletariat of grave aspect springs up. If, in view of
+the shortness of the season, these workingmen demand correspondingly
+high wages when they are needed, their impudence is denounced; if, upon
+their discharge, they roam about in hunger and idleness, they are called
+vagabonds, are abused, and not infrequently dogs are set upon them to
+chase them from the yards as "tramps," unwilling to work, and they are
+handed over to the constabulary for the workhouse. A pretty social
+"order."
+
+Capitalist exploitation of agriculture leads in all directions to
+capitalist conditions. One set of our farmers, for instance, has for
+years made enormous profits out of beet-root and the production of sugar
+therewith connected. Our system of taxation favored the exportation of
+sugar, and it was so framed that the tax on beets yielded but an
+infinitesimal revenue to the treasury of the Empire, the premium on the
+exportation of sugar being large enough to almost swallow the tax.
+
+The rebate allowed the sugar manufacturers per double quintal was
+actually higher than the tax paid by them on beets; and this premium
+enabled them to sell large quantities of sugar at the expense of the
+domestic tax-payers, and to extend ever more the cultivation of the
+sugar-beet. The profit that accrued from this system of taxation to
+about 400 sugar factories was estimated at over 30 million marks for
+1889-1890: on an average 78,000 marks per factory. Several hundreds of
+thousands of hectares of land, previously devoted to raising grain, were
+turned into beet-root fields; factories upon factories were started, and
+are still being started; the inevitable consequence is an eventual
+crash. The large returns yielded by the beet-root cultivation affected
+favorably the price of land. It rose. The result was the buying up of
+the small farms, whose owners, seduced by the high prices, allowed
+themselves to be inveigled into selling. While the land was thus being
+used for industrial speculation, the raising of potatoes and grain was
+being confined to narrower fields, hence the increasing need of
+importation of food from abroad. The demand exceeds the supply.
+Thereupon, the large supply of foreign farm products and their cheaper
+transportation from Russia, the Danubian Principalities, North and South
+America, India, etc., finally leads to prices on which the domestic
+farmers--weighed down with mortgages and taxes, and hampered by the
+smallness of their farms, and their often faultily organized and
+deficiently conducted farming--can no longer exist. High duties are then
+placed upon importations; but these duties accrue only to the large
+farmer; the small fellow profits little by them, or none at all; and
+they become heavy burdens to the non-agricultural population. The
+advantage of the few becomes the injury of the many; small farming
+retrogresses; for it there is no balm in Gilead. That the condition of
+the small peasants in the tariff areas of Germany has been steadily
+deteriorating, will be generally admitted. The advantages to the large
+farmer from high duties, prohibitions of importations and measures of
+exclusion enable him all the more easily to buy out the small holder.
+The large number of those who do not produce in meat and bread what they
+consume themselves--and a glance at the statistics of occupation and
+division of the soil shows that these are by far the larger majority of
+the farmers--even suffers a direct injury from the increased prices
+resulting upon higher tariffs and indirect taxes. An unfavorable crop,
+that lowers still more the returns from the farm, not only aggravates
+the pressure, but also increases the number of the agriculturists who
+are compelled to become purchasers of farm products themselves. Tariffs
+and indirect taxes can not improve the economic condition of the
+majority of the farmers: he who has little or nothing to sell, what, to
+him, does the tariff boot, be it never so high! The incumbrance of the
+small farmer and his final ruin are thereby promoted rather than
+checked.
+
+For Baden--overwhelmingly a State of small farms--the increase of
+mortgage indebtedness during the period of 1884-1894 is estimated at 140
+to 150 million marks. The mortgage indebtedness of the Bern peasants
+aggregated in round figures 200 million francs in 1860; in 1890 it
+aggregated 500 million francs. According to a report of the Bohemian
+representative Gustave Eim, made to his constituents in 1893, the
+indebtedness that weighed upon the farms of Bohemia stood as follows:--
+
+
+    1879       2,716,641,754 guilders
+    1889       3,105,587,363 guilders
+
+
+We see that inside of that period the burden of indebtedness increased
+14.13 per cent.--that of small holdings 13.29 per cent., while that of
+the large holdings increased only 3.77 per cent. The bulk of the
+increased indebtedness fell to the share of middle class property.
+
+How the cultivator of the soil operates his farm is--under the aegis of
+St. Private Property--his own business. His private interest decides.
+What cares he about the commonwealth and its well-being? He has to look
+out for himself: so, then, stand aside! Does not the industrialist
+proceed on that plan? He produces obscene pictures, turns out immoral
+books, sets up factories for adulterating food. These and many other
+occupations are harmful to society: they undermine morality and incite
+corruption. What does that matter! It brings in money, even more money
+than moral pictures, scientific books, and honest dealing in
+unadulterated food. The industrialist, greedy after profits, needs to
+concern himself only about escaping the too sharp eye of the police; he
+can quietly pursue his shameful trade, assured that the money he will
+thereby rake in will earn for him the envy and esteem of society.
+
+The Mammon character of our age is best typified by the Exchange and its
+doings. Land and industrial products; means of transportation;
+meteorologic and political conditions; scarcity and abundance;
+mass-misery and accidents; public debts, inventions and discoveries; the
+health, sickness and death of influential persons; war and rumors of
+war, often started for the express purpose;--all this and much more is
+made objects of speculation, for exploitation and mutual cheating. The
+matadors of capital attain decided influence upon society, and, favored
+by the powerful means at their disposal and their connections, they
+amass enormous fortunes. Cabinet ministers and whole Governments become
+puppets in their hands, compelled to act according as matadors of the
+Exchange pull the wires behind the scenes. Not the State has the
+Exchange, but the Exchange has the State in its power. Will he, nill he,
+a Minister is often forced to water the upas tree, which he might prefer
+to tear up by the roots, but that he now must aid in growing.
+
+All these facts, that, seeing the evils gain by the day in magnitude,
+daily force themselves with increasing importunity upon the
+consideration of everyone, demand speedy and radical help. But modern
+society stands bewildered before all these phenomena, just as certain
+animals are said to stand before a mountain;[175] it turns like a horse
+in the treadmill, constantly in a circle,--lost, helpless, the picture
+of distress and stupidity. Those who would bring help are yet too weak;
+those who should bring help still lack the necessary understanding;
+those who could bring help will not, they rely upon force; at best, they
+think with Madame Pompadour "_apres nous le deluge_" (after us the
+deluge). But how if the deluge were to come before their departure from
+life?
+
+The flood rises and is washing out the foundations upon which our State
+and Social structure rests. All feel that the ground shakes, and that
+only the strongest props can now stead. But these demand great
+sacrifices on the part of the ruling classes. There is the rub. Every
+proposition injurious to the material interests of the ruling classes,
+and that threatens their privileged position, is bitterly opposed and
+branded as a scheme looking to the overthrow of the modern political and
+social order. Neither is the sick world to be cured without any danger
+to the privileges and immunities of the ruling classes, nor without
+their final abolition by the abolition of the classes themselves.
+
+"The struggle for the emancipation of the working class is no struggle
+for privileges, but a struggle for equal rights and equal duties; it is
+a struggle for the abolition of all privileges"--thus runs the programme
+of the Socialist Movement. It follows that half-measures and small
+concessions are fruitless.
+
+Until now, the ruling classes regard their privileged position as quite
+natural and normal, as to the justice of which no doubt may be
+entertained. It is a matter of course, therefore, that they should
+object and resolutely oppose every attempt to shake their prerogatives.
+Even propositions and laws, that affect neither the fundamental
+principles of the existing social order nor the privileged position of
+the ruling classes, throw them into great commotion the moment their
+purses are or might be touched. Mountains of paper are filed in the
+parliaments full of speeches and printed matter, until the heaving
+mountains bring forth a ridiculous mouse. The simplest and most obvious
+questions regarding the protection of Labor are met by them with such a
+resistance as though the existence of society hinged on such
+concessions. After endless struggles a few concessions are finally wrung
+from them, and then they act as if they had sacrificed a large part of
+their fortunes. The same stubborn resistance do they display if the
+point is the formal recognition of the equality of the oppressed
+classes, to allow these, for instance, to have an equal voice with them
+in wage and other labor agreements.
+
+This resistance to the simplest matters and the most obvious demands
+confirms the old principle founded in experience, that no ruling class
+can be convinced by _reasoning_, until the force of circumstances drives
+them to sense and to submission. This force of circumstances lies in the
+development of society, and in the increasing intelligence awakened by
+this very development among the oppressed. The class-antagonism--the
+sketch of our social conditions has pointed them out--grow more
+pronounced, visible and sensible. Along therewith increases the
+understanding of the untenableness of the existing order among the
+oppressed and exploited classes; their indignation mounts higher, and,
+as a result thereof, also the imperious demand for a change and for
+improved conditions. By penetrating ever wider circles, such
+understanding of the situation finally conquers the vast majority of
+society, most directly interested in the change. In the same measure,
+however, as the popular understanding increases regarding the
+untenableness of the existing order and the necessity of its radical
+change, the power of resistance decreases on the part of the ruling
+classes, whose power rests upon ignorance and lack of intelligence on
+the part of the oppressed and exploited. This cross effect is evident;
+hence, everything that promotes it must be welcome. The progress made by
+large capitalization, on one side, is amply compensated, on the other,
+by the increasing perception by the proletariat of the contradiction in
+which the social order stands with the well-being of the enormous
+majority. The dissolution and abolition of the social antagonisms may
+cost extraordinary pains, sacrifices and efforts, it may depend upon
+factors that lie beyond the influence of the individual, or even of a
+class. Nevertheless, the solution is reached the moment these
+antagonisms have reached their acme,--a point towards which they are
+rushing.
+
+The measures to be adopted at the various phases of development depend
+upon the then conditions. It is impossible to foretell what measures may
+become necessary under given circumstances. No Government, no Minister,
+be he ever so powerful, can foresee what circumstances may require in
+the next few years. All the less is it possible to foretell measures,
+that will be influenced by circumstance, which elude all accurate
+calculation. The question of "measures" is a question of tactics in
+battle. These depend upon the enemy and upon the means at his disposal,
+and at mine. A measure that would be excellent to-day, may be harmful
+to-morrow, the circumstances that yesterday justified its application
+having changed to-day. With the goal in view, the means to attain it by
+depend upon time and tide; imperative is but the seizing of the most
+effective and thorough going ones that time and tide may allow. In
+forecasting the future, hypotheses alone are available: things must be
+supposed to exist that have not yet set in.
+
+_Accordingly, we suppose the arrival of a day when all the evils
+described will have reached such maturity that they will have become
+oppressingly sensible to the feeling as to the sight of the vast
+majority, to the extent of being no longer bearable; whereupon a general
+irresistible desire for a radical change will seize society, and then
+the quickest will be regarded the most effective remedy._
+
+All social evils, without exception, have their source in that social
+order of things, which, as has been shown, rests upon capitalism, upon
+the capitalist system of production. Under this system, the capitalist
+class is the possessor of all instruments of labor--land, mines,
+quarries, raw material, tools, machines, means of transportation and
+communication--and it exploits and oppresses the vast majority of the
+people. The result of such abuses is an increased precariousness of
+livelihood, increased misery, oppression and degradation of the
+exploited classes. It is, consequently, necessary to convert this
+capitalist property into social property by means of a general
+expropriation. _Production for sale must be converted into socialist
+production, conducted for and by Society. Production on a large scale,
+and the increasing fertility of social labor,--until now a source of
+misery and of oppression for the exploited classes--must be turned into
+a source of highest well-being and of full and harmonious culture._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[160] Let also one American instance be cited. It occurred on April 1,
+1894, in Dolgeville, N. Y., where an employe of the "profit-sharing"
+concern of Alfred Dolge--at whose annual dinners Professor, now
+President George Gunton was regularly a star guest, and orator to the
+"dined" workingmen on the beauties of "profit-sharing,"--one of the
+workingmen, driven by the pinching poverty and incertitude inflicted
+upon him by the "profit-sharing" practice, killed his wife, four
+children and himself, and left a letter describing his plight. (See "The
+People," April 8, 1894)--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[161] As early as the days of Plato were the consequences of such
+conditions understood. He writes: "A nation in which classes exist, is
+not one, but two: one class is made up of the poor, the other of the
+rich, both living together, yet on the watch against each other.... In
+the end, the ruling class is unable to conduct a war, because it would
+then have to avail itself of the masses, whom, armed, it fears more than
+the enemy himself"; Plato, "The Republic." Aristotle says: "Widespread
+poverty is an evil, inasmuch as it is hardly possible to prevent such
+people from becoming inciters of sedition"; Aristotle, "Politics."
+
+[162] "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte."
+
+[163] Similarly Plato in "The Republic": "Crimes have their roots in
+want of culture, in bad education and bad social institutions."
+Evidently, Plato understood the nature of society better than one of his
+learned successors twenty-three hundred years later,--not a cheering
+contemplation.
+
+[164] In the sense of German industrial statistics, every employer is
+placed under the head of "small producer" who employs less than five
+persons.
+
+[165] Clemens Heiss: "Die grossen Einkommen in Deutschland."
+
+[166] Clemens Heiss, _ubi supra._
+
+[167] Clemens Heiss: "Die grossen Einkommen in Deutschland."
+
+[168] According to the census of 1900, the capital invested in industry
+was 9,831 million dollars,--an increase over 1890 of 3,307 million; and
+the value of the industrial products was 13,010 million dollars,--an
+increase over 1890 of 3,640 millions.--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+[169] Professor Adolf Wagner expresses the same thought in his first
+revised edition of Raus' "Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie." He says,
+p. 361: "The social question is the consciousness gained by the people
+of the contradiction between the economic development and the social
+principle of freedom and equality, that hovers over their minds as the
+ideal, and is realized in political life."
+
+[170] Dr. E. Sax says in his work "Die Hausindustrie in Thueringen,"
+among other things, that in 1869 the production of 244 1/4 million slate
+pencils had given from 122,000 to 200,000 gilders in wages to the labor,
+but the final price paid by the consumer rose to 1,200,000 gilders; it
+was, accordingly, at least six times as much as the producer received.
+In the summer of 1888, there were 5 marks paid at first hand for 5
+hundredweights of shellfish; the retailer paid the wholesale dealer 15
+marks; and the public paid 125 marks. Moreover, large quantities of
+foodstuffs are destroyed because the prices will not pay for
+transportation. For instance, in years of great herring draughts, whole
+boatloads are turned to manure, while inland there are hundreds of
+thousands of people who can buy no herrings. It was likewise in 1892
+with the large potato crops in California. And yet sense is claimed for
+such a state of things.
+
+[171] The industrial census of June 5, 1882, gives Germany 386,157 large
+and 154,474 small stores, a total of 531,631. In the large shops, there
+were 705,906 persons employed.
+
+[172] Dr. Rud. Meyer, "Das Sinken der Grundrente."
+
+[173] "Die Fideikommisse in den westlichen Provinzen Pruessens."
+
+[174] For further details see, "Das soziale Elend und die besitzenden
+Klassen in Oesterreich," T. W. Teisen.
+
+[175] A German idiom, expressive of dumb bewilderment, uses the simile:
+"Like oxen before a mountain."--THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE SOCIALIZATION OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+The soon as possible general expropriation of all the means of
+production furnishes society with a new foundation. The conditions of
+life and labor--in manufacture, agriculture, transportation and
+communication, education, marriage, science, art and intercourse--are
+radically changed for both sexes. Human existence acquires a new sense.
+The present political organization gradually loses ground: the State
+vanishes: in a measure it abolishes itself.
+
+It was shown in the first part of this book why the State arose. It
+arises, as the product of a social growth, from a primitive form of
+society, that rested on communism and that dissolved in the measure that
+_private property_ developed. With the rise of private property,
+antagonistic interests take shape within society; in the course of its
+development these antagonisms lead to rank and class contrasts, and
+these, in turn, grow into enmities between the several groups of
+interests, and finally into rank and class struggles, that threaten the
+existence of the new social order. In order to keep down these rank and
+class struggles, and to protect the property-holders, an organization is
+requisite that parries the assaults on property, and that pronounces
+"legal and sacred" the property obtained under certain forms. _This
+organization and power, that guards and upholds property, is the State._
+Through the enactment of laws it secures the owner in his ownership, and
+it steps as judge and avenger before him who assails the established
+order. By reason of its innermost being, the interest of a ruling
+property class, and of the Government therewith connected, is ever
+conservative. The organization of the State changes only when the
+interest of property so demands. The State is, accordingly, the
+_inevitably necessary_ organization of a social order that rests upon
+class rule. The moment class antagonisms fall through the abolition of
+private property, the State loses both the _necessity_ and the
+_possibility_ for its existence. With the removal of the conditions for
+rulership, the State gradually ceases to be, the same as creeds wane
+when the belief ceases in supernatural beings, or in transcendental
+powers gifted with reason. Words must have sense; if they lose that they
+cease to convey ideas.
+
+"Yes," interjects at this point a capitalist-minded reader, "that is all
+very well, but by what 'legal principle' can society justify such a
+change?" The legal principle is the same that ever prevailed, whenever
+it was the question of changes and reforms,--_public policy_. Not the
+State, but society is the source of right; the State is but the
+committee of Society, authorized to administer and dispense right.
+Hitherto, "Society" has been a small minority; yet it acted in the name
+of the whole community (the people) by pronouncing itself "Society,"
+much as Louis XIV. pronounced himself the "State,"--"_L'etat c'est moi_"
+(I am the State). When our newspapers announce: "The season begins;
+society is returning to the city," or "The season has closed; society is
+rushing to the country," they never mean the people, but only the upper
+ten thousand, who constitute "Society" as they constitute the "State."
+The masses are "plebs," "vile multitude," "canaille," "people." In
+keeping therewith, all that the State has done in the name of Society
+for the "public weal" has always been to the advantage and profit of the
+ruling class. It is in its interests that laws are framed. "_Salus
+reipublicae suprema lex esto_" (Let the public weal be the supreme law)
+is a well known legal principle of Old Rome. But who constituted the
+Roman Commonwealth? Did it consist of the subjugated peoples, the
+millions of slaves? No. A disproportionately small number of Roman
+citizens, foremost among these the Roman nobility, all of whom were
+supported by the subject class.
+
+When, in the Middle Ages, noblemen and Princes stole the common
+property, they did so "according to law," in the "interest of the public
+weal," and how drastically the common property and that of the helpless
+peasants was treated on the occasion we have sufficiently explained. The
+agrarian history of the last fifteen centuries is a narration of
+uninterrupted robbery perpetrated upon common and peasant property by
+the nobility and the Church in all the leading countries of Europe. When
+the French Revolution expropriated the estates of the nobility and the
+Church, it did so "in the name of the public weal"; and a large part of
+the seven million of landed estates, that are to-day the prop of modern
+bourgeois France, owe their existence to this expropriation. "In the
+name of the public weal," Spain more than once embargoed Church
+property, and Italy wholly confiscated the same,--both with the plaudits
+of the zealous defenders of "sacred property." The English nobility has
+for centuries been robbing the Irish and English people of their
+property, and, during the period of 1804-1832 made itself a present of
+not less than 3,511,710 acres of commons "in the interest of the public
+welfare." When during the great North American war for the emancipation
+of the negro, millions of slaves, the regular property of their masters,
+were declared free without indemnity to the latter, the thing was done
+"in the name of the public weal." Our whole capitalist development is an
+uninterrupted process of expropriation and confiscation, at which the
+manufacturer expropriates the workingman, the large landlord
+expropriates the peasant, the large merchant expropriates the small
+dealer, and finally one capitalist expropriates another, i. e., the
+larger expropriates and absorbs the smaller. To hear our bourgeoisie,
+all this happens in the interest of the "public weal," for the "good of
+society." The Napoleonites "saved Society" on the 18th Brumaire and 2d
+of December, and "Society" congratulated them. If hereafter Society
+shall save itself by resuming possession of the property that itself has
+produced, it will enact the most notable historic event--_it is not
+seeking to oppress some in the interest of others, but to afford to all
+the prerequisite for equality of existence, to make possible to each an
+existence worthy of human beings_. It will be morally the cleanest and
+most stupendous measure that human society has ever executed.
+
+In what manner this gigantic process of social expropriation will be
+achieved, and under what modality, eludes all surmise. Who can tell how
+general conditions will then be, and what the demands of public interest
+will be?
+
+In his fourth social letter to v. Kirchmann, entitled "Capital,"
+Rodbertus says: "The dissolution of all capitalist property in land is
+no chimera; on the contrary, it is easily conceivable in national
+economy. It would, moreover, be the most radical aid to society, that,
+as might be put in a few words, is suffering of rent-rising--rent of
+land and capital. Hence the measure would be the only manner of
+abolishing property in land and capital, _a measure that would not even
+for a moment interrupt the commerce and progress of the nation_." What
+say our agrarians to this opinion of their former political
+co-religionist?
+
+In the contemplation of how matters will probably shape themselves along
+the principal lines of human activity, upon such a measure of general
+expropriation, there can be no question of establishing hard and fast
+lines, or rigid institutions. No one is able to forecast the detailed
+molds in which future generations may cast their social organizations,
+and how they will satisfy their wants. In Society as in Nature,
+everything is in constant flux and reflux; one thing rises, another
+wanes; what is old and sered is replaced with new and living forms.
+Inventions, discoveries and improvements, numerous and various, the
+bearing and significance of which often none can tell, are made from day
+to day, come into operation, and, each in its own way, they
+revolutionize and transform human life and all society.
+
+We can, accordingly, be concerned only with general principles, that
+flow inevitably from the preceding _expose_, and whose enforcement may
+be supervised, up to a certain point. If even hitherto society has been
+no automatic entity, leadable and guidable by an individual, much as
+appearances often pointed the other way; if even hitherto those who
+imagined they pushed were themselves pushed; if even hitherto society
+was an organism, that developed according to certain inherent laws;--if
+that was hitherto the case, in the future all guiding and leading after
+individual caprice is all the more out of question. Society will have
+discovered the secret of its own being, it will have discovered the laws
+of its own progress, and it will apply these consciously towards its own
+further development.
+
+So soon as society is in possession of all the means of production, _the
+duty to work, on the part of all able to work, without distinction of
+sex, becomes the organic law of socialized society_. Without work
+society can not exist. Hence, society has the right to demand that all,
+who wish to satisfy their wants, shall exert themselves, according to
+their physical and mental faculties, in the production of the requisite
+wealth. The silly claim that the Socialist does not wish to work, that
+he seeks to abolish work, is a matchless absurdity, which fits our
+adversaries alone. Non-workers, idlers, exist in capitalist society
+_only_. Socialism agrees with the Bible that "He who will not work,
+neither shall he eat." But work shall not be mere activity; it shall be
+useful, productive activity. The new social system will demand that each
+and all pursue some industrial, agricultural or other useful occupation,
+whereby to furnish a certain amount of work towards the satisfaction of
+existing wants. _Without work no pleasure, no pleasure without work._
+
+All being obliged to work, all have an equal interest in seeing the
+following three conditions of work in force:--
+
+First, that work shall be moderate, and shall overtax none;
+
+Second, that work shall be as agreeable and varied as possible;
+
+Third, that work shall be as productive as possible, seeing that both
+the hours of work and fruition hinge upon that.
+
+These three conditions hinge, in turn, upon the nature and the number of
+the productive powers that are available, and also upon the aspirations
+of society. But Socialist society does not come into existence for the
+purpose of living in proletarian style; _it comes into existence in
+order to abolish the proletarian style of life of the large majority of
+humanity_. It seeks to afford to each and all the fullest possible
+measure of the amenities of life. The question that does rise is, How
+high will the aspirations of society mount?
+
+In order to determine this, an administration is requisite that shall
+embrace all the fields of social activity. Our municipalities constitute
+an effective basis thereto: if they are too large to allow a ready
+supervision, they can be divided into wards. As in primitive society,
+all members of the community who are of age participate in the
+elections, _without distinction of sex_, and have a voice in the choice
+of the persons who are to be entrusted with the administration. At the
+head of all the local administrations stands the central
+administration--as will be noted, not a Government, with power to rule,
+but an executive college of administrative functions. Whether the
+central administration shall be chosen directly by popular vote or
+appointed by the local administration is immaterial. These questions
+will not then have the importance they have to-day: the question is then
+no longer one of filling posts that bestow special honor, or that vest
+the incumbent with greater power and influence, or that yield larger
+incomes: it is then a question of filling positions of trust, for which
+the fittest, whether male or female, are taken; and these may be
+recalled or re-elected as circumstances may demand, or the electors may
+deem preferable. All posts are for given terms. The incumbents are,
+accordingly, clothed with no special "official qualities"; the feature
+of continuity of office is absent, likewise a hierarchical order of
+promotion. Hence it is also immaterial to us whether there shall be
+middle stages, say provincial administrations, between the central and
+the local administrations. If they are deemed necessary, they are set
+up; if they are not deemed necessary, they are left alone. All such
+matters are decided by actual exigencies, as ascertained in practice. If
+the progress of society has rendered any old organization superfluous,
+it is abolished without further ado and dispute, there being no longer
+any personal interest in conflict; and new ones are similarly
+established. Obviously, _such an administration, resting upon the
+broadest democratic foundation, differs radically from what we have
+to-day_. What a battle of newspapers, what a war of tongues in our
+parliaments, what mountains of public documents in our bureaus, if but a
+trivial change is made in the administration or the Government!
+
+The principal thing to ascertain is the number and the nature of the
+forces that are available, the quantity and nature of the means of
+production,--the factories, workshops, means of transportation and
+communication, land--and also their productivity. The next thing to
+ascertain is the quantity of the supplies that are on hand and the
+extent to which these can satisfy the wants of society. As to-day the
+State and the several municipalities yearly cast up their budgets, the
+thing will then be done with an eye to all the wants of society, without
+thereby excluding changes that increased or new wants may demand.
+Statistics here play the chief _role_: they become the most important
+subsidiary science of the new order: they furnish the measure for all
+social activities.
+
+Statistics are extensively used to-day for similar purposes. The
+Imperial, State and municipal budgets are based upon a large amount of
+statistical reports, made yearly by the several administrative branches.
+Long experience and a certain degree of stability in the running wants
+facilitate their gathering. Every operator of a large factory, every
+merchant is, under normal conditions, able to determine accurately what
+he will need during the next three months, and how he should regulate
+his production and purchases. Unless excessive changes set in, his
+calculations will be found safe.
+
+The experience that crises are caused by blind, anarchic production, i.
+e., that production is carried on without a knowledge of the volume of
+supply, of sales and of demand of and for the several goods in the
+world's market, has, as indicated in previous passages, caused large
+manufacturers in several branches of industry to join in Trusts and
+rings, partly with the view of steadying prices, partly also for the
+purpose of regulating production by the light of previous experience and
+of the orders received. According to the capability of each
+establishment and to the probable demand, the output of each is
+determined for the next few months. Infractions are punished with heavy
+conventional mulcts, and even expulsion. The capitalists do not conclude
+these agreements for the benefit of the public, but to its injury and to
+their own profit. Their purpose is to utilize the power of combination
+in order to secure the greatest advantages to themselves. This
+regulation of production has for its object to enable the capitalist to
+demand from the public prices that could not be got if the competitive
+struggle was on between the several capitalists. These enrich themselves
+at the expense of the consumers who are forced to pay whatever price is
+demanded for the goods they need. As the consumer, so is the workingman
+injured by the Trusts. The artificial regulation of production throws a
+part of the working class out of work, and, in order that these may
+live, they underbid their fellows at work. Thus the employer derives a
+double advantage: he receives higher prices, and he pays lower wages.
+Such a regulation of production by combinations of capitalists _is
+exactly the reverse of that which will be practiced in Socialist
+society_. While to-day the interests of the capitalists is the
+determining factor, the interests of all will then be the guide.
+Production will then be carried on for the satisfaction of human wants,
+and not in order to obtain, through high prices, large profits for
+private individuals. Nevertheless, the best planned combination in
+capitalist society can not take in and control all the factors needed in
+the calculation: competition and speculation run wild despite all
+combinations: finally the discovery is made that the calculation had a
+leak, and the scheme breaks down.
+
+The same as production on a large scale, commerce also has extensive
+statistics. Every week the larger centers of commerce and the ports
+publish reports on the supply of petroleum, coffee, cotton, sugar,
+grain, etc. These statistics are frequently inaccurate, seeing that the
+owners of the goods frequently have a personal interest in concealing
+the truth. On the whole, however, the statistics are pretty safe and
+furnish to those interested, information on the condition of the
+market. But here also speculation steps in, upsets all calculations, and
+often renders all legitimate business impossible. Seeing how impossible
+is a general regulation of production in capitalist society, due to the
+existence of many thousands of private producers with conflicting
+interests, it will be obvious why the speculative nature of commerce,
+the number of merchants and their conflicting interests render equally
+impossible the regulation of distribution. Nevertheless, what is done in
+these directions indicates what could be done so soon as private
+interest were to drop out and the interests of all were alone dominant.
+A proof of this is furnished by the statistics of crops, that are yearly
+issued by the leading countries of civilization, and that enable certain
+general conclusions to be drawn upon the size of the crops, the extent
+that they will supply the demand, and the probable price.
+
+In a socialized society matters are fully regulated; society is held in
+fraternal bonds. Everything is done in order; there, it is an easy
+matter to gauge demand. With a little experience, the thing is easy as
+play. If, for instance, the demand is statistically established for
+bread, meat, shoes, linen, etc., and, on the other hand, the
+productivity of the respective plants is equally known, _the average
+daily amount of socially necessary labor is thereby ascertained. The
+figures would, furthermore, point out where more plants for the
+production of a certain article may be needed, or where such may be
+discontinued as superfluous, or turned to other purposes._
+
+Everyone decides the pursuit he chooses: the large number of different
+fields of activity caters to the tastes of all. If on one field there is
+a surplus and on another a dearth of labor-power, the administration
+attends to the equalization of forces. To organize production, and to
+furnish the several powers with the opportunity to apply themselves at
+the right places will be the principal task of these functionaries. In
+the measure that the several forces are broken in, the wheels will move
+with greater smoothness. The several branches and divisions of labor
+choose their foremen, who superintend the work. These are no
+slave-drivers, like most foremen of to-day; they are fellow workers,
+who, instead of a productive, exercise an administrative function
+entrusted to them. The idea is by no means excluded that, with the
+attainment of higher perfection, both in point of organization and of
+individuals, these functions should alternate so that, within a certain
+time, and in certain order, they are filled by all _regardless of sex_.
+
+A system of labor, organized upon a plan of such absolute liberty and
+democratic equality, where each stands for all, and all stand for each,
+and where the sense of solidarity reigns supreme,--such a system would
+generate a spirit of industry and of emulation nowhere to be found in
+the modern economic system. Nor could such a spirit of industry fail to
+react both upon the productivity of labor and the quality of labor's
+product.
+
+Furthermore--seeing that all are mutually active--the interest becomes
+general in the best and most complete, as well as in the quickest
+possible production of goods, with the object of saving labor, and of
+gaining time for the production of further wealth, looking to the
+gratification of higher wants. _Such a common interest spurs all to bend
+their thoughts towards simplifying and quickening the process of labor.
+The ambition to invent and discover is stimulated to the highest pitch:
+each will seek to outdo the other in propositions and ideas._[176]
+
+Just the reverse will, accordingly, happen of which the adversaries of
+Socialism claim. How many are not the inventors and discoverers who go
+to pieces in the capitalist world! How many has it not exploited and
+then cast aside! If talent and intellect, instead of property, stood at
+the head of bourgeois society, _the larger part of the employers would
+have to make room for their workingmen, master mechanics, technical
+overseers, engineers, chemists, etc._ These are the men, who, in
+ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, make the inventions, discoveries and
+improvements, which the man with the money-bag exploits. How many
+thousands of discoverers and inventors have gone to pieces unable to
+find the man of means ready to provide the wherewithal for the execution
+of their thoughts; how many germs of inventions and discoveries have
+been and continue to be nipped by the social stress for bare existence,
+is a matter that eludes all calculation. Not the men of head and brain,
+but those of large wealth are to-day the masters of the world,--which,
+however, does not exclude the occasional and exceptional phenomenon of
+brains and wealth being united in one person. The exception only proves
+the rule.
+
+Everyone in practical life knows with what suspicion the workingman
+to-day regards every improvement, every invention introduced in the
+shop. And he is right. He rarely derives any advantage therefrom; it all
+accrues to the employer. The workingman is assailed with the fear lest
+the new machine, the new improvement cast him off to-morrow as
+superfluous. Instead of gladsome applause for an invention that does
+honor to man and is fraught with benefit for the race, he only has a
+malediction on his lips. We also know, from personal experience, how
+many an improvement perceived by the workingman, is not introduced: the
+workingman keeps silent, fearing to derive no benefit but only harm from
+it. Such are the natural consequences of an antagonism of
+interests.[177]
+
+This antagonism of interests is removed in Socialist society. Each
+unfolds his faculties in his own interest, and, by so doing,
+simultaneously benefits the commonweal. To-day personal gratification is
+generally antagonistic to the common weal; the two exclude each other.
+In the new Order, the antagonisms are removed: _The gratification of the
+ego and the promotion of the common weal harmonize, they supplement each
+other._[178]
+
+The marvelous effect of such a mental and moral condition is obvious.
+The productivity of labor will rise mightily, and such increased
+productivity makes possible the satisfaction of higher wants. Especially
+will the productivity of labor rise through the discontinuance of the
+present and enormous disintegration of labor, in hundreds of thousands,
+even millions of petty establishments, conducted with imperfect tools.
+According to the industrial census of the German Empire for the year
+1882, there were 3,005,457 leading establishments, exclusive of
+commerce, transportation, hotels and inns, in which 6,396,465 persons
+were occupied. Of these leading establishments, 61.1 per cent. employed
+less than 5 persons, and 16.8 per cent. employed from 6 to 50 persons.
+The former are small concerns, the latter middle class ones. Through the
+concentration of the small and middle class establishments into large
+ones, equipped with all the advantages of modern technique, an enormous
+waste in power, time, material (light, heat, etc.) space, now incurred,
+would be avoided, and the productivity of labor would gain
+proportionally. What difference there is in the productivity of small,
+middle class and large establishments, even where modern technique is
+applied, may be illustrated by the census of manufactories of the State
+of Massachusetts for 1890. The establishments in ten leading industries
+were divided into three classes. Those that produced less than $40,000
+worth of goods were placed in the lowest class; those that produced from
+$40,000 to $150,000 were placed in the middle class; and those that
+produced over $150,000 worth of goods were placed in the upper class.
+
+The result was this:--
+
+
+               Number of        Percentage    Productivity Percentage
+               Establishments.    of All          of        of Total
+    Classes.                  Establishments.  Each Class. Productivity.
+  Lower        2,042                55.2        51,660,617       9.4
+  Middle         968                26.2       106,868,635      19.5
+  Upper          686                18.6       390,817,300      71.1
+               -----               -----       -----------     -----
+               3,696               100.0       549,346,552     100.0
+
+
+The more than twice as large number of small establishments turned out
+only 9.4 per cent. of the total product. But even the large
+establishments could, with hardly any exception, be conducted far more
+rationally than now, so that, under a system of collective production,
+aided by the most highly perfected technical process, an infinitely
+larger demand could be supplied.
+
+Upon the subject of the saving of time, possible under a system of
+production planted on a rational basis, Th. Hertzka of Vienna has made
+some interesting calculations.[179] He investigated the amount of
+labor-power and time requisite for the satisfaction of the wants of the
+22 million inhabitants of Austria by means of production on a large
+scale. To this end Hertzka gathered information upon the capacity of
+large establishments in several fields, and he based his calculations
+upon the data thus ascertained. In Hertzka's calculation are included
+10,500,000 hectares of agricultural and 3,000,000 hectares of pasture
+lands, that should suffice for the production of agricultural products
+and of meat for the said population. Hertzka also included in his
+computation the building of houses on the basis of a house of 150 square
+meters, 5 rooms and strong enough to last 50 years, to each family. The
+result was that, for agricultural, building, the production of flour,
+sugar, coal, iron, machinery, clothing and chemicals, only 615,000
+workingmen were needed, at work the whole year and at the present
+average hours of daily labor. These 615,000 workingmen are, however,
+_only 12.3 per cent. of the population of Austria, capable to work,
+exclusive of all the women as well as the males under 16 and over 50
+years of age_. If all the 5,000,000 men, and not merely the above figure
+of 615,000, were engaged, then, _each of them would need to work only
+36.9 days--six weeks in round figures_--in order to produce the
+necessaries of life for 22 million people. Assuming 300 work days in the
+year, instead of 37, and 11 as the present daily hours of work, it
+follows that, under this new organization of labor, _only 1-3/8 hours a
+day would be needed to cover the most pressing needs of all_.
+
+Hertzka further computes the articles of luxury that the better situated
+demand, and he finds that the production of the same for 22 million
+people would require an additional 315,000 workingmen. Altogether,
+according to Hertzka, and making allowance for some industries that are
+not properly represented in Austria, one million in round figures, equal
+to 20 per cent. of the male population able to work, exclusive of those
+under 16 and above 50 years of age, would suffice to cover _all the
+needs of the population_ in 60 days. If, again, the whole male
+population able to work is made the basis of the computation, these
+would need to furnish but _two and a half hours work a day_.[180]
+
+This computation will surprise none who take a comprehensive view of
+things. Considering, then, that, at such moderate hours, even the men 50
+years old--all the sick and invalid excepted--are able to work;
+furthermore, that also youths under 16 years of age could be partially
+active, as well as a large number of women, in so far as these are not
+otherwise engaged in the education of children, the preparation of food,
+etc.;--considering all that, it follows that even these hours could be
+considerably lowered, or the demand for wealth could be considerably
+increased. None will venture to claim that no more and unforeseen
+progress, and considerable progress, at that, is possible in the
+process of production, thus furnishing still greater advantages. But
+the issue now is to satisfy a mass of wants felt by all that to-day are
+satisfied only by a minority. With higher culture ever newer wants
+arise, and these too should be met. We repeat it: _the new Social order
+is not to live in proletarian style; it lives as a highly developed
+people demand to live, and it makes the demand in all its members from
+the first to the last_. But such a people can not rest content with
+satisfying merely its material wants. All its members are to be allowed
+fullest leisure for their development in the arts and sciences, as well
+as for their recreation.
+
+Also in other important respects will Socialist society differ from the
+bourgeois individualist system. The motto: "Cheap and bad"--which is and
+must be standard for a large portion of bourgeois production, seeing
+that the larger part of the customers can buy only cheap goods, that
+quickly wear out--likewise drops out. Only the best will be produced; it
+will last longer and will need replacing at only wider intervals. The
+follies and insanities of fashion, promoted by wastefulness and
+tastelessness, also cease. People will probably clothe themselves more
+properly and sightfully than to-day, when, be it said in passing, the
+fashions of the last hundred years, especially as to men, distinguish
+themselves by their utter tastelessness. No longer will a new fashion be
+introduced every three months, an act of folly that stands in intimate
+relation with the competitive struggle of women among themselves, with
+the ostentatiousness and vanity of society, and with the necessity for
+the display of wealth. To-day a mass of establishments and people live
+upon this folly of fashion, and are compelled by their own interests to
+stimulate and force it. Together with the folly of fashion in dress,
+falls the folly of fashion in the style of architecture. Eccentricity
+reaches here its worst expression. Styles of architecture that required
+centuries for their development and that sprang up among different
+peoples--we are no longer satisfied with European styles, we go to the
+Japanese, Indians and Chinese--are used up in a few decades and laid
+aside. Our poor professional artists no longer know whither and whereto
+they should turn with and for their samples and models. Hardly have they
+assorted themselves with one style, and expect to recover with ease the
+outlays they have made, when a new style breaks in upon them, and
+demands new sacrifices of time and money, of mental and physical powers.
+The nervousness of the age is best reflected in the rush from one
+fashion to the other, from one style to the other. No one will dare to
+claim any sense for such hurrying and scurrying, or the merit of its
+being a symptom of social health.
+
+_Socialism alone will re-introduce a greater stability in the habits of
+life._ It will make repose and enjoyment possible; it will be a
+liberator from hurry and excessive exertion. Nervousness, that scourge
+of our age, will disappear.
+
+But labor is also to be made pleasant. To that end practical and
+tastefully contrived workshops are required; the utmost precautions
+against danger; the removal of disagreeable odors, gases and smoke,--in
+short, of all sources of injury or discomfort to health. At the start,
+the new social system will carry on production with the old means,
+inherited from the old. But these are utterly inadequate. Numerous and
+unsuitable workshops, disintegrated in all directions; imperfect tools
+and machinery, running through all the stages of usefulness;--this heap
+is insufficient both for the number of the workers and for their demands
+of comfort and of pleasure. The establishment of a large number of
+spacious, light, airy, fully equipped and ornamented workshops is a
+pressing need. Art, technique, skill of head and hand immediately find a
+wide field of activity. All departments in the building of machinery, in
+the fashioning of tools, in architecture and in the branches of work
+connected with the internal equipment of houses have the amplest
+opportunity. Whatever human genius can invent with regard to comfortable
+and pleasant homes, proper ventilation, lighting and heating, mechanical
+and technical provisions and cleanliness is brought into application.
+The saving of motor power, heating, lighting, time, as well as the
+promotion of all that tends to render work and life agreeable, demand a
+suitable concentration of the fields of labor on certain spots.
+Habitations are separated from places of work and are freed from the
+disagreeable features of industrial and other manual work. These
+disagreeable features are, in their turn, reduced to the lowest measure
+possible by means of suitable arrangements and provisions of all sorts,
+until wholly removed. The present state of technique has now means
+enough at command to wholly free from danger the most dangerous
+occupations, such as mining and the preparation of chemicals, etc. But
+these means can not be applied in capitalist society because they are
+expensive, and there is no obligation to do more than what is absolutely
+necessary for the workingman. The discomforts attached to mining can be
+removed by means of a different sort of draining, of extensive
+ventilation, of electric lighting, of a material reduction of hours of
+work, and of frequent shifts. Nor does it require any particular
+cleverness to find such protective means as would render building
+accidents almost impossible, and transform work in that line into the
+most exhilarating of all. Ample protections against sun and rain are
+possible in the construction of the largest edifices. Furthermore, in a
+society with ample labor-power at its disposal, such as Socialist
+society would be, frequent shifts and the concentration of certain work
+upon certain seasons of the year and certain hours of day would be an
+easy matter.
+
+The problem of removing dust, smoke, soot and odors could likewise be
+completely solved by modern chemistry and technique; it is solved only
+partially or not at all, simply because the private employers care not
+to make the necessary sacrifice of funds. The work-places of the future,
+wherever located, whether above or under ground, will, accordingly,
+distinguish themselves most favorably from those of to-day. Many
+contrivances are, under the existing system of private enterprise, first
+of all, a question of money: can the business bear the expenditure? Will
+it pay? If the answer is in the negative, then let the workingmen go to
+pieces. Capital does not operate where there is no profit. Humanity is
+not an "issue" on the Exchange.[181]
+
+The question of "profit" has exhausted its _role_ in Socialist society:
+_in Socialist society the only consideration is the welfare of its
+members_. Whatever is beneficent to these and protects them must be
+introduced; whatever injures them must stop. None is forced to join in a
+dangerous game. If matters are undertaken that have dangers in prospect,
+volunteers will be numerous, all the more so seeing that the object can
+never be to the injury, but only to the promotion of civilization.
+
+The amplest application of motor powers and of the best machinery and
+implements, the utmost subdivision of labor, and the most efficient
+combinations of labor-power will, accordingly, carry production to such
+pitch that the hours of work can be materially reduced in the production
+of the necessaries of life. The capitalist lengthens the hours of labor,
+whenever he can, especially during crises, when the worker's power of
+resistance is broken, and by squeezing more surplus values out of him,
+prices may be lowered. In Socialist society, an increase of production
+accrues to the benefit of all: _The share of each rises with the
+productivity of labor and increased productivity again makes possible
+the reduction of the hours of work, socially determined as necessary._
+
+Among the motor powers that are coming into application, electricity
+will, according to all appearances, take a decisive place.[182]
+Capitalist society is now everywhere engaged in harnessing it to its
+service. The more extensively this is done the better. The
+revolutionizing effect of this mightiest of all the powers of Nature
+will but all the sooner snap the bonds of bourgeois society, and open
+the doors to Socialism. But only in Socialist society will electricity
+attain its fullest and most widespread application. If the prospects now
+opened for its application are even but partially realized--and on that
+head there can be no doubt--electricity, as a motor power as well as a
+source of light and heat, will contribute immeasurably towards the
+improvement of the conditions of life. Electricity distinguishes itself
+from all other motor power in that, above all, its supply in Nature is
+abundant. Our water courses, the ebb and tide of the sea, the winds, the
+sun-light--all furnish innumerable horse-powers, the moment we know how
+to utilize them in full. Through the invention of accumulators it has
+been proved that large volumes of power, which can be appropriated only
+periodically, from the ebbs and tides, the winds and mountain streams,
+can be stored up and kept for use at any given place and any given time.
+All these inventions and discoveries are still in embryo: their full
+development may be surmised, but can not be forecast in detail.
+
+The progress expected from the application of electricity sounds like a
+fairy tale. Mr. Meems of Baltimore has planned an electric wagon able to
+travel 300 kilometers an hour--actually race with the wind. Nor does Mr.
+Meems stand alone. Prof. Elihu Thomson of Lynn, Mass., also believes it
+possible to construct electromotors of a velocity of 160 kilometers,
+and, with suitable strengthening of the rolling stock and improvement of
+the signal system, of a velocity of 260 kilometers; and he has given a
+plausible explanation of his system. The same scientist holds, and in
+this Werner Siemens, who expressed similar views at the Berlin
+Convention of Naturalists in 1887, agrees with him, that it is possible
+by means of electricity _to transform the chemical elements directly
+into food_--a revolution that would hoist capitalist society off its
+hinges. While in 1887 Werner Siemens was of the opinion that it was
+possible, though only in the remote future, to produce artificially a
+hydrate of carbon such as grape sugar and later the therewith closely
+related starch, whereby "bread could be made out of stone," the chemist
+Dr. B. Meyer claims that ligneous fibre could eventually be turned into
+a source of human food. Obviously, we are moving towards ever newer
+chemical and technical revolutions. In the meantime, the physiologist E.
+Eiseler has actually produced grape sugar artificially, and thus made a
+discovery that, in 1887, Werner Siemens considered possible only in the
+"remote future." In the spring of 1894, the French ex-Minister of Public
+Worship, Prof. Berthelot, delivered an address in Paris at the banquet
+of the Association of Chemical Manufacturers upon the significance of
+chemistry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects
+than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at
+about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll
+exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we
+shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of
+chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot went on to say:--
+
+"The manufacture of sulphuric acids and of soda, bleaching and coloring,
+beet sugar, therapeutic alkaloids, gas, gilding and silvering, etc.;
+then came electro-chemistry, whereby metallurgy was radically
+revolutionized; thermo-chemistry and the chemistry of explosives,
+whereby fresh energy was imparted to mining and to war; the wonders of
+organic chemistry in the production of colors, of flavors, of
+therapeutic and antiseptic means, etc. But all that is only a start:
+soon much more important problems are to be solved. About the year 2000
+there will be no more agriculture and no more farmers: chemistry will
+have done away with the former cultivation of the soil. There will be no
+more coal-shafts, consequently, neither will there be any more miners'
+strikes. Fuel is produced by chemical and physical processes. Tariffs
+and wars are abolished: aerial navigation, that helped itself to
+chemicals as motor power, pronounced the sentence of death upon those
+obsolete habits. The whole problem of industry then consists in
+discovering sources of power, that are inexhaustible and resortable to
+with little labor. Until now we have produced steam through the chemical
+energy of burning mineral coal. But mineral coal is hard to get and its
+supply decreases daily. Attention must be turned towards utilizing the
+heat of the sun and of the earth's crust. The hope is justified that
+both sources will be drawn upon without limit. The boring of a shaft
+3,000 to 4,000 meters deep does not exceed the power of modern, less yet
+it will exceed that of future engineers. The source of all heat and of
+all industry would be thus thrown open. Add water to that, and all
+imaginable machinery may be put in perpetual operation on earth: the
+source of this power would experience hardly any diminution in hundreds
+of years.
+
+"With the aid of the earth's heat, numerous chemical problems will
+become solvable, among these the greatest of all--_the chemical
+production of food_. In principle, the problem is solved now. The
+synthesis of fats and oils has been long known; likewise are sugar and
+hydrates of carbon known; nor will it be long before the secret of
+compounding azote is out. The food problem is a purely chemical one.
+The day when the corresponding cheap power shall have been obtained,
+food of all sort will be producable with carbon out of carbon oxides,
+and with hydrogen and acids out of water, and with nitrogen out of the
+atmosphere. What until now vegetation has done, industry will
+thenceforth perform, and more perfectly than Nature itself. The time
+will come when everyone will carry about him a little box of chemicals
+wherewith to provide his food supply of albumen, fat and hydrates of
+carbon, regardless of the hour of the day or the season of the year,
+regardless of rain or drought, of frost or hail, or insects. A
+revolution will then set in of which no conception is so far possible.
+Fields bearing fruit, wine-bearing mountain slopes and pastures for
+cattle will have vanished. Man will have gained in gentleness and
+morality seeing he no longer lives on the murder and destruction of
+living beings. Then also will the difference drop away between fertile
+and barren districts; perchance deserts may then become the favorite
+homes of man being healthier than the damp valleys and the
+swamp-infected plains. Then also will Art, together with all the
+beauties of human life reach full development. No longer will the face
+of earth be marred, so to speak, with geometrical figures, now entailed
+by agriculture: it will become a garden in which, at will, grass or
+flowers, bush or woods, can be allowed to grow, and in which the human
+race will live in plenty, in a Golden Age. Nor will man thereby sink
+into indolence and corruption. Work is requisite to happiness, and man
+will work as much as ever, because he will be working for himself aiming
+at the highest development of his mental, moral and esthetical powers."
+
+Every reader may accept what he please of this address of Prof.
+Berthelot; certain, however, is the prospect that in the future and in
+virtue of the progress of science, wealth--the volume and variety of
+products--will increase enormously, and that the pleasures of life of
+the coming generations will take undreamed of increment.
+
+An aspiration, deeply implanted in the nature of man, is that of freedom
+in the choice and change of occupation. As uninterrupted repetition
+renders the daintiest of dishes repulsive, so with a daily
+treadmill-like recurring occupation: it dulls and relaxes the senses.
+Man then does only mechanically what he must do; he does it without
+swing or enjoyment. There are latent in all men faculties and desires
+that need but to be awakened and developed to produce the most beautiful
+results. Only then does man become fully and truly man. Towards the
+satisfaction of this need of change, Socialist society offers, as will
+be shown, the fullest opportunity. The mighty increase of productive
+powers, coupled with an ever progressing simplification of the process
+of labor, not only enables a considerable lowering of hours of work, it
+also _facilitates the acquisition of skill in many directions_.
+
+The old apprentice system has survived its usefulness: it exists to-day
+only and is possible only in backward, old-fashioned forms of
+production, as represented by the small handicrafts. Seeing, however,
+that this vanishes from the new social Order, all the institutions and
+forms peculiar thereto vanish along with it. New ones step in. Every
+factory shows us to-day how few are its workingmen, still engaged at a
+work that they have been apprenticed in. The employes are of the most
+varied, heterogeneous trades; a short time suffices to train them in any
+sub-department of work, at which, in accord with the ruling system of
+exploitation, they are then kept at work longer hours, without change or
+regard to their inclinations, and, lashed to the machine, become
+themselves a machine.[183] Such a state of things has no place in a
+changed organization of society. There is ample time for the acquisition
+of dexterity of hand and the exercise of artistic skill. Spacious
+training schools, equipped with all necessary comforts and technical
+perfections will facilitate to young and old the acquisition of any
+trade. Chemical and physical laboratories, up to all the demands of
+these sciences, and furnished with ample staffs of instructors will be
+in existence. Only then will be appreciated to its full magnitude what a
+world of ambitions and faculties the capitalist system of production
+suppresses, or forces awry into mistaken paths.[184]
+
+It is not merely possible to have a regard for the need of change; it is
+the purpose of society to realize its satisfaction: the harmonious
+growth of man depends upon that. The professional physiognomies that
+modern society brings to the surface--whether the profession be in
+certain occupations of some sort or other, or in gluttony and idleness,
+or in compulsory tramping--will gradually vanish. There are to-day
+precious few people with any opportunity of change in their occupations,
+or who exercise the same. Occasionally, individuals are found who,
+favored by circumstances, withdraw from the routine of their daily
+pursuits and, after having paid their tribute to physical, recreate
+themselves with intellectual work; and conversely, brain workers are met
+off and on, who seek and find change in physical labors of some sort or
+other, handwork, gardening, etc. Every hygienist will confirm the
+invigorating effect of a pursuit that rests upon alternating physical
+and mental work; only such a pursuit is natural. The only qualification
+is that it be moderately indulged, and in proportion to the strength of
+the individual.
+
+Leo Tolstoi lashes the hypertrophic and unnatural character that art and
+science have assumed under the unnatural conditions of modern
+society.[185] He severely condemns the contempt for physical labor,
+entertained in modern society, and he recommends a return to natural
+conditions. Every being, who means to live according to the laws of
+nature and enjoy life, should divide the day between, first, physical
+field labor; secondly, hand work; thirdly, mental work; fourthly,
+cultured and companionable intercourse. More than eight hours' physical
+work should not be done. Tolstoi, who practices this system of life, and
+who, as he says, has felt himself human only since he put it into
+practice, perceives only what is possible to him, a rich, independent
+man, but wholly impossible to the large mass of mankind, under existing
+conditions. The person who must do hard physical work every day ten,
+twelve and more hours, to gain a meager existence, and who was brought
+up in ignorance, can not furnish himself with the Tolstoian system of
+life. Neither can they, who are on the firing line of business life and
+are compelled to submit to its exactions. The small minority who could
+imitate Tolstoi have, as a rule, no need to do so. It is one of the
+illusions that Tolstoi yields to, the belief that social systems can be
+changed by preaching and example. The experiences made by Tolstoi with
+his system of life prove how rational the same is; in order, however, to
+introduce such a system of life as a social custom, a social foundation
+is requisite other than the present. It requires a new society.
+
+_Future society will have such a foundation; it will have scientists and
+artists of all sorts in abundance; but all of them will work physically
+a part of the day, and devote the rest, according to their liking, to
+study, the arts or companionable intercourse._[186]
+
+The existing contrast between mental and manual labor--a contrast that
+the ruling classes seek to render as pronounced as possible with the
+view of securing for themselves also the intellectual means of
+sovereignty--will likewise be removed.
+
+It follows from the preceding arguments that crises and compulsory
+idleness are impossible phenomena in the new social Order. Crises arise
+from the circumstance that individualist, capitalist production--incited
+by profit and devoid of all reliable gauge with which to ascertain the
+actual demand--brings an overstocking of the world's market, and thus
+overproduction. The merchandise feature of the products under
+capitalism, of the products that their owners endeavor to exchange,
+makes the use of the product dependent upon the consumer's _capacity to
+buy_. The capacity to buy is, however, limited, in so far as the
+overwhelming majority are concerned, they being under-paid for their
+labor, or even wholly unable to sell the same if the capitalist does not
+happen to be able to squeeze a surplus value out of it. _The capacity to
+buy and the capacity to consume are two wholly distinct things in
+capitalist society._ Many millions of people are in want of clothes,
+shoes, furniture, linen, eatables and drinkables, but they have no
+money, and their wants, i. e., their capacity to consume, remains
+unsatisfied. The market is glutted with goods, but the masses suffer
+hunger; they are willing to work, but they find none to buy their
+labor-power because the holder of money sees nothing to "make" in the
+purchase. "Die, canaille; become vagabonds, criminals! I, the
+capitalist, can not help it. I have no use for goods that I have no
+purchaser to buy from me with corresponding profit." And, in a way, the
+man is right.
+
+In the new social Order this contradiction is wiped out. Socialist
+society produces not "merchandise," in order to "buy" and to "sell;" _it
+produces necessaries of life, that are used, consumed, and otherwise
+have no object_. In Socialist society, accordingly, the capacity to
+consume is not bounded, as in bourgeois society, by the individual's
+capacity to buy; _it is bounded by the collective capacity to produce_.
+If labor and instruments of labor are in existence, all wants can be
+satisfied; the social capacity to consume is bounded only by _the
+satisfaction of the consumers_.
+
+There being no "merchandise" in Socialist society, neither can there be
+any "money." Money is the visible contrast of merchandise; yet itself is
+merchandise! Money, though itself merchandise, is at the same time the
+social equivalent for all other articles of merchandise. But Socialist
+society produces no articles of merchandise, only articles of use and
+necessity, whose production requires a certain measure of social labor.
+The time, on an average requisite for the production of an article is
+the only standard by which it is measured for social use. Ten minutes
+social labor in one article are equal to ten minutes social labor in
+another--neither more nor less. Society is not "on the make"; it only
+seeks to effect among its members the exchange of articles of equal
+quality, equal utility. It need not even set up a standard of use value.
+It merely produces what it needs. If society finds that a three-hour
+work day is requisite for the production of all that is needed, it
+establishes such a term of work.[187] If the methods of production
+improve in such wise that the supply can be raised in two hours, the
+two-hour work day is established. If, on the contrary, society demands
+the gratification of higher wants than, despite the increase of forces
+and the improved productivity of the process of labor, can be satisfied
+with two or three hours work, then the four-hour day is introduced. Its
+will is law.
+
+How much social labor will be requisite for the production of any
+article is easily computed.[188] The relation of the part to the whole
+of the working time is measured accordingly. Any voucher--a printed
+piece of paper, gold or tin--certifies to the time spent in work, and
+enables its possessor to exchange it for articles of various kinds.[189]
+If he finds that his wants are smaller than what he receives for his
+labor, he then works proportionally shorter hours. If he wishes to give
+away what he does not consume, nothing hinders him. If he is disposed to
+work for another out of his own free will, so that the latter may revel
+in the _dolce far niente_,--if he chooses to be such a blockhead,
+nothing hinders him. But none can compel him to work for another; none
+can withhold from him a part of what is due him for labor performed.
+Everyone can satisfy all his legitimate desires--only not at the expense
+of others. He receives the equivalent of what he has rendered to
+society--neither more nor less, and he remains free from all
+exploitation by third parties.
+
+"But what becomes of the difference between the lazy and the
+industrious? between the intelligent and the stupid?" That is one of the
+principal questions from our opponents, and the answer gives them no
+slight headache. That this distinction between the "lazy" and the
+"industrious," the "intelligent" and the "stupid" is not made in our
+civil service hierarchy, but that the term of service decides in the
+matter of salary and generally of promotion also--these are facts that
+occur to none of these would-be puzzlers and wiseacres. The teachers,
+the professors--and as a rule the latter are the silliest
+questioners--move into their posts, not according to their own
+qualities, but according to the salaries that these posts bring. That
+promotions in the army and in the hierarchies of the civil service and
+the learned professions are often made, not according to worth, but
+according to birth, friendship and female influence, is a matter of
+public notoriety. That, however, wealth also is not measured by
+diligence and intelligence may be judged by the Berlin inn-keepers,
+bakers and butchers, to whom grammar often is a mystery, and who figure
+in the first of the three classes of the Prussian electorate, while the
+intellectuals of Berlin, the men of science, the highest magistrates of
+the Empire and the State, vote with the second class. There is not now
+any difference between the "lazy" and the "diligent," the "intelligent"
+and the "stupid" for the simple reason that what is understood by these
+terms exists no longer. A "lazy" fellow society only calls him who has
+been thrown out of work, is compelled to lead a vagabond's life and
+finally does become a vagabond, or who, grown up under improper
+training, sinks into vice. But to style "lazy fellow" the man who rolls
+in money and kills the day with idleness or debauchery, would be an
+insult: he is a "worthy and good man."
+
+How do matters stand in Socialist society? All develop under equal
+conditions, and each is active in that to which inclination and skill
+point him, whence differences in work will be but insignificant.[190]
+The intellectual and moral atmosphere of society, which stimulates all
+to excel one another, likewise aids in equalizing such differences. If
+any person finds that he cannot do as much as others on a certain field,
+he chooses another that corresponds with his strength and faculties.
+Whoever has worked with a large number of people in one establishment
+knows that men who prove themselves unfit and useless in a certain line,
+do excellent work in another. There is no normally constructed being who
+fails to meet the highest demands in one line or another, the moment he
+finds himself in the right place. By what right does any claim
+precedence over another? If any one has been treated so step-motherly by
+Nature that with the best will he can not do what others can, _Society
+has no right to punish him for the shortcomings of Nature_. If, on the
+contrary, a person has received from Nature gifts that raise him above
+others, _Society is not obliged to reward what is not his personal
+desert_. In Socialist society all enjoy equal conditions of life and
+opportunities for education; all are furnished the same opportunities to
+develop their knowledge and powers according to their respective
+capacities and inclinations. In this lies a further guarantee that not
+only will the standard of culture and powers be higher in Socialist than
+in bourgeois society, but also that both will be more equally
+distributed and yet be much more manifold.
+
+When, on a journey up the Rhine, Goethe studied the Cathedral of
+Cologne, he discovered in the archives that the old master-builders paid
+their workmen equal wages for equal time. They did so because they
+wished to get good and conscientious work. This looks like an anomaly to
+modern bourgeois society. It introduced the system of piece-work, that
+drives the workingmen to out-work one another, and thus aids the
+employer in underpaying and in reducing wages.
+
+As with manual, so with mental work. Man is the product of the time and
+circumstances that he lives in. A Goethe, born under equally favorable
+conditions in the fourth, instead of the eighteenth, century might have
+become, instead of a distinguished poet and naturalist, a great Father
+of the Church, who might have thrown St. Augustine into the shade. If,
+on the other hand, instead of being the son of a rich Frankfort
+patrician, Goethe had been born the son of a poor shoemaker of the same
+town, he never would have become the Minister of the Grand Duke of
+Weimar, but would probably have remained a shoemaker, and died an
+honorable member of the craft. Goethe himself recognized the advantage
+he had in being born in a materially and socially favorable station in
+order to reach his stage of development. It so appears in his "Wilhelm
+Meister." Were Napoleon I. born ten years later, he never would have
+been Emperor of France. Without the war of 1870-1871, Gambetta had never
+become what he did become. Place the naturally gifted child of
+intelligent parents among savages, and he becomes a savage. _Whatever a
+man is, society has made him._ Ideas are not creations that spring from
+the head of the individual out of nothing, or through inspiration from
+above; they are products of social life, of the _Spirit of the Age_,
+raised in the head of the individual. An Aristotle could not possibly
+have the ideas of a Darwin, and a Darwin could not choose but think
+otherwise than an Aristotle. Man thinks according as the Spirit of the
+Age, i. e., his surroundings and the phenomena that they present to him
+drive him to think. Hence the experience of different people often
+thinking simultaneously the same thing, of the same inventions and
+discoveries being made simultaneously in places far apart from each
+other. Hence also the fact that an idea, uttered fifty years too early,
+leaves the world cold; fifty years later, sets it ablaze. Emperor
+Sigismund could risk breaking his word to Huss in 1415 and order him
+burned in Constance; Charles V., although a more violent fanatic, was
+compelled to allow Luther to depart in peace from the Reichstag at Worms
+in 1521. Ideas are, accordingly, the product of combined social causes
+and social life. What is true of society in general, is true in
+particular of the several classes that, at given historic epochs,
+constitute society. As each class has its special interests, it also has
+its special ideas and views, that lead to those class struggles of which
+recorded history is full, and that reach their climax in the class
+antagonisms and class struggles of modern days. Hence, it depends not
+merely upon the age in which a man lives, but also upon the social
+stratum of a certain age in which he lived or lives, and whereby his
+feelings, thoughts and actions are determined.
+
+Without modern society, no modern ideas. That is obvious. With regard to
+the future social Order, it must be furthermore added that the means
+whereby the individual develops are the property of society. Society
+can, accordingly, not be bound to render special homage to what itself
+made possible and is its own product.
+
+So much on the qualification of manual and brain work. It follows that
+there can be no real distinction between "higher" and "lower" manual
+work, such as not infrequently a mechanic to-day affects towards the
+day-laborer, who performs work on the street, or the like. Society
+demands only socially necessary work; hence all work is of equal value
+to society. If work that is disagreeable and repulsive can not be
+performed mechanically or chemically and by some process converted into
+work that is agreeable--a prospect that may not be put in doubt, seeing
+the progress made on the fields of technique and chemistry--and if the
+necessary volunteer forces can not be raised, then the obligation lies
+upon each, as soon as is his turn, to do his part. False ideas of shame,
+absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These
+exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as
+an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the
+hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its
+social usefulness. To-day work is badly paid in proportion as it is
+disagreeable. The reason is that, due to the constant revolutionizing of
+the process of production, a permanent mass of superfluous labor lies on
+the street, and, in order to live, sells itself for such vile work, and
+at such prices that the introduction of machinery in these departments
+of labor does not "pay." Stone-breaking, for instance, is proverbially
+one of the worst paid and most disagreeable kinds of work. It were a
+trifling matter to have the stone-breaking done by machinery, as in the
+United States; but we have such a mass of cheap labor-power that the
+machine would not "pay."[191] Street and sewer cleaning, the carting
+away of refuse, underground work of all sorts, etc., could, with the aid
+of machinery and technical contrivances, even at our present state of
+development, be all done in such manner that no longer would any trace
+of disagreeableness attach to the work. Carefully considered, the
+workingman who cleans out a sewer and thereby protects people from
+miasmas, is a very useful member of society; whereas a professor who
+teaches falsified history in the interest of the ruling classes, or a
+theologian who seeks to befog the mind with supernatural and
+transcendental doctrines are highly injurious beings.
+
+The learned fraternity of to-day, clad in offices and dignities, to a
+large extent represents a guild intended and paid to defend and justify
+the rule of the leading classes with the authority of science; to make
+them appear good and necessary; and to prop up existing superstitions.
+In point of fact this guild is largely engaged in the trade of quackery
+and brain-poisoning--a work injurious to civilization, intellectual
+wage-labor in the interest of the capitalist class and its clients.[192]
+A social condition, that should make impossible the existence of such
+elements, would perform an act towards the liberation of humanity.
+
+Genuine science, on the other hand, is often connected with highly
+disagreeable and repulsive work, such, for instance, as when a physician
+examines a corpse in a state of decomposition, or operates on supurating
+wounds, or when a chemist makes experiments. These often are labors more
+repulsive than the most repulsive ones ever performed by day-laborers
+and untutored workingmen. Few recognize the fact. The difference lies in
+that the one requires extensive studies in order to perform it, whereas
+the other can be performed by anyone without preparatory studies. Hence
+the radical difference in the estimation of the two. But in a society
+where, in virtue of the amplest opportunities of education afforded to
+all, the present distinction between "cultured" and "uncultured" ceases
+to exist, the contrast is likewise bound to vanish between learned and
+unlearned work, all the more seeing that technical development knows no
+limits and manual labor may be likewise performed by machinery or
+technical contrivances. We need but look at the development of our art
+handicrafts--xylography and copper-etching, for instance. As it turns
+out that the most disagreeable kinds of work often are the most useful,
+so also is our conception regarding agreeable and disagreeable work,
+like so many other modern conceptions, utterly superficial; it is a
+conception that has an eye to externals only.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The moment production is carried on in Socialist society upon the lines
+traced above, it no longer produces "merchandise," but only articles of
+use for the direct demand of society. Commerce, accordingly, ceases,
+having its sense and reason for being only in a social system that rests
+upon the production of goods for sale. A large army of persons of both
+sexes is thus set free for productive work.[193] This large army, set
+free for production, not only increases the volume of wealth produced,
+but makes possible a reduction of the hours of work. These people are
+to-day more or less parasites: they are supported by the work of others:
+in many instances they must toil diligently in return for a meagre
+existence. In Socialist society they are superfluous as merchants,
+hosts, brokers and agents. In lieu of the dozens, hundreds and thousands
+of stores and commercial establishments of all sorts, that to-day every
+community holds in proportion to its size, large municipal stores step
+in, elegant bazaars, actual exhibitions, requiring a relatively small
+administrative personnel. This change in itself represents a revolution
+in all previous institutions. The tangled mass of modern commerce is
+transformed into a centralized and purely administrative department,
+with only the simplest of functions, that can not choose but grow still
+simpler through the progressive centralization of all social
+institutions. Likewise does the whole system of transportation and
+communication undergo a complete change.
+
+The telegraph, railroads, Post Office, river and ocean vessels, street
+railways--whatever the names of the vehicles and institutions may be
+that attend to the transportation and communication of capitalist
+society--now become _social_ property. Many of these institutions--Post
+Offices, telegraph and railroads generally--are now State institutions
+in Germany. Their transformation into social property presents no
+difficulties: there no private interests are left to hurt: if the State
+continues to develop in that direction, all the better. But these
+institutions, administered by the State, are no Socialist institutions,
+as they are mistakenly taken for. They are business plants, that are
+exploited as capitalistically as if they were in private hands. Neither
+the officers nor the workingmen have any special benefit from them. The
+State treats them just as any private capitalist. When, for instance,
+orders were issued not to engage any workingman over 40 years of age in
+the railway or marine service of the Empire, the measure carries on its
+brows the class stamp of the State of the exploiters, and is bound to
+raise the indignation of the working class. Such and similar measures
+that proceed from the State as an employer of labor are even worse than
+if they proceed from private employers. As against the State, the latter
+is but a small employer, and the occupation that this one denies another
+might grant. The State, on the contrary, being a monopolistic employer,
+can, at one stroke, cast thousands of people into misery with its
+regulations. That is not Socialist, it is capitalist conduct; and the
+Socialist guards against allowing the present State ownership being
+regarded as Socialism, or the realization of Socialist aspirations. In a
+Socialist institution there are no employers. The leader, chosen for the
+purpose, can only carry out the orders and superintend the execution of
+the disciplinary and other measures prescribed by the collectivity
+itself.
+
+As in the instance of the millions of private producers, dealers and
+middlemen of all sorts, large centralized establishments take their
+place, so does the whole system of transportation and communication
+assume new shape. The myriads of small shipments to as many consignees
+that consume a mass of powers and of time, now grow into large shipments
+to the municipal depots and the central places of production. Here also
+labor is simplified. The transportation of raw material to an
+establishment of a thousand workers is an infinitely simpler matter than
+to a thousand small and scattered establishments. Thus centralized
+localities of production and of transportation for whole communities, or
+divisions of the same, will introduce a great saving of time, of labor,
+of material, and of means both of production and distribution. The
+benefit accrues to the whole community, and to each individual therein.
+The physiognomy of our productive establishments, of our system of
+transportation and communication, especially also of our habitations,
+will be completely altered for the better. The nerve-racking noise,
+crowding and rushing of our large cities with their thousands of
+vehicles of all sorts ceases substantially: society assumes an aspect of
+greater repose. The opening of streets and their cleaning, the whole
+system of life and of intercourse acquires new character. Hygienic
+measures--possible to-day only at great cost and then only partially,
+not infrequently only in the quarters of the rich--can be introduced
+with ease everywhere. To-day "the common people" do not need them; they
+can wait till the funds are ready; and these never are.
+
+Such a system of communication and transportation can not then choose
+but reach a high grade of perfection. Who knows but aerial navigation
+may then become a chief means of travel. The lines of transportation and
+communication are the arteries that carry the exchange of
+products--circulation of the blood--throughout the whole body social,
+that effect personal and mental intercourse between man and man. They
+are, consequently, highly calculated to establish an equal level of
+well-being and culture throughout society. The extension and
+ramification of the most perfect means of transportation and
+communication into the remotest corners of the land is, accordingly, _a
+necessity and a matter of general social interest_. On this field there
+arise before the new social system tasks that go far beyond any that
+modern society can put to itself. Finally, such a perfected system of
+transportation and communication, will promote the decentralization of
+the mass of humanity that is to-day heaped up in the large cities. It
+will distribute the same over the country, and thus--in point of
+sanitation as well as of mental and material progress--it will assume a
+significance of inestimable value.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the means of production in industry and transportation, land holds
+a leading place, being the source of all human effort and the foundation
+of all human existence, hence, of Society itself. Society resumes at its
+advanced stage of civilization, what it originally possessed. Among all
+races on earth that reached a certain minimum degree of culture, we find
+community in land, and the system continues in force with such people
+wherever they are still in existence. Community in land constituted the
+foundation of all primitive association: the latter was impossible
+without the former. Not until the rise and development of private
+property and of the forms of rulership therewith connected, and then
+only under a running struggle, that extends deep into our own times, was
+the system of common ownership in land ended, and the land usurped as
+private property. The robbery of the land and its transformation into
+private property furnished, as we have seen, the first source of that
+bondage that, extending from chattel slavery to the "freedom" of the
+wage-earner of our own century, has run through all imaginable stages,
+until finally the enslaved, after a development of thousands of years
+re-convert the land into common property.
+
+The importance of land to human existence is such that in all social
+struggles the world has ever known--whether in India, China, Egypt,
+Greece (Cleomenes), Rome (the Gracchi), Christian Middle Ages (religious
+sects, Munzer, the Peasants War), in the empires of the Aztecs and of
+the Incas, or in the several upheavals of latter days--the possession of
+land is the principal aim of the combatants. And even to-day, the public
+ownership of land finds its justifiers in such men as Adolf Samter,
+Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, who on other domains of the Social Question
+are ready to rest content with half-measures.[194]
+
+The well-being of the population depends first of all upon the proper
+cultivation of the land. To raise the same to the highest degree of
+perfection is eminently a matter of public concern. That the
+cultivation of the land can reach the necessary high degree of
+perfection neither under the large, nor the middle, least of all under
+the small landlord system, has been previously shown. The most
+profitable cultivation of land depends not merely upon the special care
+bestowed upon it. Elements come here into consideration that neither the
+largest private holder, nor the mightiest association of these is equal
+to cope with. These are elements that lap over, even beyond the reach of
+the State and require international treatment.
+
+Society must first of all consider the land as a whole--its
+topographical qualities, its mountains, plains, woods, lakes, rivers,
+ponds, heaths, swamps, moors, etc. The topography, together with the
+geographical location of land, both of which are unchangeable, exercises
+certain influences upon climate and the qualities of the soil. Here is
+an immense field on which a mass of experience is to be gathered and a
+mass of experiments to be made. What the State has done until now in
+this line is meager. What with the small means that it applies to these
+purposes, and what with the limitations imposed upon it by the large
+landlords, who even if the State were willing, would check it, little or
+nothing has been done. The State could do nothing on this field without
+greatly encroaching upon private property. Seeing, however, that its
+very existence is conditioned upon the safe-keeping and "sacredness" of
+private property, the large landlords are vital to it, and it is
+stripped of the power, even if it otherwise had the will, to move in
+that direction. Socialist society will have the task of undertaking vast
+improvements of the soil,--raising woods here, and dismantling others
+yonder, draining and irrigating, mixing and changing of soil, planting,
+etc., in order to raise the land to the highest point of productivity
+that it is capable of.
+
+An important question, connected with the improvement of the land, is
+the contrivance of an ample and systematically planned network of rivers
+and canals, conducted upon scientific principles. The question of
+"cheaper" transportation on the waterways--a question of such gravity to
+modern society--loses all importance in Socialist society, seeing that
+the conceptions "cheap" and "dear" are unknown to it. On the other hand,
+however, waterways, as comfortable means of transportation, that can,
+moreover, be utilized with but slight expenditure of strength and
+matter, deserve attention. Moreover river and canal systems play
+important _roles_ in the matter of climate, draining and irrigation, and
+the supply of fertilizers and other materials needed in the improvement
+of agricultural land.
+
+Experience teaches that poorly-watered regions suffer more severely from
+cold winters and hot summers than well-watered lands, whence coast
+regions are exempt from the extremes of temperature, or rarely undergo
+them. Extremes of temperature are favorable neither to plants nor man.
+An extensive system of canalization, in connection with the proper
+forestry regulations, would unquestionably exercise beneficent
+influences. Such a system of canalization, along with the building of
+large reservoirs, that will collect the water in cases of freshets
+through thaws or heavy rainfalls, would be of great usefulness. Freshets
+and their devastating results would be impossible. Wide expanses of
+water, together with their proportional evaporations, would also, in all
+probability, bring about a more regular rain-fall. Finally such
+institutions would facilitate the erection of works for an extensive
+system of irrigation whenever needed.
+
+Large tracts of land, until now wholly barren or almost so, could be
+transformed into fertile regions by means of artificial irrigation.
+Where now sheep can barely graze, and at best consumptive-looking pine
+trees raise their thin arms heavenward, rich crops could grow and a
+dense population find ample nutriment. It is merely a question of labor
+whether the vast sand tracts of the Mark, the "holy dust-box of the
+German Empire," shall be turned into an Eden. The fact was pointed out
+in an address delivered in the spring of 1894 on the occasion of the
+agricultural exposition in Berlin.[195] The requisite improvements,
+canals, provisions for irrigation, mixing of soil, etc., are matters,
+however, that can be undertaken neither by the small nor the large
+landlords of the Mark. Hence those vast tracts, lying at the very gates
+of the capital of the Empire, remain in a state of such backward
+cultivation that it will seem incredible to future generations. Again, a
+proper canalization would, by draining, reclaim for cultivation vast
+swamps and marshes in North as well as South Germany. These waterways
+could be furthermore utilized in raising fish; they could thus be vast
+sources of food; in neighborhoods where there are no rivers, they would
+furnish opportunity for commodious bath-houses.
+
+Let a few examples illustrate the effectiveness of irrigation. In the
+neighborhood of Weissensfels, 7 1/2 hectares of well-watered meadows
+produced 480 cwt. of after-grass; 5 contiguous hectares of meadow land
+of the same quality, but not watered, yielded only 32 cwt. The former
+had, accordingly, a crop ten times as large as the latter. Near Reisa in
+Saxony, the irrigation of 65 acres of meadow lands raised their revenue
+from 5,850 marks to 11,100 marks. The expensive outlays paid. Besides
+the Mark there are in Germany other vast tracts, whose soil, consisting
+mainly of sand, yields but poor returns, even when the summer is wet.
+Crossed and irrigated by canals, and their soil improved, these lands
+would within a short time yield five and ten times as much. There are
+examples in Spain of the yield of well-irrigated lands exceeding
+thirty-seven fold that of others that are not irrigated. Let there but
+be water, and increased volumes of food are conjured into existence.
+
+Where are the private individuals, where the States, able to operate
+upon the requisite scale? When, after long decades of bitter experience,
+the State finally yields to the stormy demands of a population that has
+suffered from all manner of calamities, and only after millions of
+values have been destroyed, how slow, with what circumspection, how
+cautious does it proceed! It is so easy to do too much, and the State
+might by its precipitancy lose the means with which to build some new
+barracks for the accommodation of a few regiments. Then also, if one is
+helped "too much," others come along, and also want help. "Man, help
+yourself and God will help you," thus runs the bourgeois creed. Each for
+himself, none for all. And thus, hardly a year goes by without once,
+twice and oftener more or less serious freshets from brooks, rivers or
+streams occurring in several provinces and States: vast tracts of
+fertile lands are then devastated by the violence of the floods, and
+others are covered with sand, stone and all manner of debris; whole
+orchard plantations, that demanded tens of years for their growth, are
+uprooted; houses, bridges, dams are washed away; railroad tracks torn
+up; cattle, not infrequently human beings also, are drowned; soil
+improvements are carried off; crops ruined. Vast tracts, exposed to
+frequent inundations, are cultivated but slightly, lest the loss be
+double.
+
+On the other hand, unskilful corrections of the channels of large rivers
+and streams,--undertaken in one-sided interests, to which the State ever
+yields readily in the service of "trade and transportation"--increase
+the dangers of freshets. Extensive cutting down of forests, especially
+on highlands and for private profit, adds more grist to the flood mill.
+The marked deterioration of the climate and decreased productivity of
+the soil, noticeable in the provinces of Prussia, Pomerania, the
+Steuermark, Italy, France, Spain, etc., is imputed to this vandalic
+devastation of the woods, done in the interest of private parties.
+
+Frequent freshets are the consequence of the dismantling of mountain
+woodlands. The inundations of the Rhine, the Oder and the Vistula are
+ascribed mainly to the devastation of the woods in Switzerland, Galicia
+and Poland; and likewise in Italy with regard to the Po. Due to the
+baring of the Carnian Alps, the climate of Triest and Venice has
+materially deteriorated. Madeira, a large part of Spain, vast and once
+luxurious fields of Asia Minor have in a great measure forfeited their
+fertility through the same causes.
+
+It goes without saying that Socialist society will not be able to
+accomplish all these great tasks out-of-hand. But it can and will
+undertake them, with all possible promptness and with all the powers at
+its command, seeing that its sole mission is to solve problems of
+civilization and to tolerate no hindrance. Thus it will in the course of
+time solve problems and accomplish feats that modern society can give no
+thought to, and the very thought of which gives it the vertigo.
+
+The cultivation of the soil will, accordingly, be mightily improved in
+Socialist society, through these and similar measures. But other
+considerations, looking to the proper exploitation of the soil, are
+added to these. To-day, many square miles are planted with potatoes,
+which are to be applied mainly to the distilling of brandy, an article
+consumed almost exclusively by the poor classes of the population.
+Liquor is the only stimulant and "care-dispeller" that they are able to
+procure. The population of Socialist society needs none of that, hence
+the raising of potatoes and corn for that purpose, together with the
+labor therein expended, are set free for the production of healthy
+food.[196] The speculative purposes that our most fertile fields are put
+to in the matter of the sugar beet for the exportation of sugar, have
+been pointed out in a previous chapter. About 400,000 hectares of the
+best wheat fields are yearly devoted to the cultivation of sugar beet,
+in order to supply England, the United States and Northern Europe with
+sugar. The countries whose climate favors the growth of sugar cane
+succumb to this competition. Furthermore, our system of a standing army,
+the disintegration of production, the disintegration of the means of
+transportation and communication, the disintegration of agriculture,
+etc.,--all these demand hundreds of thousands of horses, with the
+corresponding fields to feed them and to raise colts. The completely
+transformed social and political conditions free the bulk of the lands
+that are now given up to these various purposes; and again large areas
+and rich labor-power are reclaimed for purposes of civilization.
+Latterly, extensive fields, covering many square kilometers, have been
+withdrawn from cultivation, being needed for the manoeuvering and
+exercising of army corps in the new methods of warfare and long
+distance firearms. All this falls away.
+
+The vast field of agriculture, forestry and irrigation has become the
+subject of an extensive scientific literature. No special branch has
+been left untouched: irrigation and drainage, forestry, the cultivation
+of cereals, of leguminous and tuberous plants, of vegetables, of fruit
+trees, of berries, of flowers and ornamental plants; fodder for cattle
+raising; meadows; rational methods of breeding cattle, fish and poultry
+and bees, and the utilization of their excrements; utilization of manure
+and refuse in agriculture and manufacture; chemical examinations of
+seeds and of the soil, to ascertain its fitness for this or that crop;
+investigations in the rotations of crops and in agricultural machinery
+and implements; the profitable construction of agricultural buildings of
+all nature; the weather;--all have been drawn within the circle of
+scientific treatment. Hardly a day goes by without some new discovery,
+some new experience being made towards improving and ennobling one or
+other of these several branches. With the work of J. v. Liebig, the
+cultivation of the soil has become a science, indeed, one of the
+foremost and most important of all, a science that since then has
+attained a vastness and significance unique in the domain of activity in
+material production. And yet, if we compare the fullness of the progress
+made in this direction with the actual conditions prevailing in
+agriculture to-day, _it must be admitted that, until now, only a small
+fraction of the private owners have been able to turn the progress to
+advantage_, and among these there naturally is none who did not proceed
+from the view point of his own private interests, acted accordingly,
+kept only that in mind, and gave no thought to the public weal. The
+large majority of our farmers and gardeners, we may say 98 per cent. of
+them, are in no wise in condition to utilize all the advances made and
+advantages that are possible: they lack either the means or the
+knowledge thereto, if not both: as to the others, they simply do as they
+please. Socialist society finds herein a theoretically and practically
+well prepared field of activity. It need but to fall to and organize in
+order to attain wonderful results.
+
+The highest possible concentration of productions affords, of itself,
+mighty advantages. Hedges, making boundary lines, wagon roads and
+footpaths between the broken-up holdings are removed, and yield some
+more available soil. The application of machinery is possible only on
+large fields: agricultural machinery of fullest development, backed by
+chemistry and physics could to-day transform unprofitable lands, of
+which there are not a few, into fertile ones. The application of
+accumulated electric power to agricultural machinery--plows, harrows,
+rollers, sowers, mowers, threshers, seed-assorters, chaff-cutters,
+etc.--is only a question of time. Likewise will the day come when
+electricity will move from the fields the wagons laden with the crops:
+draught cattle can be spared. A scientific system of fertilizing the
+fields, hand in hand with thorough management, irrigation and draining
+will materially increase the productivity of the land. A careful
+selection of seeds, proper protection against weeds--in itself a head
+much sinned against to-day--sends up the yield still higher.
+
+According to Ruhland, a successful war upon cereal diseases would of
+itself suffice to render superfluous the present importation of grain
+into Germany.[197] Seeding, planting and rotation of crops, being
+conducted with the sole end in view of raising the largest possible
+volume of food, the object is then obtainable.
+
+What may be possible even under present conditions is shown by the
+management of the Schnistenberg farm in the Rhenish Palatinate. In 1884
+the same fell into the hand of a new tenant, who, in the course of eight
+years, raised three or four times as much as his predecessor.[198] The
+said property is situated 320 meters above the level of the sea, 286
+acres in size, of which 18 are meadows, and has generally unfavorable
+soil, 30 acres being sandy, 60 stony, 55 sand loam and 123 hard loam.
+The new method of cultivation had astonishing results. The crops rose
+from year to year. The increase during the period of 1884-1892 was as
+follows per acre:
+
+
+      Product.       1884.         1892.
+    Rye           7.75 cwts.   19.50 cwts.
+    Wheat         3.50  "      15.30   "
+    Barley       12.00  "      18.85   "
+    Oats          7.00  "      18.85   "
+
+
+The neighboring community of Kiegsfeld, the witness of this marvelous
+development, followed the example and reached similar results on its own
+ground. The yield per acre was on an average this:
+
+
+      Product.         1884.           1892.
+    Wheat           10 to 12 cwts.  13 to 18 cwts.
+    Rye             12 to 15  "     15 to 20  "
+    Oats             7 to  9  "     14 to 22 and even 24
+    Barley           9 to 11  "     18 to 22 cwts.
+
+
+Such results are eloquent enough.
+
+The cultivation of fruits, berries and garden vegetables will reach a
+development hardly thought possible. How unpardonably is being sinned at
+present in these respects, a look at our orchards will show. They are
+generally marked by a total absence of proper care. This is true of the
+cultivation of fruit trees even in countries that have a reputation for
+the excellence of these; Wurtemberg, for instance. The concentration of
+stables, depots for implements and manure and methods of
+feeding--towards which wonderful progress has been made, but which can
+to-day be applied only slightly--will, when generally introduced,
+materially increase the returns in raising cattle, and thereby
+facilitate the procurement of manure. Machinery and implements of all
+sorts will be there in abundance, very differently from the experience
+of ninety-nine one hundredths of our modern farmers. Animal products,
+such as milk, eggs, meat, honey, hair, wool, will be obtained and
+utilized scientifically. The improvements and advantages in the dairy
+industry reached by the large dairy associations is known to all
+experts, and ever new inventions and improvements are daily made. Many
+are the branches of agriculture in which the same and even better can be
+done. The preparation of the fields and the gathering of the crops are
+then attended to by large bodies of men, under skilful use of the
+weather, such as is to-day impossible. Large drying houses and sheds
+allow crops being gathered even in unfavorable weather, and save losses
+that are to-day unavoidable, and which, according to v. d. Goltz, often
+are so severe that, during a particularly rainy year, from eight to nine
+million marks worth of crops were ruined in Mecklenburg, and from twelve
+to fifteen in the district of Koenigsberg.
+
+Through the skilful application of artificial heat and moisture on a
+large scale in structures protected from bad weather, the raising of
+vegetables and all manner of fruit is possible at all seasons in large
+quantities. The flower stores of our large cities have in mid-winter
+floral exhibitions that vie with those of the summer. One of the most
+remarkable advances made in the artificial raising of fruit is
+exemplified by the artificial vineyard of Garden-Director Haupt in
+Brieg, Silesia, which has found a number of imitators, and was itself
+preceded long before by a number of others in other countries, England
+among them. The arrangements and the results obtained in this vineyard
+were so enticingly described in the "Vossische Zeitung" of September 27,
+1890, that we have reproduced the account in extracts:
+
+"The glass-house is situated upon an approximately square field of 500
+square meters, i. e., one-fifth of an acre. It is 4.5 to 5 meters high,
+and its walls face north, south, east and west. Twelve rows of double
+fruit walls run inside due north and south. They are 1.8 meters apart
+from each other and serve at the same time as supports to the flat roof.
+In a bed 1.25 meters deep, resting on a bank of earth 25 centimeters
+strong and which contains a net of drain and ventilation pipes,--a bed
+'whose hard ground is rendered loose, permeable and fruitful through
+chalk, rubbish, sand, manure in a state of decomposition, bonedust and
+potash'--Herr Haupt planted against the walls three hundred and sixty
+grape vines of the kind which yields the noblest grape juice in the
+Rhinegau:--white and red Reissling and Tramine, white and blue
+Moscatelle and Burgundy.
+
+"The ventilation of the place is effected by means of large fans, twenty
+meters long, attached to the roof, besides several openings on the
+side-walls. The fans can be opened and shut by means of a lever,
+fastened on the roof provided with a spindle and winch, and they can be
+made safe against all weather. For the watering of the vines 26
+sprinklers are used, which are fastened to rubber pipes 1.25 meters
+long, and that hang down from a water tank. Herr Haupt introduced,
+however, another ingenious contrivance for quickly and thoroughly
+watering his 'wine-hall' and his 'vineyard', to wit, an artificial rain
+producer. On high, under the roof, lie four long copper tubes,
+perforated at distances of one-half meter. The streams of water that
+spout upward through these openings strike small round sieves made of
+window gauze and, filtered through these, are scattered in fine spray.
+To thoroughly water the vines by means of the rubber pipes requires
+several hours. But only one faucet needs to be turned by this second
+contrivance and a gentle refreshing rain trickles down over the whole
+place upon the grape vines, the beds and the granite flags of the walks.
+The temperature can be raised from 8 to 10 degrees R. above the outside
+air without any artificial contrivance, and simply through the natural
+qualities of the glass-house. In order to protect the vines from that
+dangerous and destructive foe, the vine louse, should it show itself, it
+is enough to close the drain and open all the water pipes. The
+inundation of the vines, thus achieved, the enemy can not withstand. The
+glass roof and walls protect the vineyard from storms, cold, frost and
+superfluous rain; in cases of hail, a fine wire-netting is spread over
+the same; against drought the artificial rain system affords all the
+protection needed. The vine-dresser of such a vineyard is his own
+weather-maker, and he can laugh at all the dangers from the incalculable
+whims and caprices of indifferent and cruel Nature,--dangers that ever
+threaten with ruin the fruit of the vine cultivator.
+
+"What Herr Haupt expected happened. The vines thrived remarkably under
+the uniformly warm climate. The grapes ripened to their fullest, and as
+early as the fall of 1885 they yielded a juice not inferior to that
+generally obtained in the Rhinegau in point of richness of sugar and
+slightness of sourness. The grapes thrived equally the next year and
+even during the unfavorable year of 1887. On this space, when the vines
+have reached their full height of 5 meters, and are loaded with their
+burden of swollen grapes, 20 hectoliters of wine can be produced yearly,
+and the cost of a bottle of noble wine will not exceed 40 pennies.
+
+"There is no reason imaginable why this process should not be conducted
+upon a large scale like any other industry. Glass-houses of the nature
+of this one on one-fifth of an acre can be undoubtedly raised upon a
+whole acre with equal facilities of ventilation, watering, draining and
+rain-making. Vegetation will start there several weeks sooner than in
+the open, and the vine-shoots remain safe from May frosts, rain and cold
+while they blossom; from drought during the growth of the grapes; from
+pilfering birds and grape thieves and from dampness while they ripen;
+finally from the vine-louse during the whole year and can hang safely
+deep into November and December. In his address, held in 1888 to the
+Society for the Promotion of Horticulture, and from which I have taken
+many a technical expression in this description of the 'Vineyard', the
+inventor and founder of the same closed his words with this alluring
+perspective of the future: 'Seeing that this vine culture can be carried
+on all over Germany, especially on otherwise barren, sandy or stony
+ground, such as, for instance, the worst of the Mark, that can be made
+arable and watered, it follows that the great interests in the
+cultivation of the soil receive fresh vigor from "vineyards under
+glass." I would like to call this industry "the vineyard of the
+future".'
+
+"Just as Herr Haupt has furnished the practical proof that on this path
+an abundance of fine and healthy grapes can be drawn from the vine, he
+has also proved by his own pressing of the same what excellent wine they
+can yield. More thorough, more experienced, better experts and tried
+wine-drinkers and connoisseurs than myself have, after a severe test,
+bestowed enthusiastic praise upon the Reissling of the vintage of '88,
+upon the Tramine and Moscatelle of the vintage of '89, and upon the
+Burgundy of the vintage of '88, pressed from the grapes of this
+'vineyard'. It should also be mentioned that this 'vineyard' also
+affords sufficient space for the cultivation of other side and twin
+plants. Herr Haupt raises between every two vines one rose bush, that
+blossoms richly in April and May; against the east and west walls he
+raises peaches, whose beauty of blossom must impart in April an
+appearance of truly fairy charm to this wine palace."
+
+The enthusiasm with which the reporter describes this artificial
+"vineyard" in a serious paper testifies to the deep impression made upon
+him by this extraordinary artificial cultivation. There is nothing to
+prevent similar establishments, on a much more stupendous scale and for
+other branches of vegetation. The luxury of a double crop is obtainable
+in many agricultural products. To-day all such undertakings are a
+question of money, and their products are accessible only to the
+privileged classes. A Socialist society knows no other question than
+that of sufficient labor-power. If that is in existence, the work is
+done in the interest of all.
+
+Another new invention on the field of food is that of Dr. Johann
+Hundhausen of Hamm in Westphalia, who succeeded in extracting the
+albumen of wheat--the secret of whose utilization in the legume was not
+yet known--in the shape of a thoroughly nutritive flour. This is a
+far-reaching invention. It is now possible to render the albumen of
+plants useful in substantial form for human food.
+
+The inventor erected a large factory which produces vegetal albumen or
+aleurone meal from 80 to 83 per cent. of albumen, and a second quality
+of about 50 per cent. That the so-called aleurone meal represents a very
+concentrated albuminous food appears from the following comparison with
+our best elements of nourishment:
+
+
+                                          Carbon-
+                   Water  Albumen   Fat   hydrate Cellulose Salt
+    Aleurone meal   8.83   82.67    0.27   7.01     0.45    0.78
+    Hen's eggs     73.67   12.55   12.11   0.55     0.55    1.12
+    Beef           55.42   17.19   26.58   ....     ....    1.08
+
+
+Aleurone meal is not only eaten directly, it is also used as a condiment
+in all sorts of bakery products, as well as soups and vegetables.
+Aleurone meal substitutes in a high degree meat preserves in point of
+nutrition; moreover, it is by far the cheapest albumen obtainable
+to-day. One kilogram of albumen costs:
+
+
+    In aleurone meal                             1.45 marks
+    In white bread or white flour            4 to 4.5   "
+    In hen's eggs, according to the season   8 to 16    "
+    In beef                                 12 to 13    "
+
+
+Beef, accordingly, is about eight times dearer, as albuminous food, than
+aleurone meal; eggs five times as dear; white bread or common white
+flour about three times as dear. Aleurone meal also has the advantage
+that, with the addition of about one-eighth of the weight of a potato,
+it not only furnishes a considerable quantity of albumen to the body,
+but produces a complete digestion of the starch contained in the potato.
+Dogs, that have a nose for albumen, eat aleurone meal with the same
+avidity as meat, even if they otherwise refuse bread, and they are then
+better able to stand hardships.
+
+Aleurone meal, as a dry vegetal albumen, is of great use as food on
+ships, in fortresses and in military hospitals during war. It renders
+large supplies of meat unnecessary. At present aleurone meal is a side
+product in starch factories. Within short, starch will become a side
+product of aleurone meal. A further result will be that the cultivation
+of cereals will crowd out that of potatoes and other less productive
+food plants; the volume of nutrition of a given field of wheat or rye is
+tripled or quadrupled at one stroke.
+
+Dr. Rudolf Meyer of Vienna, whose attention was called by us to the
+aleurone meal says[199] that he furnished himself with a quantity of it
+and had it examined on June 19, 1893, by the bureau of experiments of
+the Board of Soil Cultivation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The examination
+fully confirmed our statements. For further details Meyer's work should
+be read. Meyer also calls attention to a discovery made by Otto Redemann
+of Bockenheim near Frankfort-on-the-Main. After granulating the peanut
+and removing its oil, he analyzed its component elements of nutrition.
+The analysis showed 47 per cent. of albumen, 19 of fat and 19 of
+starch--altogether 2,135 units of nutritious matter in one kilo.
+According to this analysis the peanut is one of the most nutritious
+vegetal products. The pharmacist Rud. Simpson of Mohrungen discovered a
+process by which to remove the bitterness from the lupine, which, as may
+be known, thrives best on sandy soil, and is used both as fodder and as
+a fertilizer; and he then produced from it a meal, which, according to
+expert authority, baked as bread tastes very good, is solid, is said to
+be more nutritious than rye-bread, and, besides all that, much cheaper.
+
+Even under present conditions a regular revolution is plowing its way in
+the matter of human food. _The utilization of all these discoveries is,
+however, slow, for the reason that mighty classes--the farmer element
+together with its social and political props--have the liveliest
+interest in suppressing them._ To our agrarians, a good crop is to-day a
+horror--although the same is prayed for in all the churches--because it
+lowers prices. Consequently, they are no wise anxious for a double and
+threefold nutritive power of their cereals; it would likewise tend to
+lower prices. Present society is everywhere at fisticuffs with its own
+development.
+
+The preservation of the soil in a state of fertility depends primarily
+upon fertilization. The obtaining of fertilizers is, accordingly, for
+future society also one of the principal tasks.[200] Manure is to the
+soil what food is to man, and just as every kind of food is not equally
+nourishing to man, neither is every kind of manure of equal benefit to
+the soil. The soil must receive back exactly the same chemical
+substances that it gave up through a crop; and the chemical substances
+especially needed by a certain vegetable must be given to the soil in
+larger quantities. Hence the study of chemistry and its practical
+application will experience a development unknown to-day.
+
+Animal and human excrements are particularly rich in the chemical
+elements that are fittest for the reproduction of human food. Hence the
+endeavor must be to secure the same in the fullest quantity and cause
+its proper distribution. On this head too modern society sins
+grievously. Cities and industrial centers, that receive large masses of
+foodstuffs, return to the soil but a slight part of their valuable
+offal.[201] The consequence is that the fields, situated at great
+distances from the cities and industrial centers, and which yearly send
+their products to the same, suffer greatly from a dearth of manure; the
+offal that these farms themselves yield is often not enough, because the
+men and beasts who live on them consume but a small part of the product.
+Thus frequently a soil-vandalism is practiced, that cripples the land
+and decreases the crops. All countries that export agricultural products
+mainly, but receive no manure back, inevitably go to ruin through the
+gradual impoverishment of the soil. This is the case with Hungary,
+Russia, the Danubian Principalities, North America, etc. Artificial
+fertilizers, guano in particular, indeed substitute the offal of men and
+beasts; but many farmers can not obtain the same in sufficient
+quantity; it is too dear; at any rate, it is an inversion of nature to
+import manure from great distances, while it is allowed to go to waste
+nearby.
+
+Several years since has the Thomas-slag been recognized as an eminently
+fit manure for certain soils. The manufacturers, however, who grind the
+Thomas-slag into flour and carry it to market, have built a ring, and,
+to the injury of the farming interests who make bitter complaints on
+that score, they keep the prices high. Thus every progress is crippled
+by greed in bourgeois society. Another and at present inexhaustable
+source of fertilizers is offered by the deposits of potash in the
+province of Saxony and contiguous regions. The Prussian State owns a
+number of potash works and it also made the attempt to monopolize the
+industry, to the end of raising the largest possible revenues for the
+Treasury.
+
+If the opinion of Julius Hensel on the subject of fertilizers proves
+correct, it will mean a revolution in the theory of fertilization, and a
+complete saving of the expenses now made for the importation of
+fertilizers, amounting for guano and Chile saltpeter to from 80 to 100
+million marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces
+numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our
+mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing
+stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the
+fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished
+a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human
+refuse.[203] These minerals, he claims, contain all the elements for the
+cultivation of plants: potash, chalk, magnesia, phosphoric, sulphuric
+and silicic acids, and also hydrochlorides. According to Hensel, the
+Sudeton, Riesen, Erz, Tichtel, Hartz, Rhone, Vogel, Taunus, Eisel and
+Weser mountains, the woods of Thuringen, Spessart and Oden had an
+inexhaustible supply of fertilizers. It will be literally possible to
+"make bread out of stones." The dust and dirt of our highways also are,
+according to Hensel, inexhaustible sources of the same blessing. In this
+matter we are laymen and can not test the correctness of Hensel's
+theories; a part of them, however, sound most plausible. Hensel charges
+the manufacturers of and dealers in artificial fertilizers with
+hostility to his discovery and with systematic opposition, because they
+would suffer great loss.
+
+According to Heider, a healthy adult secretes on an average 48.8
+kilograms of solid and 438 of liquid matter a year. Estimated by the
+present standard of the prices of manure, and if utilized without loss
+by evaporation, etc., this offal represents a money value of 11.8
+marks. Calculating the population of Germany to be 50,000,000 in round
+figures, and estimating the average value of the human offal at 8 marks,
+the sum of 400,000,000 marks is obtained, which now is almost totally
+lost to agriculture, owing to the present imperfect methods for
+utilizing it. The great difficulty in the way of a full utilization of
+these stuffs lies in the establishment of proper and extensive
+provisions for their collection, and in the cost of transportation.
+Relatively, this cost is now higher than the importation of guano from
+far-away transmarine deposits, which, however, decline in mass in the
+measure that the demand increases. Every living being, however, casts
+off regularly an annual supply of manure about enough for a field that
+yields food for one person. The enormous loss is obvious. A large
+portion of the city excrement runs out into our rivers and streams, and
+pollutes them. Likewise is the refuse from kitchens and factories, also
+serviceable as manure, recklessly squandered.
+
+Future society will find means and ways to stop this waste. What is done
+to-day in this direction is mere patchwork, and utterly inadequate. As
+an illustration of what could be done to-day, may be cited the
+canalization and the laying out of vast fields in the capital of the
+Empire, on whose value, however, experts are of divided opinion.
+Socialist society will solve the question more easily, due, in a great
+measure, to the fact that _large cities will gradually cease to exist,
+and population will decentralize_.
+
+No one will regard our modern rise of metropoles as a healthy
+phenomenon. The modern system of manufacture and production in general,
+steadily draws large masses of the population to the large cities.[204]
+There is the seat of manufacture and commerce; there the avenues of
+communication converge; there the owners of large wealth have their
+headquarters, the central authorities, the military staffs, the higher
+tribunals. There large institutions rear their heads--the academies of
+art, large pleasure resorts, exhibitions, museums, theaters, concert
+halls, etc. Hundreds are drawn thither by their professions, thousands
+by pleasure, and many more thousands by the hope of easier work and an
+agreeable life.
+
+But, speaking figuratively, the rise of metropolitan cities makes the
+impression of a person whose girth gains steadily in size, while his
+legs as steadily become thinner, and finally will be unable to carry the
+burden. All around, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the
+villages also assume a city aspect, in which the proletariat is heaped
+up in large masses. The municipalities, generally out of funds, are
+forced to lay on taxes to the utmost, and still remain unable to meet
+the demand made upon them. When finally they have grown up to the large
+city and it up to them, they rush into and are absorbed by it, as
+happens with planets that have swung too close to the sun. But the fact
+does not improve the conditions of life. On the contrary, they grow
+worse through the crowding of people in already overcrowded spaces.
+These gatherings of masses--inevitable under modern development, and, to
+a certain extent, the raisers of revolutionary centers,--will have
+fulfilled their mission in Socialist society. Their gradual dissolution
+then becomes necessary: _the current will then run the other way:
+population will migrate from the cities to the country: it will there
+raise new municipalities corresponding with the altered conditions, and
+they will join their industrial with their agricultural activities_.
+
+So soon as--due to the complete remodeling and equipment of the means of
+communication and transportation, and of the productive establishments,
+etc., etc.--the city populations will be enabled to transfer to the
+country all their acquired habits of culture, to find there their
+museums, theaters, concert halls, reading rooms, libraries, etc.--just
+so soon will the migration thither set in. Life will then enjoy all the
+comforts of large cities, without their disadvantages. The population
+will be housed more comfortably and sanitarily. The rural population
+will join in manufacturing, the manufacturing population in agricultural
+pursuits,--a change of occupation enjoyed to-day by but few, and then
+often under conditions of excessive exertion.
+
+As on all other fields, bourgeois society is promoting this development
+also: every year new industrial undertakings are transferred to the
+country. The unfavorable conditions of large cities--high rents and high
+wages--drive many employers to this migration. At the same time, the
+large landlords are steadily becoming industrialists--manufacturers of
+sugar, distillers of liquor, beer brewers, manufacturers of cement,
+earthen wares, tiles, woodwork, paper goods, etc. In the new social
+order offal of all sorts will then be easily furnished to agriculture,
+especially through the concentration of production and the public
+kitchens. Each community will, in a way, constitute a zone of culture;
+it will, to a large extent, itself raise its necessaries of life.
+Horticulture, perhaps the most agreeable of all practical occupations,
+will then reach fullest bloom. The cultivation of vegetables, fruit
+trees and bushes of all nature, ornamental flowers and shrubs--all offer
+an inexhaustible field for human activity, a field, moreover, whose
+nature excludes machinery almost wholly.
+
+_Thanks to the decentralization of the population, the existing contrast
+and antagonism between the country and the city will also vanish._
+
+The peasant, this Helot of modern times, hitherto cut off from all
+cultural development through his isolation in the country, now becomes a
+free being because he has fully become a limb of civilization.[205] The
+wish, once expressed by Prince Bismarck, that he might see the large
+cities destroyed, will be verified, but in a sense wholly different from
+that which he had in mind.[206]
+
+If the preceding arguments are rapidly passed in review, it will be seen
+that, with the abolition of private property in the means of production
+and their conversion into social property, the mass evils, that modern
+society reveals at every turn and which grow ever greater and more
+intolerable under its sway, will gradually disappear. The over-lordship
+of one class and its representatives ceases. Society applies its forces
+planfully and controls itself. As, with the abolition of the wage system
+the ground will be taken from under the exploitation of man by man,
+likewise will it be taken from under swindle and cheating--the
+adulteration of food, the stock exchange, etc.,--with the abolition of
+private capitalism. The halls in the Temples of Mammon will stand
+vacant; national bonds of indebtedness, stocks, pawn-tickets, mortgages,
+deeds, etc., will have become so much waste paper. The words of
+Schiller: "Let our book of indebtedness be annihilated, and the whole
+world reconciled" will have become reality, and the Biblical maxim: "In
+the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread" will now come into force for
+the heroes of the stock exchange and the drones of capitalism as well.
+Yet the labor that, as equal members of society they will have to
+perform, will not oppress them: their bodily health will be materially
+improved. The worry of property--said to be, judging from the pathetic
+assurances of our employers and capitalists in general, harder to bear
+than the uncertain and needy lot of the workingman--will be forever
+removed from those gentlemen. The excitements of speculation, that breed
+so many diseases of the heart and bring on so many strokes of apoplexy
+among our exchange jobbers, and that render them nervous wrecks, will
+all be saved to them. A life free from mental worry will be their lot
+and that of our descendants; and in the end they will gladly accommodate
+themselves thereto.
+
+With the abolition of private property and of class antagonism, the
+State also gradually vanishes away;--it vanishes without being missed.
+
+"By converting the large majority of the population more and more into
+proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the power, that,
+under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this
+revolution. By urging more and more the conversion of the large, already
+socialized means of production into State property, it points the path
+for the accomplishment of this revolution.... The State was the official
+representative of the whole society; it was the constitution of the
+latter into a visible body; but it was so only in so far as it was the
+State of that class which itself, at its time, represented the whole
+society; in antiquity, the State of slave-holding citizens; in the
+middle ages, the State of the feudal nobility; in our own days, the
+State of the capitalist class. By at last becoming actually the
+representative of the whole social body, it renders itself superfluous.
+As soon as there is no longer any social class to be kept down; as soon
+as, together with class rule and the individual struggle for life,
+founded in the previous anarchy of production, the conflicts and
+excesses that issued therefrom have been removed, there is nothing more
+to be repressed, and the State or Government, as a special power of
+repression, is no longer necessary. The first act, wherein the State
+appears as the real representative of the whole body social--the seizure
+of the means of production in the name of society--is also its last
+independent act as State. The interference of the State in social
+relations becomes superfluous in one domain after another, and falls of
+itself into desuetude. The place of a government over persons is taken
+by the administration of things and the conduct of the processes of
+production. The State is not 'abolished'--_it dies out!_"[207]
+
+Along with the State, die out its representatives--cabinet ministers,
+parliaments, standing armies, police and constables, courts, district
+attorneys, prison officials, tariff and tax collectors, in short, the
+whole political apparatus. Barracks, and such other military structures,
+palaces of law and of administration, prisons--all will now await better
+use. Ten thousand laws, decrees and regulations become so much rubbish;
+they have only historic value. The great and yet so petty parliamentary
+struggles, with which the men of tongue imagine they rule and guide the
+world, are no more, they will have made room for administrative colleges
+and delegations whose attention will be engaged in the best means of
+production and distribution, in ascertaining the volume of supplies
+needed, in introducing and applying effective improvements in art, in
+architecture, in intercourse, in the process of production, etc. These
+are all practical matters, visible and tangible, towards which everyone
+stands objectively, there being no personal interests hostile to society
+to affect their judgment. None has any interest other than the
+collectivity, and that interest consists in instituting and providing
+everything in the best, most effective and most profitable manner.
+
+The hundreds of thousands of former representatives of the State pass
+over into the various trades, and help with their intelligence and
+strength to increase the wealth and comforts of society. Henceforth
+there are known neither political crimes nor common ones. There are no
+more thieves, seeing that private property has ceased to be in the means
+of production, and everyone can now satisfy his wants with ease and
+comfort by work. Tramps and vagabonds likewise cease to be; they are the
+product of a social system based on private property; the former cease
+to be with the latter. And murder? Why? None can grow rich at the
+expense of another. Even murder out of hatred and revenge flows directly
+or indirectly from the modern social system. Perjury, false testimony,
+cheating, thefts of inheritance, fraudulent failures? There is no
+private property on and against which to commit these crimes. Arson? Who
+is to derive pleasure or satisfaction therefrom, seeing that society
+removes from him all sources of hatred? Counterfeiting? Why, money has
+become a chimera, love's labor would be lost. Contempt for religion?
+Nonsense. It is left to the "omnipotent and good God" to punish him who
+should offend Him--provided there be still controversies on the
+existence of God.
+
+Thus all the cornerstones of the present "order" become myths. Parents
+will tell their children stories on those heads, like legends from olden
+days. The narrations of the persecutions, that men with new ideas are
+to-day overwhelmed with, will sound to them just as the stories of the
+burning of heretics and witches sound to us to-day. The names of all the
+great men, who to-day distinguish themselves by their persecutions of
+the new ideas, and who are applauded by their narrow-minded
+contemporaries, are forgotten and blown over, and they are run across
+only by the historian who may happen to dive into the past. What remarks
+may escape him, we care not to tell, seeing that, unhappily, we do not
+yet live in an age where man is free to breathe.
+
+As with the State, so with "Religion."[208] It is not "abolished." God
+will not be "dethroned"; religion will not be "torn out of the hearts of
+people"; nor will any of the silly charges against the Socialists
+materialize. Such mistaken policies the Socialists leave to the
+Bourgeois ideologists, who resorted to such means in the French
+Revolution and, of course, suffered miserable shipwreck. Without any
+violence whatever, and without any manner of oppression of thought,
+religion will gradually vanish.
+
+Religion is the transcendental reflection of the social conditions of
+given epochs. In the measure that human development advances and society
+is transformed, religion is transformed along with it. It is, as Marx
+puts it, a popular striving after the illusory happiness that
+corresponds with a social condition which needs such an illusion.[209]
+The illusion wanes so soon as real happiness is descried, and the
+possibility of its realization penetrates the masses. The ruling classes
+endeavor, in their own interest, to prevent this popular conception.
+Hence they seek to turn religion into a means to preserve their
+domination. The purpose appears fully in their maxim: "The people must
+be held to religion." This particular business becomes an official
+function in a society that rests upon class rule. A caste is formed that
+assumes this function and that turns the whole acumen of their minds
+towards preserving, and enlarging such a social structure, seeing that
+thereby their own power and importance are increased.
+
+Starting in fetishism at low stages of civilization and primitive social
+conditions, religion becomes polytheism at a higher, and monotheism at a
+still higher stage. It is not the gods that create men, it is man who
+turns the gods into God. "In the image of himself (man) he created Him"
+(God), not the opposite way. Monotheism has also suffered changes. It
+has dissolved into a pantheism that embraces and permeates the
+universe--and it volatilizes day by day. Natural science reduced to myth
+the dogma of the creation of the earth in six days; astronomy,
+mathematics, physics have converted heaven into a structure of air, and
+the stars, once fastened to the roof of heaven in which angels had their
+abodes, into fixed stars and planets whose very composition excludes all
+angelic life.
+
+The ruling class, finding itself threatened in its existence, clings to
+religion as a prop of all authority, just as every ruling class has done
+heretofore.[210] The bourgeoisie or capitalist class itself believes in
+nothing. Itself, at every stage of its development and through the
+modern science that sprang from none but its own lap, has destroyed all
+faith in religion and authority. Its faith is only a pretence; and the
+Church accepts the help of this false friend because itself is in need
+of help. "Religion is necessary for the people."
+
+No such considerations animate Socialistic Society. Human progress and
+unadulterated science are its device. If any there be who has religious
+needs, he is free to please himself in the company of those who feel
+like him. It is a matter that does not concern society. Seeing that the
+clergyman's own mind will be improved by work, the day will dawn to him
+also when he will realize that _the highest aim is to be man_.
+
+Ethics and morality exist without organized religion. The contrary is
+asserted only by weak-minded people or hypocrites. Ethics and morality
+are the expression of conceptions that regulate the relations of man to
+man, and their mutual conduct. Religion embraces the relations of man
+with supernal beings. And, just as with religion, moral conceptions also
+are born of existing social conditions at given times. Cannibals regard
+the eating of human beings as highly moral; Greeks and Romans regarded
+slavery as moral; the feudal lord of the Middle Ages regarded serfdom as
+moral; and to-day the modern capitalist considers highly moral the
+institution of wage-slavery, the flaying of women with night work and
+the demoralization of children by factory labor.[211] Here we have four
+different social stages, and as many different conceptions of morality,
+and yet in none does the highest moral sense prevail. Undoubtedly the
+highest moral stage is that in which men stand to one another free and
+equal; that in which the principle: "What you do not wish to be done
+unto you, do not unto others" is observed inviolate throughout the
+relations of man to man. In the Middle Ages, the genealogical tree was
+the standard; to-day it is property; in future society, the standard of
+man is man. And the future is Socialism in practice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late Reichstag delegate, Dr. Lasker, delivered, in the seventies, an
+address in Berlin, in which he arrived at the conclusion that an equal
+level of education for all members of society was possible. Dr. Lasker
+was an anti-Socialist a rigid upholder of private property and of the
+capitalist system of production. The question of education is to-day,
+however, a question of money. Under such conditions, an equal level of
+education for all is an impossibility. Exceptional persons, situated in
+relatively favorable conditions, may, by dint of overcoming all
+difficulties and by the exertion of great energy, not given to
+everybody, succeed in acquiring a higher education. The masses never, so
+long as they live in a state of social oppression.[212]
+
+In the new social order, the conditions of existence are equal for all.
+Wants and inclinations differ, and, differences being grounded in the
+very nature of man, will continue so to be. Each member, however, can
+live and develop under the same favorable conditions that obtain for
+all. The uniformity, generally imputed to Socialism, is, as so many
+other things, false and nonsensical. Even if Socialism did so wish it,
+the wish were absurd; it would come in conflict with the nature of man;
+Socialism would have to give up the idea of seeing society develop
+according to its principles.[213] Aye, even if Socialism were to succeed
+in overpowering society and to force upon it unnatural conditions, it
+would not be long before such conditions, felt to be shackles, would be
+snapped, and Socialism would be done for. Society develops out of
+itself, according to laws latent in it, and it acts accordingly.[214]
+
+One of the principal tasks of the new social system will be the
+education of the rising generation in keeping with its improved
+opportunities. Every child that is born, be it male or female, is a
+welcome addition to society. Society sees therein the prospect of its
+own perpetuity, of its own further development. It, therefore, also
+realizes the duty of providing for the new being according to its best
+powers. The first object of its attention must, consequently, be the one
+that gives birth to the new being--the mother. A comfortable home;
+agreeable surroundings and provisions of all sorts, requisite to this
+stage of maternity; a careful nursing--such are the first requirements.
+The mother's breast must be preserved for the child as long as possible
+and necessary. This is obvious. Moleschott, Sonderegger, all hygienists
+and physicians are agreed that nothing can fully substitute the mother's
+nourishment.
+
+People who, like Eugen Richter, indignate at the idea of a young mother
+being placed in a lying-in establishment, where she is surrounded by all
+that to-day is possible only to the very wealthiest, and which even
+these cannot furnish in the fullness attainable at institutions
+especially equipped for the purpose--such people we wish to remind of
+the fact that, to-day, at least four-fifths of the population are born
+under the most primitive circumstances and conditions, that are a
+disgrace to our civilization. Of the remaining one-fifth of our mothers,
+only a minority is able to enjoy the nursing and comforts that should be
+bestowed upon a woman in that state. _The fact is that in cities with
+excellent provisions for child-birth--Berlin for instance, and all
+University cities--even to-day not a few women resort to such
+institutions as soon as they feel their time approaching, and await
+their delivery. Unfortunately, however, the expenses at such
+institutions are so high, that but few women can use them, while others
+are held back by prejudice._ Here again we have an instance of how
+everywhere bourgeois society carries in its own lap the germ of the
+future order.
+
+For the rest, maternity among the rich has a unique taste; the maternal
+duties are transferred as soon as possible to a _proletarian nurse_. As
+is well known, the Wendt Lausitz (Spreewald) is the region that the
+women of the Berlin bourgeoisie, who are unwilling or unable to nurse
+their own babies, draw their wet-nurses from. The "cultivation of
+nurses" is there carried on as a peculiar trade. It consists in the
+girls of the district causing themselves to be impregnated, with the end
+in view of being able, after the birth of their own children, to hire
+themselves out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth
+to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as
+nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the
+Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is
+utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the
+view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered
+praiseworthy and desirable.
+
+So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls
+in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common
+surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical
+culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence.
+Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in
+the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct
+of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined
+to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own
+parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215]
+The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction
+into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual
+occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work,
+connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and
+swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both sexes
+follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy,
+physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the
+induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits--manufacturing,
+horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production,
+etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several
+branches of science.
+
+The same process of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of
+production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and
+harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural
+things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge
+infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at
+odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when
+"religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and
+natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational
+establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new
+social order. All the means of education and of study, clothing and
+support are furnished by society; no pupil is at a disadvantage with
+another.[216] That is another chapter at which our "men of law and
+order" bristle up indignantly.[217] "The school-house is to be turned
+into barracks; parents are to be deprived of all influence upon their
+children!" is the cry of our adversaries. All false! Seeing that in the
+future society parents will have infinitely more time at their disposal
+than is the case to-day with the large majority--we need but to call
+attention to the ten to fifteen hour day of many workingmen in the post
+office, the railroads, the prisons, the police department, and to the
+demands made upon the time of the industrial workers, the small farmers,
+merchants, soldiers, many physicians, etc.--it follows that they will be
+able to devote themselves to their children in a measure that is
+impossible to-day. _Moreover, the parents themselves have the regulation
+of education in their hands; it is they who determine the measures that
+shall be adopted and introduced. We are then living in a thoroughgoing
+democratic society. The Boards of Education, which will exist, of
+course, are made up of the parents themselves--men and women--and of
+those following the educational profession._ Does any one imagine they
+will act against their own interests? That happens only to-day when the
+State seeks but to enforce its own exclusive interests.
+
+Our opponents furthermore demean themselves as though to-day one of the
+greatest pleasures of parents was to have their children about them all
+day long, and to educate them. It is just the reverse in reality. What
+hardships and cares are to-day caused by the education of a child, even
+when a family has but one of them, those parents are best able to judge
+who are themselves so situated. Several children, in a manner,
+facilitate education, but then again they give rise to so much more
+trouble that their father and especially the mother, who is the one to
+bear the heaviest burden, is happy when the school hour arrives, and
+thus the house is rid of the children for a portion of the day. Most
+parents can afford but a very imperfect education to their children.
+The large majority of fathers and mothers lack time; the former have
+their business, the latter their household to attend to, and their time
+is furthermore taken up with social duties. Even when they actually have
+time, in innumerable instances they lack the ability. How many parents
+are able to follow the course of their children's education at school,
+and to take them under the arm in their schoolwork at home? Only few.
+The mother, who in most such cases has greater leisure at her disposal,
+lacks capacity; she has not herself received sufficient training.
+Moreover, the method and the courses of education change so frequently
+that these are strange to the parents.
+
+Again, the home facilities are generally so poor that the children enjoy
+neither the necessary comfort, nor order, nor quiet to do their
+schoolwork at home, or to find there the needed aid. Everything
+necessary is generally wanting. The home is narrow and overcrowded;
+small and grown-up brothers and sisters move about over that narrow
+space; the furniture is not what it should be, and furnishes no
+facilities to the child for study. Not infrequently light, also air and
+heat are wanting; the materials for study and work, if there be any of
+them, are poor; frequently even hunger gnaws at the stomach of the child
+and robs it of mind and pleasure for its work. As a supplement to this
+picture, the fact must be added that hundreds of thousands of children
+are put to all manner of work, domestic and industrial, that embitters
+their youth and disables them from fulfilling their educational task.
+Again, often do children have to overcome the resistance of
+narrow-minded parents when they try to take time for their schoolwork or
+for play. In short, the obstacles are so numerous that, if they are all
+taken into account, the wonder is the youth of the land is as well
+educated. It is an evidence of the health of human nature, and of its
+inherent ambition after progress and perfection.
+
+Bourgeois society itself recognizes some of these evils by the
+introduction of public education and by facilitating the same still more
+through the free supply, here and there, of school material--two things
+that, as late as about the year 1885 the then Minister of Education of
+Saxony designated as a "Social Democratic demand," and as such flung the
+designation in the face of the Socialist Representative in the Landtag.
+In France, where, after long neglect, popular education advanced so much
+more rapidly, progress has gone still further. At least in Paris, the
+school children are fed at public expense. The poor obtain food free,
+and the children of parents who are better circumstanced contribute
+thereto a slight tax toward the common treasury--a communistic
+arrangement that has proved satisfactory to parents and children alike.
+
+An evidence of the inadequacy of the present school system--it is
+unable to fulfil even the moderate demands made upon it--is the fact
+that thousands upon thousands of children _are unable to fulfil their
+school duties by reason of insufficient food_. In the winter of 1893-94,
+it was ascertained in Berlin that _in one school district alone 3,600
+children went to school without breakfast_. In such shocking conditions
+there are hundreds of thousands of children in Germany to-day at certain
+seasons of the year. With millions of others the nourishment is utterly
+insufficient. For all these children public alimentation and clothing
+also would be a godsend. A commonwealth that pursued such a policy and
+thus, by the systematic nourishing and clothing of the children, would
+bring humanity home to them, is not likely to see the sight of
+"penitentiaries." Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of such
+misery, which itself has called forth. Hence we see compassionate souls
+foregathering in the establishment of breakfast and soup houses, to the
+end of partially filling by means of charity what it were the duty of
+society to fill in full. Our conditions are wretched--_but still more
+wretched is the mental make-up of those who shut their eyes to such
+facts_.
+
+The system of reducing so-called home school work, and of having the
+same done at school under the supervision of a teacher is progressing;
+the inadequacy of home facilities is realized. Not only is the richer
+pupil at an advantage over the poorer by reason of his position, but
+also by reason of his having private teachers and such other assistance
+at his command. On the other hand, however, laziness and shiftlessness
+are promoted with the rich pupil by reason of the effects of wealth,
+luxury and superfluity; these make knowledge appear superfluous to him,
+and often they place before him such immoral sights that he easily
+slides into temptation. He who every day and every hour hears the
+praises sung of rank, position, money, property, and that they are
+all-essential, acquires abnormal conceptions regarding man and his
+duties, and regarding State and social institutions.
+
+Closely looked into, bourgeois society has no reason to feel indignant
+at the communistic education, which Socialists aim at. Bourgeois society
+has itself partly introduced such a system for the privileged classes,
+but only as a caricature of the original. Look at the cadet and alumni
+establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at
+the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children,
+partly from the so-called upper classes, are educated in a one-sided and
+wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for
+certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better
+situated classes, who live in the country or in small places as
+physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords,
+large farmers, etc., send their children to boarding schools in the
+large cities and barely get a glimpse of them, except possibly during
+vacations.
+
+There is, accordingly, an obvious contradiction between the indignation
+expressed by our adversaries at a communistic system of education and at
+"the estrangement of children from their parents," on the one hand, and
+their own conduct, on the other, in _introducing the identical system
+for their own children--only in a bungling, absolutely false and
+inadequate style_.
+
+In equal tempo with the increased opportunities for education must the
+number of teachers increase. In the matter of the education of the
+rising generations the new social order must proceed in a way similar to
+that which prevails in the army, in the drilling of soldiers. There is
+one "under-officer" to each eight or ten men. With one teacher to every
+eight or ten pupils, the future may expect the results that should be
+aimed at.
+
+The introduction of mechanical activities in the best equipped
+workshops, in garden and field work, will constitute a good part of the
+education of the youth. It will all be done with the proper change and
+without excessive exertion, to the end of reaching the most perfectly
+developed beings.
+
+Education must also be equal and in common for both sexes. Their
+separation is justifiable only in the cases where the difference in sex
+makes such separation absolutely necessary. In this manner of education
+the United States is far ahead of us. There education of the two sexes
+is in common from the primary schools up to the universities. Not only
+is education free, but also school materials, inclusive of the
+instruments needed in manual training and in cooking, as also in
+chemistry, physics, and the articles needed for experimenting and at
+bench-work. To many schools are attached gymnastic halls, bath houses,
+swimming basins and playgrounds. In the higher schools, the female sex
+is trained in gymnastics, swimming, rowing and marching.[218]
+
+The Socialist system of education, properly regulated and ordered and
+placed under the direction of a sufficient force, continues up to the
+age when society shall determine that its youth shall enter upon their
+majority. Both sexes are fully qualified to exercise all the rights and
+fill all the duties that society demands from its adult members. Society
+now enjoys the certainty of having brought up only thorough, fully
+developed members, human beings to whom nothing natural is strange, as
+familiar with their nature as with the nature and conditions of society
+which they join full-righted.
+
+The daily increasing excesses of our modern youth--all of them the
+inevitable consequences of the present tainted and decomposing state of
+society--will have vanished. Impropriety of conduct, disobedience,
+immorality and rude pleasure-seeking, such as is especially noticeable
+among the youth of our higher educational institutions--the gymnasia,
+polytechnics, universities, etc.--vices that are incited and promoted by
+the existing demoralization and unrest of domestic life, by the
+poisonous influence of social life such as the immoral literature that
+wealth procures--all these will likewise have vanished. In equal measure
+will disappear the evil effects of the modern factory system and of
+improper housing, that dissoluteness and self-assurance of youths at an
+age when the human being is most in need of reining and education in
+self-control. All these evils future society will escape without the
+need of coercive measures. The nature of the social institutions and of
+the mental atmosphere, that will spring from them and that will rule
+society itself, rendering impossible the breaking out of such evils; as
+in Nature disease and the destruction of organisms can appear only when
+there is a state of decay that invites disease; so likewise in society.
+
+No one will deny that our present system of instruction and of education
+suffers of serious defects--the higher schools and educational
+establishments even more so than the lower. The village school is a
+paragon of moral health compared with the college; common schools for
+the manual training of poor girls are paragons of morality compared with
+many leading boarding schools for girls. The reason is not far to seek.
+In the upper classes of society, every aspiration after higher human
+aims is smothered; _those classes no longer have any ideal_. As a
+consequence of the absence of ideals and of noble endeavor, an unbounded
+passion for physical indulgence and hankering after excesses spread
+their physical and moral gangrene in all directions. How else can the
+youth be that is brought up in such an atmosphere? Purely material
+indulgence, without stint and without bounds, is the only aim that it
+sees or knows of. Why exert themselves, if the wealth of their parents
+makes all effort seem superfluous? The maximum of education with a large
+majority of the sons of our bourgeoisie consists in passing the
+examinations for the one year's service in the army. Is this goal
+reached, then they imagine to have climbed Pelion and Ossa, and regard
+themselves at least as demi-gods. Have they a reserve officer's
+certificate in their pocket, then their pride and arrogance knows no
+limit. The influence exercised by this generation--a generation it has
+become by its numbers--weak in the character and knowledge of its
+members, but strong in their designs and the spirit of graft,
+characterizes the present period as the "Age of Reserve Officers." Its
+peculiarities are: Characterlessness and ignorance, but a strong will;
+servility upward, arrogance and brutality downward.
+
+The daughters of our bourgeoisie are trained as show-dolls, fools of
+fashion and drawingroom-ladies, on the chase after one enjoyment after
+another, until, finally, surfeited with _ennui_, they fall a prey to all
+imaginable real and supposed diseases. Grown old, they become devotees
+and beads-women, who turn up their eyes at the corruption of the world
+and preach asceticism. As regards the lower classes, the effort is on
+foot to lower still more the level of their education. The proletariat
+might become too knowing, it might get tired of its vassalage, and might
+rebel against its earthly gods. The more stupid the mass, all the easier
+is it to control and rule.
+
+And thus modern society stands before the question of instruction and
+education as bewildered as it stands before all other social questions.
+What does it? It calls for the rod; preaches "religion," that is,
+submission and contentment to those who are now but too submissive;
+teaches abstinence where, due to poverty, abstinence has become
+compulsory in the utmost necessaries of life. Those who in the rudeness
+of their nature rear up brutally are taken to "reformatories," that
+usually are controlled by pietistic influences;--and the pedagogic
+wisdom of modern society has about reached the end of its tether.
+
+From the moment that the rising generation in future society shall have
+reached its majority, all further growth is left to the individual:
+society will feel sure that each will seize the opportunity to unfold
+the germs that have been so far developed in him. Each does according as
+inclination and faculties serve him. Some choose one branch of the ever
+more brilliant natural sciences: anthropology, zoology, botany,
+mineralogy, geology, physics, chemistry, prehistoric sciences, etc.;
+others take to the science of history, philologic researches, art;
+others yet become musicians from special gifts, or painters, or
+sculptors, or actors. The future will have "guild artists" as little as
+"guild scientists" or "guild artisans." Thousands of brilliant talents,
+hitherto kept down, unfold and assert themselves and display their
+knowledge and ability wherever opportunity offers. No longer are there
+any musicians, actors, artists and scientists by profession; they will
+exist only by inspiration, talent and genius; and the achievements of
+these bid fair to excel modern achievements on these fields as vastly as
+the industrial, technical and agricultural achievements of future
+society are certain to excel those of to-day. An era of art and sciences
+will spring up such as the world never saw before; nor will its
+creations fail to correspond to such a _renaissance_.
+
+What transformation and new-birth science will experience when
+conditions shall have become worthy of the human race, no less a man
+than the late Richard Wagner foresaw and expressed as early as 1850 in
+his work "Art and Revolution." This work is all the more significant
+seeing that it made its appearance immediately after a revolution that
+had just been beaten down, that Wagner took part in, and by reason of
+which he had to flee from Dresden. In this book Wagner foretells what
+the future will bring on. He turns directly to the working class as the
+one called upon to emancipate true art. Among other things he says:
+
+"When, with the free human race of the future, the earning of a living
+shall no longer be the object of life; when, on the contrary, thanks to
+the rise of a new faith, or of higher knowledge, the gaining of a
+livelihood by means of compatible work shall be raised above all
+uncertainty;--in short, when industry shall no longer be our master but
+our servant, then will we place the object of life in the pleasure of
+life, and seek to make our children fit and worthy through education. An
+education that starts from the exercise of strength, from the care of
+the beauty of the body will, due to the undisturbed love for the child
+and to the joy experienced at the thriving of its charms, become purely
+artistic; and thus in some sense or another every being will be an
+artist in truth. The diversity of natural inclinations will develop the
+most manifold aptitudes into an unprecedented wealth of beauty!"--at all
+points a Socialist line of thought, and fully in keeping with the
+arguments herein made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Social life in future will be ever more public. What the trend is may be
+gathered from the wholly changed position of woman, compared with former
+times. Domestic life will be confined to what is absolutely necessary,
+while the widest field will be opened to the gratification of the social
+instincts. Large gathering places for the holding of addresses and
+discussions, and for conferring upon all social questions, over which
+the collectivity has the sovereign word; play, meal and reading rooms;
+libraries, concert halls and theaters; museums and gymnastic
+institutions; parks, promenades, public baths, educational institutions
+of all sorts; laboratories, etc.;--all of these, erected in the best and
+equipped in the fittest manner possible, will afford richest opportunity
+for all manner of intercourse, of art and of science to achieve the
+highest. Likewise will the institutions for the nursing of the sick, the
+weak, the infirm through old age, meet the highest demands.
+
+How little will then our much boasted about age seem in comparison.
+This fawning for favor and sunshine from above; this cringing and
+dog-like frame of mind; this mutual struggle of enviousness, with the
+aid of the most hateful and vilest means, for the privileged place. All
+along the suppression of convictions; the veiling of good qualities,
+that might otherwise give offence; the emasculation of character; the
+affectation of opinions and feelings;--in short, all those qualities
+that may be summed up in words "cowardice and characterlessness" are now
+every day more pronounced. Whatever elevates and ennobles
+man--self-esteem, independence and incorruptibility of opinion and
+convictions, freedom of utterance--modern conditions generally turn into
+defects and crimes. Often do these qualities work the ruin of their
+owners, unless he suppresses them. Many do not even realize their
+degradation; they have grown accustomed thereto. The dog regards it a
+matter of course that he has a master, who, when out of temper, visits
+him with the whip.
+
+Such altered conditions in social life will impart a radically different
+aspect to literary productions. Theological literature, whose entries
+are at present most numerous in the yearly catalogues of literary works,
+drops out in company with its juridic cousin,--there is no more interest
+in the former, and no more use for the latter. All the literary
+productions that refer to the struggle over political institutions will
+be seen no more,--their subject-matter has ceased to be. The study of
+all such matters will belong to the history of civilization. The vast
+mass of inane productions--the evidences of a spoiled taste, often
+possible only through sacrifices at the altar of the author's
+vanity--are gone. Even speaking from the view-point of present
+conditions, it may be said without exaggeration that four-fifths of all
+literary productions could disappear from the market without loss to a
+single interest of civilization. Such is the vastness of the mass of
+superficial or harmful books, palpable trash, extant to-day on the field
+of literature.
+
+Belles-lettres and the press will be equally hit. There is nothing
+sorrier, more spiritless or superficial than the large majority of our
+newspaper literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific
+attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it
+would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are
+judged from a view-point that corresponds with centuries gone by, and
+that has been long since proved laughable and untenable by science. A
+considerable portion of our journalists are people who, as Bismarck once
+put it, "missed their calling," but whose education and standard of
+wages fit with bourgeois interests. Furthermore, these newspapers, as
+well as the majority of the belles-lettric magazines, have the mission
+of circulating impure advertisements; the interests of their purses are
+on this field the same as on the former: the material interests of
+their owners determine their contents.
+
+On an average, belles-lettric literature is not much superior to
+newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders
+homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and
+superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order
+of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in
+trifles, as the best of all possible worlds.
+
+On this extensive and important field, future society will institute
+some thorough-going housecleaning. Science, truth, beauty, the contest
+of the intellect after the best will rule supreme. Everyone who achieves
+what is worthy will enjoy the opportunity to exercise his faculties. He
+no longer depends upon the favor of a publisher, moneyed considerations
+or prejudice, but only upon the impartial judgment of experts whom he
+himself joins in electing, and from whose unfavorable decision he can
+always appeal to the general vote of the whole community,--all of which
+is to-day against him or impossible. The childish notion that all
+contest of intellect would be held down in a Socialist society they
+alone can maintain who hold the bourgeois world to be the most perfect
+social system, and who, out of enmity to Socialism seek to slander and
+to belittle it. A society, that rests upon full democratic equality,
+neither knows nor tolerates oppression. Only the fullest freedom of
+thought makes uninterrupted progress possible, and this is the principle
+of life with society. Moreover, it is an act of deception to represent
+bourgeois society as the paladin of true freedom of thought. Parties
+that represent class interests will publish in the press only that which
+does not injure their class' own interests, and woe to him who would
+attempt the contrary. His social ruin would be sealed, as every one
+knows. In what manner publishers handle literary work that does not suit
+them, every writer almost could tell a tale of woe on. Finally, the
+German press and criminal laws betray the spirit that animates our
+ruling and leading classes. Actual freedom of thought is looked upon by
+them as the most dangerous of evils.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The individual is to develop himself fully. That must be the law of
+human association. Accordingly, the individual may not remain fettered
+to the soil on which the accident of birth first placed him. Men and the
+world should be known, not from books and papers only: personal
+observation, practical experience are also needed. Accordingly, future
+society must enable everyone to do what is now done by many, although in
+most instances it happens to-day under the whip that want cracks. The
+wish for change in all the relations of life is a craving strongly
+stamped in man. It springs from the instinct after perfection, inherent
+in all organic beings. The plant that stands in a dark room, stretches
+and strains, as though endowed with consciousness, towards the light
+that falls from some crevice. Just so with man. An instinct implanted in
+man, consequently a natural instinct, must be rationally gratified. The
+conditions of future society will not balk the instinct after change; on
+the contrary, they promote its gratification with all: it is facilitated
+by the highly developed system of intercommunication; it is demanded by
+international relations. In future days, infinitely more people will
+travel through the world, and for the most varied of purposes, than
+happens to-day.
+
+In order to meet all demands, society furthermore requires an ample
+provision of all the necessaries of life. Society regulates its hours of
+work accordingly. It makes them longer or shorter, according as its
+needs or the season of the year may suggest. It may turn its strength at
+one season mainly to agriculture, at another mainly to industrial and
+similar production. It directs its labor forces as occasion may require.
+Through the combination of numerous forces, equipped with the best
+technical provisions, it can carry through with swiftness, aye,
+playingly, undertakings that to-day seem impossible.
+
+As society assumes the care of its youth, so it does of its aged, sick
+or invalid members. It guards whoever, by whatever circumstance, has
+become unable to work. There is in this no question of _charity_, but of
+_duty_; not of an alms morsel, but of an assistance born of every
+possible consideration due him, who, during the time of his strength and
+ability to work, fulfilled his duties to the commonwealth. The setting
+sun of old age is beautiful with all that society can offer: everyone
+being buoyed up with the confidence that he will some day himself enjoy
+what now he affords to others. No longer are the aged now disturbed with
+the thought that others are awaiting their death in order to "inherit;"
+likewise has the fear vanished from the mind of man that, grown old and
+helpless, he will be cast off like a squeezed lemon. Man now feels
+himself left neither to the benevolence of his children, nor to the alms
+of the community. What the condition is in which most parents find
+themselves, who depend in old age upon the support of their children, is
+notorious. How demoralizing is not the effect of the hope of inheriting
+upon the children, and, in a still greater degree, upon relatives! What
+vile qualities are not awakened; and how many are not the crimes that
+such hopes have led to!--murder, forgery, perjury, extortion, etc.
+Capitalist society has no reason to be proud of its laws of
+inheritance; to them are ascribable part of the crimes that are
+committed every year; and yet the large majority of people have nothing
+to bequeath or to inherit.[219]
+
+The moral and physical condition of future society; the nature of its
+work, homes, food, clothing, its social life--everything will greatly
+contribute to avoid accidents, sickness, debility. Natural death by the
+decline of the vigor of life will become the rule. The conviction that
+"heaven" is on earth, and that to be dead means to be ended, will cause
+people to lead rational lives.[220] He enjoys most who enjoys longest.
+None know how to appreciate a long life better than the very clergy who
+prepare people for the "after world;" a life free from care makes it
+possible for these gentlemen to reach the highest age average.[221]
+
+Life requires, first of all, food and drink. Friends of the so-called
+"natural way of living" often ask why is Socialism indifferent to
+vegetarianism. The question causes us to take up the subject in a few
+lines. Vegetarianism, that is, the doctrine that prescribes an exclusive
+vegetal diet, found its first supporters in such circles as are in the
+agreeable position of being able to choose between a vegetal and an
+animal diet. To the large majority of people there is no such choice:
+they are forced to live according to their means, the meagerness of
+which in many instances keeps them almost exclusively to a vegetal diet,
+and to the least nutritive, at that. With our working class population
+in Silesia, Saxony, Thuringen, etc., the potato is the principal
+nourishment; even bread comes in only secondarily; meat, and then only
+of poor quality, is hardly ever seen on the table. Even the largest part
+of the rural population, although they are the raisers of cattle, rarely
+partake of meat: they must sell the cattle in order to satisfy other
+pressing wants with the money obtained therefor.
+
+For the innumerable people, who are compelled to live as vegetarians, an
+occasional solid beefsteak, or good leg of mutton, would be a decided
+improvement in the diet. When vegetarianism directs itself against the
+overrating of the nutrition contained in meat, it is right; it is wrong,
+however, when it combats the partaking of meat as harmful and fatal,
+mainly on sentimental grounds--such as "the nature of man forbids the
+killing of animals and to partake of a corpse." In order to live
+comfortably and undisturbed, we are compelled to declare war upon and
+destroy a large number of living beings in the shape of all manner of
+vermin; in order not to be ourselves eaten up, we must undertake the
+killing and extirpating of wild animals. The quiet toleration of those
+"good friends of man," the domestic animals, would increase the number
+of these "good friends" in a few decades so immensely that they would
+"devour" us by robbing us of food. Neither is the claim true that a
+vegetarian diet produces mildness of temperament. The "beast" was
+awakened even in the mild, vegetarian Hindoo when the severity of the
+Englishmen drove him to mutiny.
+
+In our opinion Sonderegger hits the nail on the head when he says:
+"There is no order of rank in the matter of the different kinds of food;
+but there is an unalterable law in the matter of combining their several
+nutritious qualities." It is true that no one can nourish himself on an
+exclusively meat diet, but that he can on an exclusively vegetal diet,
+provided always he can select to suit; but neither would any one be
+satisfied with one vegetable, let it be the most nutritive. Beans, for
+instance, peas, lentils, in short, the leguminosae, are the most
+nutritive of all food. Nevertheless, to be forced to feed exclusively on
+them--which is said to be possible--were a torture. Karl Marx mentions
+in "Capital" that the Chilian mine-owners compel their workingmen to eat
+beans year in and year out, because the food imparts to them great
+strength and enables them to carry burdens that they could not carry
+with any other diet. Despite its nutrition, the workingmen turn against
+such food, but get none other, and are thus obliged to rest content
+therewith. Under no circumstances do the happiness and well-being of
+people depend upon a certain diet, as is claimed by the fanatics among
+the vegetarians. Climate, custom, individual tastes are the determining
+factors.
+
+In the measure that civilization advances, a vegetal diet progressively
+takes the place of the exclusive meat diet, such as is indulged in by
+hunting and pastoral peoples. A many-sided agriculture is a sign of
+higher culture. On a given field, vegetal nutritive matter can be raised
+in larger quantities than could meat be obtained through cattle raising.
+This development imparts to vegetal nutrition an ever greater
+preponderance. The transportation of meat, that the modern vandalic
+economic system furnishes us with from foreign lands, especially from
+South America and Australia, has been very nearly exhausted within few
+decades. On the other hand, animals are raised, not merely for the sake
+of meat, but also for that of wool, hair, bristles, skin and hides,
+milk, eggs, etc., upon which many industries and human wants are
+dependent. Again offal of several kinds can be turned in no way to
+better advantage than through cattle raising. The seas will also in
+future be made to yield to man their wealth of animal food to a much
+larger extent than now. It will be in future a rare occurrence to see,
+as we do to-day, whole loads of fish turned to manure, because the
+facilities and costs of transportation, or the facilities of
+preservation prevent their being otherwise used. It follows that a
+purely vegetal diet is neither probable nor necessary in the future.
+
+In the matter of food, _quality_ rather than _quantity_ is to be
+considered. Quantity is of little use if not good. Quality is greatly
+improved by the manner of preparation. The preparation of food must be
+conducted as scientifically as any other function, if it is to reach the
+highest point of utility possible. Knowledge and equipment are thereto
+requisite. That our women, upon whom to-day mainly devolves the
+preparation of food, do not and can not possess this knowledge, needs no
+proof. They lack all the necessary equipments therefor. As every well
+equipped hotel kitchen, the steam kitchen of barracks or of hospitals
+and especially the cooking expositions teach us, the cooking
+apparatuses, together with many technical arrangements for all manner of
+food preparation, have reached a high degree of perfection and have been
+contrived upon scientific principles. That will in the future be the
+rule. The object aimed at must be to obtain the best results with the
+smallest expenditure of power, time and material. _The small private
+kitchen is, just like the workshop of the small master mechanic, a
+transition stage, an arrangement by which time, power and material are
+senselessly squandered and wasted._ The preparation of food also will
+in future society be a social establishment, conducted on the most
+improved plane, in proper and advantageous manner. The private kitchen
+disappears, as it has now disappeared in the instance of those families
+who, although they generally provide themselves through their own
+kitchen, always resort to hotel kitchens or to those of caterers, the
+moment the question is to provide for banquets or to procure dishes a
+knowledge of which both they and their domestics lack.[222]
+
+The Chicago Exposition of 1893 brought out a mass of interesting facts
+on the revolution that has taken place in the kitchen also, and in the
+preparation of food;--among other things a kitchen in which the heating
+and cooking was done wholly through electricity. Electricity not only
+furnished the light, but was also active in the washing of dishes, which
+thereupon required the aid of the human hand only in finishing up. In
+this kitchen of the future there was no hot air, no smoke, no vapors.
+Numberless apparatuses and subsidiary machinery performed a number of
+operations that until then had to be performed by human hands. This
+kitchen of the future resembled more a parlor than a kitchen that
+everyone who has nothing to do in, likes to stay away from. Work therein
+at the Chicago Exposition was pleasurable and free from all the
+unpleasantness that are features of the modern kitchen. Can a private
+kitchen be imagined even approximately equipped like that? And then,
+what a saving in all directions through such a central kitchen! Our
+women would seize the opportunity with both hands to exchange the
+present for the kitchen of the future.
+
+The nutritive value of food is heightened by its facility of
+assimilation. This is a determining factor.[223] A natural system of
+nourishment for all can be reached only by future society. Cato praises
+the Rome of before his days for having had experts in the art of
+healing, but, down to the sixth century of the city, no occupation for
+exclusive physicians. People lived so frugally and simply, that disease
+was rare, and death from old age was the usual form of decease. Not
+until gourmandizing and idleness--in short, license with some, want and
+excessive work with others--had permeated society, did matters change,
+and radically so. In future, gluttony and license will be impossible,
+and likewise want, misery and privation. There is enough, and an
+abundance, for all. More than fifty years ago Henrich Heine sang:
+
+
+    Why, there grows down here abundance
+      And a plentitude for all;
+    Roses, myrtles, beauty and joy;
+      Yes, and sugar beans withal--
+
+    Aye, sugar beans in bursting pods
+      For everyone are here,
+    But they're left to heaven's angels
+      And the sparrows of the air.
+
+
+"He who eats little lives well"--that is, long, said the Italian Cornaro
+in the sixteenth century, as quoted by Niemeyer. In the end chemistry
+will be active in the preparation and improvement of nourishment to a
+degree thitherto unknown. To-day the science is greatly abused in the
+interest of adulterations and fraud. It is obvious that a chemically
+prepared food that has all the qualities of the natural product will
+accomplish the same purpose. The form of the preparation is of secondary
+importance, provided the product otherwise meets all requirements.
+
+As in the kitchen, the revolution will be accomplished throughout
+domestic life: it will remove numberless details of work that must be
+attended to to-day. As in the future the domestic kitchen is rendered
+wholly superfluous by the central institutions for the preparation of
+food, so likewise are all the former troubles of keeping ranges, lamps,
+etc., in working order, removed by the central heating and electric
+apparatuses for lighting. Warm and cold water supplies place bathing
+within the reach of all at pleasure, and without the aid of any person.
+The central laundries assume the washing, drying, etc., of clothes; the
+central cleaning establishments see to the dusting, etc., of clothing
+and carpets. In Chicago, carpet-cleaning machines were exhibited that
+did the work in so short a time as to call forth the admiration of the
+ladies who visited the Exposition. The electric door opens at a slight
+pressure of the finger, and shuts of itself. Electric contrivances
+deliver letters and newspapers on all the floors of the houses; electric
+elevators save the climbing of stairs. The inside arrangement of the
+houses--floorings, garnishing of the walls, furnitures--will be
+contrived with an eye to the facility of cleaning and to the prevention
+of the gathering of dust and bacteria. Dust, sweepings and offal of all
+sorts will be carried by pipes out of the houses as water, that has
+been used, is carried off to-day. In the United States, in many a
+European city--Zurich, for instance--there are to-day tenements,
+exquisitely equipped, in which numerous affluent families--others could
+not bear the expense--live and enjoy a large part of the conveniences
+just sketched.
+
+Here again we have an illustration of how capitalist society breaks the
+way in revolutionizing human affairs, in this instance in domestic
+life,--but only for its elect. Domestic life being thus radically
+transformed, the servant, this "slave of all the whims of the mistress,"
+is no more,--and the mistress neither. "No servants, no culture!" cries
+the horrified Herr v. Treitschke with comic pathos. He can as little
+imagine society without servants as Aristotle could without slaves. The
+matter of surprise is that Herr v. Treitschke looks upon our servants as
+the "carriers of civilization." Treitschke, like Eugen Richter, is
+furthermore greatly worried by the shoe-polishing and clothes-dusting
+question, which neither is able to attend to personally. It so happens,
+however, that with nine-tenths of the people everyone sees to that
+himself, or the wife does for her husband, or a daughter or son for the
+family. We might answer that what the nine-tenths have hitherto done,
+the remnant tenth may also do. But there is another way out. Why should
+not in future society the youth of the land, without distinction of sex,
+be enlisted for such necessary work? Work does not dishonor, even if it
+consist in polishing boots. Many a member of the old nobility, and
+officers of the army at that, learned the lesson when, to escape their
+debts, they ran off to the United States, and there became servants, or
+shoe-polishers. Eugen Richter, in his pamphlets, goes even so far as to
+cause the downfall of the "Socialist Imperial Chancellor" on the
+"Shoe-polishing Question," and the consequent falling to pieces of the
+"Socialist State." The "Socialist Imperial Chancellor" refuses to polish
+his own shoes; hence his troubles. The bourgeoisie has hugely enjoyed
+this description of Richter, and it has thereby furnished evidence of
+the modesty of its demands upon a criticism of Socialism. But Eugen
+Richter lived to experience the sorrow of not only seeing one of his own
+party members in Nuerenberg invent a shoe-polishing machine soon after
+the appearance of that pamphlet, but of also learning that at the
+Chicago Exposition of 1893 an electric shoe-polishing machine was
+exhibited that did the work perfectly. Thus the principal objection,
+raised by Richter and Treitschke against Socialist society, has been
+practically thrown overboard by an invention made under the bourgeois
+social system itself.
+
+The revolutionary transformation, that radically changes all the
+relations of man, especially the position of woman, is, as we see, going
+on now under our own eyes. It is only a question of time when society
+will take the process into its own hands and upon a large scale, thus
+quickening and perfecting the change and affording to all, without
+exception, the opportunity to share its innumerable advantages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[176] "The power of emulation, in exciting to the most strenuous
+exertions for the sake of the approbation and admiration of others, is
+borne witness to by experience in every situation in which human beings
+publicly compete with one another, even if it be in things frivolous, or
+from which the public derives no benefit. A contest, who can do most for
+the common good, is not the kind of competition which Socialists
+repudiate."--John Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy." Every
+union, every association of people, who pursue equal aims, likewise
+furnishes numerous examples of greater effort with no material, but only
+an ideal, reward in view. The emulators are moved by the ambition to
+distinguish themselves, by the desire to serve the common cause. But
+this sort of ambition is no vice; it is a virtue; it is put forth in the
+interest of all; and the individual finds his satisfaction in that along
+with all others. Ambition is harmful and objectionable only when it is
+put forth to the injury of the whole, and at the expense of others.
+
+[177] Von Thuenen says in his "Der isolirte Staat": "The reason why the
+proletarians, on the one hand, and property classes, on the other, face
+each other permanently as enemies lies in the antagonism of their
+interests; and they will remain unreconciled _so long as this division
+of interests is not removed_. Not only the well-being of his wage-giver
+but--through discoveries in industry, the pavement of streets and
+building of railroads, the forming of new business connections--the
+revenues of the Nation also may increase. Under our present social
+order, however, the workingman is touched by none of these; his
+condition remains what it was, and _the whole increase of revenues
+accrues to the employers, the capitalists and the landlords_." This last
+sentence is an almost literal anticipation of the words of Gladstone in
+the English Parliament, when he declared in 1864 "this intoxicating
+increase of incomes and power" that England had experienced in the
+course of the previous twenty years, "has been confined exclusively to
+the possessing classes." Again on p. 207 of his work, v. Thuenen says:
+"The evil lies in the divorce of the workingman from his product."
+
+Morelly declares in his "Principles of Legislation": "Property divides
+us into two classes--Rich and Poor. The former love their property and
+care not to defend the State; the latter can not possibly love the
+Fatherland, seeing that it bestows upon them naught but misery. Under
+the system of Communism, however, all love the Fatherland, seeing that
+all receive from it life and happiness."
+
+[178] In weighing the advantages and the disadvantages of Communism,
+John Stuart Mill says in his "Principles of Political Economy": "No soil
+could be more favorable to the growth of such a feeling, than a
+Communist association, since all the ambition, and the bodily and mental
+activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and
+self-regarding interests, would require another sphere of employment,
+and would naturally find it in the pursuit of the general benefit of the
+community."
+
+[179] "Die Gesetze der sozialen Entwickelung."
+
+[180] What does Herr Eugene Richter say to this calculation? In his
+"Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) he makes merry over the enormous
+shortening of the hours of work that we have held out in this work as
+the result that would follow upon the obligation of all to work and upon
+the higher technical organization of the process of production. He seeks
+to minimize as much as possible the productivity of production on a
+large scale, and to enhance the importance of production on a small
+scale. He does so in order that he might claim that the expected
+increased production was not practicable. In order to make Socialism
+seem impossible, these defenders of the existing "order" are forced to
+discredit the merits of their own social system.
+
+[181] "Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and
+strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very
+incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very
+small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With
+adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will
+ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce
+eagerness; 50 per cent. positive audacity; 100 per cent. will made it
+ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a
+crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the
+chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a
+profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade
+have amply proved all that is here stated." (P. J. Dunning, 1. c., p.
+35.) Cited by Karl Marx in "Capital," p. 786, edition Swan-Sonnenscheim
+& Co., London, 1896.
+
+[182] A competitor with electricity, applied to lighting purposes, has
+recently arisen in the shape of the so-called acetylene gas, which was
+discovered in the United States, by means of an electrolytic process,
+similar to that used in the preparation of aluminum. A compound is made
+of calcium and carbon, called calcium-carbide, which, in touch with
+water, produces the acetylene gas. Its lighting power is fifteen times
+that of the ordinary illuminating gas, besides being much cheaper.
+
+[183] "The generality of laborers in this and most other countries, have
+as little choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion, are practically
+as dependent on fixed rules, and on the will of others, as they could be
+on any system short of actual slavery."--John Stuart Mill's "Principles
+of Political Economy."
+
+[184] "A French workman, on his return from San Francisco, writes as
+follows: 'I never could have believed that I was capable of working at
+the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly
+convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing.... Once
+in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation
+as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining
+did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in
+succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, etc. In consequence of
+this finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a
+mollusk and more of a man.'" (A. Courbou, "De l'Enseignement
+Professional," 2eme ed. p. 50.) Cited by Karl Marx in "Capital", p. 493,
+edition Swan-Sonnenschein Co., London, 1896.
+
+[185] Tolstoi's "The Significance of Science and Art."
+
+[186] What may be made of a man under favorable circumstances is
+illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, who was a distinguished painter,
+celebrated sculptor, favorite architect and engineer, excellent builder
+of fortifications, musician and improvisator. Benvenuto Cellini was a
+celebrated goldsmith, excellent molder, good sculptor, leading builder
+of fortifications, first-rate soldier and thorough musician. Abraham
+Lincoln was a splitter of rails, agriculturist, boatman, shop-assistant
+and lawyer, until he was placed in the Presidential chair of the United
+States. It may be said without exaggerating, most people are engaged in
+occupations that do not correspond with their faculties, simply because,
+not freedom of choice, but the force of necessity dictated their career.
+Many a bad professor would do good work as a shoemaker, and many a good
+shoemaker could be a good professor as well.
+
+[187] It should always be kept in mind that production is then organized
+up to the highest point of technical perfection, and all the people are
+at work. It may thus happen that, under given circumstances, a
+three-hour day is rather longer, and not shorter, than necessary. Owen
+in his time--first quarter of the nineteenth century--considered two
+hours' work sufficient.
+
+[188] "It is not necessary to go a round-about way in order to ascertain
+the amount of social labor crystallized in a given product. Daily
+experience shows directly the requisite average. Society can easily
+calculate how many hours are contained in a steam engine, in a
+hectoliter of last year's wheat, in a hundred square meters of cloth of
+a certain quality. Society will, therefore, never dream of re-expressing
+these units of work,--crystallized in the products and known to it
+directly and absolutely--by a merely relative, varying and insufficient
+measure, formerly used by it as a make-shift that it could not get along
+without; a measure, moreover, which itself is a third product, instead
+of by their natural, adequate and absolute measure--time.... Society
+will have to organize the plan of production according to the means of
+production, under which category labor-power especially belongs. The
+various utilities of the several articles of use, balanced with one
+another and with the amount of labor necessary for their production,
+will in the end determine the plan. People settle matters a good deal
+more simply without the intervention of the celebrated 'money
+value.'"--Fr. Engels' "Herr Eugene Duehring's Umwaelzung der
+Wissensehaft."
+
+[189] Herr Eugene Richter is so astonished at the dropping away of money
+in Socialist society--abolished money will not be: with the abolition of
+the merchandise character from the products of labor, money drops away
+of itself--that he devotes to the subject a special chapter in his
+"Irrelehren." What is particularly hard for him to understand is the
+idea that it is immaterial whether the voucher for labor performance be
+a piece of paper, gold or tin. On this head he says: "With gold, the
+devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic
+State"--that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a
+Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must,
+else a good portion of his polemic would fall through--"seeing that gold
+has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the
+possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values
+wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith
+even to lay out money on interest."
+
+Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up
+such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not
+rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand
+that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor
+can there be any "money"; and where there is no "capital" and no
+"money", neither could there be any "interest." Herr Richter is nailed
+so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world
+without "capital." We should like to know how a member of a Socialist
+society could "save up" his gold certificates of labor, or even loan
+them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members
+possess what that one is offering them and--_on which he lives_.
+
+[190] "All people of average healthy build _are born with almost equal
+intellectual powers, but education, laws and circumstances alter them
+relatively_. The correctly understood interest of the individual is
+blended into one with the common or public interest."--Helvetius' "On
+Man and His Education." Helvetius is right with regard to the large
+majority of people; but that does not take away that the natural
+faculties of each are different for different occupations.
+
+[191] "If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with
+all its chances, and the present state of society with all its
+sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property
+necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor
+should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to
+the labor--the largest portions to those who have never worked at all,
+the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a
+descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder
+and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily
+labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the
+necessaries of life; if this or Communism, were the alternative, all the
+difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the
+balance."--John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." Mill
+strove diligently to "reform" the bourgeois world, and to "bring it to
+reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all
+clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the
+fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his
+auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of
+faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in
+his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie affects loyalty, religion and
+faith in authority because through the acceptance of these "virtues" by
+the masses its own rule is safeguarded; in its own sleeves, however, it
+laughs at them.
+
+[192] "Scholarship is as often the hand-maid of ignorance as of
+progress."--Buckle's "History of Civilization in England."
+
+[193] According to the census of 1882 there were in Germany engaged in
+trade and transportation 1,570,318 persons, inclusive of those occupied
+in hotels and inns, and exclusive of 295,451 domestics.
+
+[Some opinion may be formed of the volume of useless labor, parasitism,
+in the United States, from the census figures for 1900. Under this head
+of "Trade and Transportation" alone come 4,766,964 persons. Among them,
+substantially useless, are the 241,162 agents, the 73,277 brokers, the
+92,919 commercial travelers, the 76,649 hucksters and peddlers, the
+790,886 merchants and dealers (except wholesale), the 42,293 merchants
+and dealers (wholesale), the 74,072 officials of banks and companies,
+the 33,656 livery stable keepers, the 71,622 messengers and errand and
+office boys, and the 59,545 packers and shippers--in all 1,556,081. Of
+the remaining 3,210,883--among whom are 254,880 bookkeepers and
+accountants, 632,127 clerks and copyists, 611,139 salesmen and
+women--fully two-thirds could be spared to-day under a rational social
+system. The proportion of wasteful forces, and even parasitism, is still
+larger under the heads of "Professional Service" and "Domestic and
+Personal Service," among which--to pick up only a few of the worst
+items--are 111,638 clergymen, 114,460 lawyers, 86,607 government
+officials, including officers of the United States army and navy, 33,844
+saloon keepers, 1,560,721 servants and waiters, 43,235 soldiers, sailors
+and marines (U. S.), etc., etc.--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[194] Even the Fathers of the Church, Bishops and Popes could not
+refrain from preaching in a communistic vein during those early
+centuries when community of property still prevailed, but its theft was
+assuming larger proportions. The Syllabus and the encyclicals of the
+nineteenth century have lost all recollection of this tone, and even the
+Roman Popes have been compelled to become subjects of capitalist
+society, and now pose as its zealous defenders against the Socialists.
+
+In contrast therewith Bishop Clemens I. (deceased 102 of our reckoning)
+said: "The use of all things in this world is to be common to all. It is
+an injustice to say: 'This is my property, this belongs to me, that
+belongs to another.' Hence the origin of contentions among men."
+
+Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who lived about 347, exclaimed: "Nature bestows
+all things on all men in common, for God has created all things that
+their enjoyment might be common to all, and that the earth might become
+the common possession of all. Common possession is, therefore, a right
+established by Nature, and only unjust usurpation (usurpatio) has
+created the right of private property."
+
+St. John Chrysostomus (deceased 407) declared in his homilies directed
+against the immorality and corruption of the population of
+Constantinople: "Let none call aught his own; we have received
+everything from God for enjoyment in common, and 'mine' and 'thine' are
+words of falsehood."
+
+St. Augustine (deceased 430) expressed himself thus: "Because private
+property exists there exists also law suits, enmities, dissensions,
+wars, rebellions, sins, injustice, murder. Whence proceed all these
+scourges? From property only. Let us then, my brothers, refrain from
+possessing anything as our property; at least let us refrain from loving
+it."
+
+Pope Gregory the Great declares about 600: "Let them know that the earth
+from which they spring and of which they are formed belongs to all men
+in common, and that therefore the fruits which the earth brings forth
+must belong to all without distinction."
+
+And one of the moderns, Zacharia, says in his "Forty Books on the
+State": "All the evils with which civilized nations have to contend, can
+be traced back to private property in land."
+
+All these authorities have recognized more or less accurately the nature
+of private property, which, since its existence, as St. Augustine
+correctly puts it, brought law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars,
+rebellions, injustice and murder into the world,--all of them evils that
+will disappear with its abolition.
+
+[195] "The employment of water in the cultivation of fruit as well as of
+vegetables is highly desirable; water associations with these ends in
+view could turn with us also deserts into paradises." Official report on
+the Chicago Exposition of 1893, rendered by the Imperial Commissioner,
+Berlin, 1894.
+
+[196] This prospect seems nearer realization and in a quite different
+manner than the most far-sighted could have imagined. The discovery of
+acetylene gas is the point of departure for a long line of products of
+organic chemistry, that, with proper treatment, can be drawn from it.
+Among the articles of enjoyment, that may be expected to be gained first
+of all on this path, is alcohol, the production of which promises to be
+the easiest of all and very cheap, and is expected in but few years. If
+this succeeds, a large part of the agriculture of the East Elbian
+district, which depends upon the production of alcohol, will be put in
+jeopardy. The circumstance will bring on a revolution in the respective
+agricultural interests that will play mightily into the hands of
+Socialism. Evidently, what Werner, Siemens and Berthelot held out, is
+approaching reality.
+
+[197] Dr. G. Ruhland, "Die Grundprinzipien aktueller Agrarpolitik."
+
+[198] A petition by Julius Zuns, which finally was not sent to the
+Reichstag, on the subject of an agrarian investigation.
+
+[199] Dr. Rudolf Meyer, "Der Kapitalismus fin de siecle."
+
+[200] "There is a prescription for securing the fertility of the fields
+and perpetual repetition of their produce. If this prescription be
+consistently carried out it will prove more remunerative than any which
+has ever been applied in agriculture. It is this: Let every farmer, like
+the Chinese coolie, who carries a sack of corn or a hundred weight of
+rape, or carrots or potatoes, etc., to town, bring back with him as much
+if possible or more of the ingredients of his field products as he took
+with him, and restore it to the field whence it came. He must not
+despise a potato paring or a straw, but remember that one of his
+potatoes still needs a skin, and one of his ears of corn a stalk. The
+expense for this importation is slight, the outlay secure; a savings
+bank is not securer, and no investment brings in a higher rate of
+interest. The returns of his fields will be doubled in ten years: he
+will produce more corn, more meat and more cheese without expending more
+time or labor, and he will not be driven by constant anxiety to seek for
+new and unknown means, which do not exist, to make his ground fertile in
+another manner.... Old bones, soot, ashes, whether washed out or not,
+and blood of animals and refuse of all kinds ought to be collected in
+storehouses, and prepared for distribution.... Governments and town
+police should take precautions for preventing the loss of these
+materials by a suitable arrangement of drains and closets."--Liebig's
+"Chemical Letters."
+
+[201] "Every coolie (in China) who carries his produce to market in the
+morning, brings home two buckets full of manure on a bamboo rod in the
+evening. The appreciation of manure goes so far that every one knows how
+much a man secretes in a day, a month and a year, and the Chinaman
+considers it more than rude if his guest leaves his house carrying with
+him a benefit to which his host thinks himself justly entitled as a
+return for his hospitality.... Every substance derived from plants or
+animals is carefully collected and used as manure by the Chinese.... To
+complete the idea of the importance attached to animal refuse, it will
+suffice to mention the fact that the barbers carefully collect and trade
+with the hairs cut from the heads and beards of the hundred millions of
+customers whom they daily shave. The Chinese are acquainted with the use
+of gypsum and chalk, and it not infrequently occurs that they renew the
+plaster in their kitchens merely for the purpose of using the old
+plaster as manure."--Liebig's "Chemical Letters."
+
+[202] Karl Schober, Address delivered on the agricultural, municipal and
+national economic significance of city refuse; Berlin, 1877.
+
+[203] "Life, Its Elements and the Means of Its Conservation."
+
+[204] According to the census of 1890, Germany had 26 large cities of
+over 100,000 inhabitants each. In 1871 it had only 8 of them. In 1871,
+Berlin had, in round figures, 826,000 inhabitants; in 1890 it had
+1,578,794--it had almost doubled. A number of these large cities were
+compelled to take within their municipalities the contiguous industrial
+towns, that in themselves had populations large enough for cities.
+Through the process, the population of the former rose immediately.
+Thus, within the period of 1885 to 1890, Leipsic rose from 170,000 to
+353,000; Cologne from 161,000 to 282,000; Madgeburg from 114,000 to
+201,000; Munich from 270,000 to 345,000 inhabitants, etc. At the same
+time, most of the other cities that incorporated no contiguous towns
+increased considerably during that period. Breslau grew from 299,000 to
+335,000; Dresden from 246,000 to 276,000; Frankfurt-on-Main from 154,000
+to 180,000; Hanover from 140,000 to 163,000; Dusseldorf from 115,000 to
+146,000; Nuerenberg from 115,000 to 142,000; Chemnitz from 111,000 to
+139,000 inhabitants. Similar growths were also registered by many
+middle-sized cities of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.
+
+[In the United States, the concentration of population in large cities
+has been marked. In 1790 only 3.4 per cent. of the total population
+lived in cities. The proportion of urban to the total population then
+grew from census year to census year (decade to decade) as follows: 4.0
+in 1800; 4.9 in 1810; 4.9 in 1820; 6.7 in 1830; 8.5 in 1840; 12.5 in
+1850; 16.1 in 1860; 20.9 in 1870; 22.6 in 1880; 29.2 in 1890; and 33.1
+in 1900. According to the census of 1900 there live 14,208,347 of the
+population in cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants; 5,549,271 in
+cities of 25,000 to 100,000 inhabitants; 5,286,375 in cities of 8,000 to
+25,000 inhabitants; 3,380,193 in cities of 4,000 to 8,000 inhabitants;
+and 2,214,136 in cities of 2,500 to 4,000 inhabitants. In country
+districts there live 45,573,846 of a total population of 76,212,168,
+including Alaska and Hawaii.--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[205] Prof. Adolf Wagner says in his work "Lehrbuch der politischen
+Oekonomie von Rau": "Small private holdings in land constitute an
+economic basis, that can be substituted by no other institution for a
+most important part of the population--an independent, self-sustaining
+peasantry, together with its peculiar socio-political position and
+function." Where, for the sake of his conservative friends, the author
+does not enthuse _a tout prix_ for the small farmer, he is bound to
+regard this class as one of the poorest. Under existing circumstances,
+the small farmer is downright inaccessible to higher culture: he toils
+at hard labor from early dawn till late, and lives often worse than a
+dog. Meat, butter, eggs, milk, which he produces, he does not enjoy: he
+produces them for others: under present circumstances he can not raise
+himself into better conditions: he thus becomes an element that clogs
+civilization. He who loves retrogression, seeing he finds his account
+therein, may also find satisfaction in the continuance of such a social
+stratum. Human progress demands its disappearance.
+
+[206] At the Erfurt "Union Parliament" of 1850, Prince Bismarck
+thundered against the large cities as "the hot-beds of revolution," that
+should be razed to the ground. He was quite right: capitalist society
+produces its own "grave-diggers" in the modern proletariat.
+
+[207] Frederick Engels, "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to
+Science."
+
+[208] ["Religion" In English is not quite the same as "Die Religion" in
+German. For all their etymology is identical, custom and social
+institutions have imparted to the German term a meaning, or a shade of a
+meaning, that it lacks in English. "Die Religion" is in Germany a State
+institution; it is part of the curriculum of colleges; and it is there
+so utterly creedy, churchianic, and dogmatic that it is a positive
+abomination even to the students who mean to devote themselves to
+theology. That, however, even in the German language the word has a
+varying meaning may be gathered from the epigram of Schiller: "To what
+religion I belong? To none. Why? Out of religiousness"--literally in
+German, "out of religion." The reproduction in this translation of the
+idea conveyed by the term "Die Religion" presented its difficulties. As
+none could be found in English to convey its varying sense, the word
+"religion" has been preserved throughout as the nearest equivalent.--THE
+TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[209] Karl Marx: "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts-Philosophie."
+
+[210] How the ancients thought upon the subject appears from the
+following utterance of Aristotle: "A tyrant (the term applied to
+autocrats in Old Greece) must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion
+to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a
+ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they
+do not easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his
+side."--Aristotle's "Politics." Aristotle was born 384 B. C. at Stagira,
+whence he is frequently called "the Stagirite."
+
+"A prince, then, is to have particular care that nothing falls from his
+mouth but what is full of the five qualities aforesaid, and that to see
+and to hear him, he appears all goodness, integrity, humanity and
+religion, which last he ought to pretend to more than ordinarily because
+more men do judge by the eye than by the touch; for everybody sees, but
+few understand; everybody sees how you appear, but few know what in
+reality you are, and those few dare not oppose the opinion of the
+multitude who have the majesty of their prince to defend them; and in
+the actions of all men, especially princes, where no man has power to
+judge, every one looks to the end. Let a prince, therefore, do what he
+can to preserve his life, and continue his supremacy, the means which he
+uses shall be thought honorable, and be commended by everybody; because
+the people are always taken with the appearance and event of things,
+and, the greatest part of the world consists of the people; those few
+who are wise taking place when the multitude has nothing else to rely
+upon."--Macchiavelli in his celebrated work, "The Prince." Macchiavelli
+was born in Florence, 1469.
+
+[211] Whenever the modern bourgeois is at a loss for reasons to justify
+some enormity with, a thousand to one he falls back upon "morality." In
+the spring of 1894, it went so far that, at a meeting of the Evangelical
+Synod, a "liberal" member of the Berlin Chamber of the Exchequer
+pronounced it "moral" that only taxpayers should have the right to vote
+at Church meetings (!)
+
+[212] "A certain degree of well-being and culture is a necessary
+external condition for the development of the philosophic spirit....
+Thence we find that people began to philosophize only in those nations,
+that had raised themselves to a considerable height of well-being and
+culture."--Tennemann, quoted by Buckle in a foot note, _ubi supra_.
+
+"Material and intellectual interests go hand in hand. The one can not
+exist without the other. Between the two there is the same connection as
+between body and soul: to separate them is to bring on death."--v.
+Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat."
+
+"The best life, as well for the individual in particular, as for the
+State in general, is that life in which virtue is decked out with
+_external_ goods also, sufficient to make possible an active indulgence
+in beautiful and good actions."--Aristotle's "Politics."
+
+[213] When Eugene Richter in his "Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) repeats
+the old wornout phrase about the Socialists aiming at a "Penitentiary
+State"--that the question is no longer about a "State" will have by this
+time become clear to our readers--he presupposes the existence of a
+"State" or social order _that will violate its own interests_. A new
+State or social order radically different from the preceding one can not
+possibly be produced at will; to imagine such a thing would be to ignore
+and deny all the laws of development, obedient to which State and
+Society have hitherto risen and developed. Eugen Richter and those who
+share his views may take comfort: if Socialism really implies the silly
+and unnatural aims imputed to it by them, it will go to pieces, and
+without the aid of the "Irrelehren" of Richter. But it happens that
+there is no political party that stands as squarely and logically upon
+the evolutionary field as the Social Democratic.
+
+Quite as unfounded as all the other objections are the remarks of Eugene
+Richter: "For a social condition, such as the Socialists want, the
+people must be angels." As is well known, there are no angels, nor do we
+need any. Partly are men influenced by conditions, and partly are
+conditions influenced by men, and the latter will be increasingly the
+case in the measure that men learn to know the nature of the social
+system that they themselves rear, and in the measure that the experience
+thus gathered is consciously applied by them by corresponding changes in
+their social organization,--and that is Socialism. What we need is not
+other people, but wiser and more intelligent people than most of them
+are to-day. It is with the end in view of making people wiser and more
+intelligent that we agitate, Herr Richter, and that we publish works
+like this one.
+
+[214] It is surprising that, considering the fathomless blockishness of
+our adversaries, none has yet claimed that in Socialist society everyone
+would receive an equal portion of food and an equal quantity of linen
+and clothing so as to "crown the work of uniformity." Such a claim is
+quite stupid enough to expect its being made by our opponents.
+
+[215] Fourier made this the subject of a brilliant argument, although he
+ran into utopianism in the elaboration of his ideas.
+
+[216] Condorcet demands in his plan of education: "Education must be
+free, equal, general, bodily, mental, industrial and political, and it
+must aim at real and actual equality."
+
+Likewise Rousseau in his "Political Economy": "Above all, education must
+be public, equal and mixed, for the purpose of raising men and
+citizens."
+
+Aristotle also demands: "Seeing the State has but one object, it must
+also provide one and the same education for all its members. The care
+hereof must be the concern of the State and not a private affair."
+
+[217] Eugene Richter among them, in his "Irrelehren."
+
+[218] "America's Bildungswesen," by Prof. Emil Hausknecht.
+
+[219] "The person who has led an honorable and active life until old age
+should not then have to live either on the charity of his children or of
+bourgeois society. An independent old age, free from cares or toil, is
+the natural reward for continuous exertions in the days of strength and
+health."--v. Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat." But how is it to-day in
+this bourgeois society? Millions look with dread towards the time when,
+having grown old, they are thrown upon the street. And our industrial
+system causes people to age prematurely. The very much boasted about
+old-age and invalid pensions in the German Empire afford but a very
+scanty substitute: even its most zealous defenders admit that. Their
+aids are still more inadequate than the pensions which the
+municipalities allow to the large majority of the officials whom they
+provide with pensions.
+
+[220] [It is a feature of theology to be positive, precise and emphatic
+in descriptions of what the describer knows nothing about. No less
+theologic, in this sense of the term, are negative assertions concerning
+matters that science has not yet illumined. Whether "to be dead means to
+be ended" or not, is no part either of the general question of
+Socialism, or the specific question of Woman. Nevertheless, while
+respecting the author's private opinion in the matter, and leaving his
+sentence untouched, the following phrasing would seem preferable, as
+free from the taint of what may be called the "theologic method," and
+also more in keeping with the mental posture of positive knowledge:
+"Whether to be dead means to be ended or not, is a matter on which man
+awaits the fiat of Science."--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[221] [It is otherwise in the United States, where, as a rule, clergymen
+have to "hustle"--both to curry favor with their parishioners and to
+countermine the mines laid by their competitors for fatter "calls," or
+by their numerous unemployed "brothers of the cloth." According to the
+census of 1900, clergymen had the very highest death rate (23.5) among
+the professional occupations for the registration area,--and it was
+among the highest altogether. It was excelled only by the death rate of
+the coopers (23.8); of the millers, flour and grist, (26.6); of the
+sailors, pilots, fishermen and oystermen (27.7); and of the stock
+raisers, herders and drovers (32.1). The census also shows that the
+death rate of clergymen is on the increase--18.2 in 1890; now 23.5.--THE
+TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[222] Herr Eugen Richter in his "Irrelehren" is also raving mad over the
+idea of abolishing the private kitchen. As far as we know, Herr Richter
+is a bachelor. Obviously he does not miss his own kitchen: to judge from
+the rotundity of his body, he does not fare ill. If Herr Richter were a
+married man and possessed a wife, who had herself to administer the
+kitchen department and to perform in it the needed work, instead of
+leaving all that to servants, as is the fashion with the women of the
+property classes, then, a hundred to one his wife would nicely prove to
+him how happy she would be if she only could be freed from the bondage
+of the kitchen through the large and thoroughly equipped communal
+institute for meals.
+
+[223] Niemeyer, "Gesundheitslehre."
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+WOMAN IN THE FUTURE
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN IN THE FUTURE.
+
+
+This chapter can be condensed in few words. It only contains the
+conclusions that flow from what has been said, conclusions that the
+reader may draw for himself.
+
+The woman of future society is socially and economically independent;
+she is no longer subject to even a vestige of dominion and exploitation;
+she is free, the peer of man, mistress of her lot. Her education is the
+same as that of man, with such exceptions as the difference of sex and
+sexual functions demand. Living under natural conditions, she is able to
+unfold and exercise her mental powers and faculties. She chooses her
+occupation on such field as corresponds with her wishes, inclinations
+and natural abilities, and she works under conditions identical with
+man's. Even if engaged as a practical working-woman on some field or
+other, at other times of the day she may be educator, teacher or nurse,
+at yet others she may exercise herself in art, or cultivate some branch
+of science, and at yet others may be filling some administrative
+function. She joins in studies, enjoyments or social intercourse with
+either her sisters or with men,--as she may please or occasion may
+serve.
+
+In the choice of love, she is, like man, free and unhampered. She woos
+or is wooed, and closes the bond from no considerations other than her
+own inclinations. This bond is a private contract, celebrated without
+the intervention of any functionary--just as marriage was a private
+contract until deep in the Middle Ages. Socialism creates in this
+nothing new: it merely restores, at a higher level of civilization and
+under new social forms, that which prevailed at a more primitive social
+stage, and before private property began to rule society.
+
+Under the proviso that he inflict injury upon none, the individual shall
+himself oversee the satisfaction of his own instincts. _The satisfaction
+of the sexual instinct is as much a private concern as the satisfaction
+of any other natural instinct._ None is therefor accountable to others,
+and no unsolicited judge may interfere. How I shall eat, how I shall
+drink, how I shall sleep, how I shall clothe myself, is my private
+affair,--exactly so my intercourse with a person of the opposite sex.
+Intelligence and culture, perfect individual freedom--qualities that
+become normal through the education and the conditions of future
+society--will guard everyone against the commission of acts that will
+redound to his injury. Self-training and the knowledge of their own
+being are possessions of the men and the women of future society to a
+degree much above the present. The simple circumstance that all bashful
+prudery and affectation of secrecy regarding natural matters will have
+vanished is a guarantee of a more natural intercourse of the sexes than
+that which prevails to-day. If incompatibility, disenchantment, or
+repulsion set in between two persons that have come together, morality
+commands that the unnatural, and therefore immoral, bond be dissolved.
+Seeing, moreover, that all the circumstances and conditions, which until
+then condemned large numbers of women to celibacy and to prostitution,
+will have vanished, man can no longer superimpose himself. On the other
+hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed the
+numerous inconveniences that to-day affect married life, that often
+prevent its favorable unfolding, or that even render it wholly
+impossible.
+
+The contradictions in and the unnatural features of the present position
+of woman are realized with ever increasing force in wide social circles.
+The sentiment finds lively utterance in the literature of the Social
+Question as well as in works of fiction,--often, it must be confessed,
+in wrongful manner. That the present form of marriage corresponds ever
+less with its purpose, no thinking person any longer denies. Thus is
+seen the phenomenon of the demand for freedom in the choice of love, and
+for the untrammeled dissolution of the marriage bond, when necessary,
+made by people who refuse to draw the requisite conclusions for the
+change of the present social system. They believe that the freedom of
+sexual intercourse must be asserted only in behalf of the privileged
+classes. In a polemic against Fanny Lewald's efforts in behalf of the
+emancipation of woman, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg expresses herself
+this wise:
+
+"If you (Fanny Lewald) claim the complete equality of woman with man in
+social and political life, George Sand also must be right in her
+struggles for emancipation, which aim no further than at what man has
+long been in undisputed possession of. Indeed, there is no reasonable
+ground for admitting the head and not the heart of woman to this
+equality, to give and to take as freely as man. On the contrary, if
+woman has by nature the right, and, consequently, also the duty--for we
+should not bury the talent bestowed upon us--of exerting her brain
+tissue to the utmost in the race with the intellectual Titans of the
+opposite sex, she must then have precisely the same right to preserve
+her equilibrium by quickening the circulation of her heart's blood in
+whatever way it may seem good to her. Do we not all read without the
+slightest moral indignation how Goethe--to begin with the greatest as an
+illustration--again and again wasted the warmth of his heart and the
+enthusiasm of his great soul on a different woman? Reasonable people
+regard this as perfectly natural by the very reason of the greatness of
+his soul, and the difficulty of satisfying it. Only the narrow-minded
+moralist stops to condemn his conduct. Why, then, deride the 'great
+souls' among women!... Let us suppose that the whole female sex
+consisted of great souls like George Sand, that every woman were a
+Lucretia Floriani, whose children are all children of love and who
+brought up all these children with true motherly love and devotion, as
+well as with intelligence and good sense. What would become of the
+world? There can be no doubt that it could continue to exist and to
+progress, just as it does now; it might even feel exceptionally
+comfortable under the arrangement."[224]
+
+Accordingly, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg is of the opinion that, if
+every woman were a Lucretia Floriani, that is, a great soul like George
+Sand, who draws her own picture in Lucretia Floriani, they should be
+free for the "preservation of their equilibrium to quicken the
+circulation of their heart's blood in whatever way it may seem good to
+them." But why should that be the privilege of the "great souls" only,
+and not of the others also, who are no "great souls," and can be none?
+No such difference exists to us. If a Goethe and a George Sand--to take
+these two from the many who have acted and are acting like them--live
+according to the inclinations of their hearts--and about Goethe's love
+affairs whole libraries are published that are devoured by his male and
+female admirers in wrapt ecstasy--why condemn in others that, which done
+by a Goethe or a George Sand, becomes the subject of ecstatic
+admiration?
+
+Indeed, such freedom in the choice of love is an impossibility in
+bourgeois society. This fact was the objective point in our preceding
+array of evidence. But place the whole community under social conditions
+similar to those enjoyed by the material and intellectual elect, and
+forthwith the opportunity is there of equal rights and freedom for all.
+In "Jacques," George Sand depicts a husband who judges the adulterous
+relations of his wife with another man in these words: "No human being
+can command love; and none is guilty if he feels, or goes without it.
+What degrades the woman is the lie: what constitutes her adultery is not
+the hour that she grants to her lover, but the night that she thereupon
+spends with her husband." Thanks to this view of the matter, Jacques
+feels obliged to yield the place to his rival, Borel, and he proceeds to
+philosophize: "Borel, in my place, would have quietly beaten his wife,
+and perhaps would not have blushed to receive her afterwards into his
+bed, debased by his blows and his kisses. There are men who cut the
+throat of an unfaithful wife without ceremony, after the fashion of the
+Orientals, because they consider her as legal property. Others fight
+with their rival, kill him or drive him away, and again seek the kisses
+of the woman they pretend to love, and who shrinks from them with
+horror, or resigns herself in despair. These, in cases of conjugal love,
+are the most common ways of acting, and I say that the love of the hogs
+is less vile and less gross than that of these men." Commenting on these
+passages, Brandes observes: "These truths, which are considered
+elemental with our cultured classes, were 'sophisms that cried to
+heaven' only fifty years ago." But the "property and cultured world"
+dare not to this day openly avow the principles of George Sand,
+although, in point of fact, it lives up to them in the main. As in
+morality and religion, the bourgeois is a hypocrite in marriage also.
+
+What Goethe and George Sand did, has been done and continues to be done
+by thousands of others, who are not to be compared with Goethe, yet
+without in the least losing the esteem and respect of society. All that
+is needed is a respectable position, the rest comes of itself. All this
+notwithstanding, the liberties of a Goethe and a George Sand are
+improper, judged from the standpoint of bourgeois morality, and stand in
+contradiction with the nature of its social principles. Compulsory
+marriage is the normal marriage of bourgeois society: it is the only
+"moral" union of the sexes: all other sexual union, by whomsoever
+entered into, is immoral. Bourgeois marriage--we have proved the point
+beyond cavil--is the result of bourgeois property relations. This
+marriage, which is intimately related with private property and the
+right of inheritance--demands "legitimate" children as heirs: it is
+entered into for the purpose of acquiring these: under the pressure of
+social conditions, it is forced even upon those who have nothing to
+bequeath:[225] it becomes a social law, the violation of which the State
+punishes by imprisoning for a term of years the men or women who live in
+adultery and have been divorced.
+
+In future society there is nothing to bequeath, unless the domestic
+equipment and personal inventory be regarded as inheritance: the modern
+form of marriage is thus devoid of foundation and collapses. The
+question of inheritance is thereby solved, and Socialism need not
+concern itself about abolishing the same. No right of inheritance can
+arise where there is no private property.
+
+Woman is, accordingly, free, and her children, where she has any, do not
+impair her freedom: they can only fill all the fuller the cup of her
+enjoyments and her pleasure in life. Nurses, teachers, female friends,
+the rising female generations--all these are ready at hand to help the
+mother when she needs help.
+
+It is possible that there may be men in the future who will say with
+Alexander von Humboldt: "I am not built for the father of a family.
+Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, and the begetting of children a
+crime." What of it? The power of natural instincts will restore the
+equilibrium. We are alarmed neither by a Humboldt's hostility to
+marriage nor by the philosophic pessimism of a Schopenhauer, a
+Mainlaender or a v. Hartmann, who raise to man the prospect of
+self-destruction in the "ideal State," In this matter we hold with Fr.
+Ratzel, who justly says:
+
+"Man may no longer look upon himself as an exception to the laws of
+Nature; he should rather begin at last to ascertain the law that
+underlies his own acts and thoughts, and to endeavor to live his life
+according to the laws of Nature. He will arrive at the point when he
+will arrange his social life with his fellows, that is, his family and
+the State, not after the precepts of far-back centuries, but after the
+rational principles of natural sense. Politics, morals, principles of
+justice--all of which are at present fed from all possible sources--will
+be determined according to the laws of Nature alone. An existence worthy
+of human beings, dreamed of for thousands of years, will finally become
+reality."[226]
+
+That day is approaching with giant strides. Human society has traversed,
+in the course of thousands of years, all the various phases of
+development, to arrive in the end where it started from,--communistic
+property and complete equality and fraternity, but no longer among
+congeners alone, but among the whole human race. In that does the great
+progress consist. What bourgeois society has vainly striven for, and at
+which it suffers and is bound to suffer shipwreck--the restoration of
+freedom, equality and fraternity among men--Socialism will accomplish.
+Bourgeois society could only set up the theory; here, as in so many
+other respects, their practice was at odds with their theories. It is
+for Socialism to harmonize the theory with the practice.
+
+Nevertheless, while man returns to the starting point in his
+development, the return is effected upon an infinitely higher social
+plane than that from which he started. Primitive society held property
+in common in the gens and clan, but only in the rawest and most
+undeveloped stage. The process of development that took place since,
+reduced, it is true, the common property to a small and insignificant
+vestige, broke up the gentes, and finally atomized the whole of society;
+but, simultaneously, it raised mightily the productivity of that society
+in its various phases and the manifoldness of social necessities, and it
+created out of the gentes and tribes nations and great States, although
+again it produced a condition of things that stood in violent
+contradiction with social requirements. The task of the future is to end
+the contradiction by the re-transformation upon the broadest basis, of
+property and productive powers into collective property.
+
+Society re-takes what once was its own, but, in accord with the newly
+created conditions of production, it places its whole mode of life upon
+the highest stage of culture, which enables all to enjoy what under more
+primitive circumstances was the privilege of individuals or of
+individual classes only.
+
+Now woman again fills the active _role_ that once was hers in primitive
+society. She does not become the mistress, she is the equal of man.
+
+"The end of social development resembles the beginning of human
+existence. The original equality returns. The mother-web of existence
+starts and rounds up the cycle of human affairs"--thus writes Bachofen,
+in his frequently quoted work "Das Mutterrecht," forecasting coming
+events. Like Bachofen, Morgan also passes judgment upon bourgeois
+society, a judgment that, without his having any particular information
+on Socialism, coincides essentially with our own. He says:
+
+"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so
+immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its
+_management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has
+become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power_. The human
+mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time
+will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the
+mastery over property, and define the relations of the State to the
+property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the
+rights of its owners. _The interests of society are paramount to
+individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and
+harmonious relations._ A mere property career is not the final destiny
+of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of
+the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but
+a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment
+of the ages yet to come. _The dissolution of society bids fair to become
+the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim;
+because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction.
+Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and
+privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of
+society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily
+tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty,
+equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes._"[227]
+
+Thus we see how men, proceeding from different starting-points, are
+guided by their scientific investigations to the identical conclusions.
+The complete emancipation of woman, and her equality with man is the
+final goal of our social development, whose realization no power on
+earth can prevent;--and this realization is possible only by a social
+change that shall abolish the rule of man over man--hence also of
+capitalists over workingmen. Only then will the human race reach its
+highest development. The "Golden Age" that man has been dreaming of for
+thousands of years, and after which he has been longing, will have come
+at last. Class rule will have reached its end for all time, and, along
+with it, the rule of man over woman.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[224] "Frauenrecht und Frauenpflilcht. Eine Antwort auf Fanny Lewald's
+Briefe 'Fuer und wider die Frauen.'"
+
+[225] In his work "Bau und Leben des sozialen Koerpers" (The Structure
+and Life of the Social Body), Dr. Schaeffle says: "A loosening of the
+bonds of matrimony by the facilitation of divorce is certainly
+undesirable. It flies in the face of the moral objects of human pairing,
+and would be injurious to the preservation of the population as well as
+the education of the children." After what has been said herein it
+follows that we not only consider this view wrong, but are inclined to
+regard it as "immoral." Nevertheless, Dr. Schaeffle will allow that the
+idea of introducing and maintaining institutions that do violence to its
+own conceptions of morality, is simply unimaginable in a society of much
+higher culture than the present.
+
+[226] Quoted in Haeckel's "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte."
+
+[227] Morgan's "Ancient Society."
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+INTERNATIONALITY
+
+
+
+
+INTERNATIONALITY.
+
+
+In the very nature of things, an existence worthy of human beings can
+never be the exclusive possession of a single privileged people.
+Isolated from all others, no nation could either raise or keep up such
+an establishment. The development that we have reached is the product of
+the co-operation of national and international forces and relations.
+Although with many the national idea still wholly sways the mind, and
+subserves the purpose of maintaining political and social dominations,
+possible only within national boundaries, the human race has reached far
+into internationalism.
+
+Treaties of commerce, of tariffs and of shipping, postal unions,
+international expositions, conventions on international law and on
+international systems of measurement, international scientific
+congresses and associations, international expeditions of discovery, our
+trade and intercommunication, especially the international congresses of
+workingmen, who are the carriers of the new social order and to whose
+moral influence was mainly due the international congress for factory
+legislation in the interest of the workingmen, assembled in Berlin in
+the spring of 1890 upon the invitation of the German Empire,--these and
+many other phenomena testify to the international character that,
+despite national demarcations, the relations between the various
+civilized nations have assumed. National boundary lines are being broken
+through. The term "world's economy" is taking the place of "national
+economy": an increasing significance is attaching to it, seeing that
+upon it depends the well-being and prosperity of individual nations. A
+large part of our own products is exchanged for those of foreign
+nations, without which we could no longer exist. As one branch of
+industry is injured when another suffers, so likewise does the
+production of one nation suffer materially when that of another is
+paralyzed. Despite all such transitory disturbances as wars and race
+persecutions, the relations of the several nations draw ever closer,
+because material interests, the strongest of all, dominate them. Each
+new highway, every improvement in the means of intercommunication, every
+invention or improvement in the process of production, whereby goods are
+made cheaper, strengthens these relations. The ease with which personal
+contact can be established between distantly located countries and
+peoples is a new and powerful link in the chain that draws and holds the
+nations together. Emigrations and colonizations are additional and
+powerful levers. One people learns from the other. Each seeks to excel.
+Along with the interchange of material products, the interchange of the
+products of the mind is going on, in the original tongue as well as in
+translations. To millions the learning of foreign living languages
+becomes a necessity. Next to material advantages, nothing contributes
+more towards removing antipathies than to penetrate into the language
+and the intellectual products of a foreign people.
+
+The effect of this process of drawing together, that is going on upon an
+international scale, is that the several nations are resembling one
+another ever more in their social conditions. With the most advanced,
+and therefore pace-setting nations, the resemblance is now such that he
+who has learned to understand the social structure of one, likewise
+knows that of all the others in essentials. It happens similarly as in
+Nature where, among animals of the same species the skeleton formation
+and organization is the same, and, if in possession of a part of such a
+skeleton, one can theoretically construct the whole animal.
+
+A further result is this, that where the same social foundations are
+found, their effects must be the same--the accumulation of vast wealth,
+and its opposite pole of mass-poverty, wage-slavery, dependence of the
+masses upon the machinery of production, their domination by the
+property-holding minority, and the rest of the long train of
+consequences.
+
+Indeed, we see that the class antagonisms and the class struggles, that
+rage throughout Germany, equally keep all Europe, the United States,
+Australia, etc., in commotion. In Europe, from Russia across to
+Portugal, from the Balkans, Hungary and Italy across to England and
+Ireland, the same spirit of discontent is prevalent, the identical
+symptoms of social fermentation, of general apprehension and of
+decomposition are noticeable. Externally unlike, according to the degree
+of development, the character of the people and their political
+organization, these movements are all essentially alike. Deep-reaching
+social antagonisms are their cause. Every year these antagonisms become
+more pronounced, the fermentation and discontent sinks deeper and
+spreads wider, until finally some provocation, possibly insignificant in
+seeming, brings on the explosion, that then spreads like lightning
+throughout the civilized world, and calls upon the people to take
+sides--pro or con.
+
+The battle is then on between New and Old Society. Masses of people step
+upon the stage; an abundance of intelligence is enlisted, such as the
+world never before saw engaged in any contest, and never again will see
+gathered for such a purpose. _It is the last social struggle of all._
+Standing at the elevation of this century, the sight is obvious of the
+steady coming to a head of the forces for the struggle in which the New
+Ideas will triumph.
+
+The new social system will then rear itself upon an international basis.
+The peoples will fraternize; they will reach one another the hand, and
+they will endeavor to gradually extend the new conditions over all the
+races of the earth.[228] No people any longer approaches another as an
+enemy, bent upon oppression and exploitation; or as the representative
+of a strange creed that it seeks to impose upon others;--they will meet
+one another as friends, who seek to raise all human beings to the height
+of civilization. The labors of the new social order in its work of
+colonization and civilization will differ as essentially in both purpose
+and method from the present, as the two social orders are essentially
+different from each other. Neither powder nor lead, neither "firewater"
+(liquor) nor Bible will be used. The task of civilization is entered
+upon with the instruments of peace, which will present the civilizers to
+the savages, not as enemies, but as benefactors. Intelligent travelers
+and investigators have long learned to know how successful is that path.
+
+When the civilized peoples shall have reached the point of joining in a
+large federation, the time will have come when for evermore the storms
+of war shall have been lain. Perpetual peace is no dream, as the
+gentlemen who strut about in uniforms seek to make people believe. That
+day shall have come the moment the peoples shall have understood their
+true interests: these are not promoted by war and dissension, by
+armaments that bear down whole nations; they are promoted by peaceful,
+mutual understandings, and jointly laboring in the path of civilization.
+Moreover, as was shown on page 238, the ruling classes and their
+Governments are seeing to it that the military armaments and wars break
+their own backs by their own immensity. Thus the last weapons will
+wander into the museums of antiquity, as so many of their predecessors
+have done before, and serve as witnesses to future generations of the
+manner in which the generations gone by have for thousands of years
+frequently torn up one another like wild animals--until finally the
+human in them triumphed over the beast.
+
+National peculiarities are everywhere nourished by the ruling classes in
+order that, at a given conjuncture, a great war may furnish a drainage
+for dangerous tendencies at home. As a proof of the extent to which
+these national peculiarities engender wars, an utterance of the late
+General Fieldmarshal Moltke may here be quoted. In the last volume of
+his posthumous work, which deals with the German-French war of 1870-71,
+this passage occurs among others in the introductory observations:
+
+"So long as nations lead separate existences there will be dissensions
+that only strokes can arbitrate. In the interest of humanity, however,
+it is to be hoped that wars may become as much rarer as they have become
+more fearful."
+
+Now then, this national separate existence, that is, the hostile
+shutting off of one nation from another, will vanish. Thus future
+generations will be able to achieve without trouble tasks that gifted
+heads have long conceived, and unsuccessfully attempted to accomplish.
+Condorcet, among others, conceived the idea of an international
+language. The late Ulysses S. Grant, ex-President of the United States,
+uttered himself this wise on a public occasion: "Seeing that commerce,
+education and the rapid exchange of thought and of goods by telegraphy
+and steam have altered everything, I believe that God is preparing the
+world to become one nation, to speak one language and to reach a state
+of perfection in which armies and navies will no longer be needed." It
+is natural that with a full-blooded Yankee the leading _role_ be played
+by the "dear God," who, after all, is but the product of historic
+development. Hypocrisy, or perhaps also ignorance in matters that
+concern religion, is nowhere as stupendous as in the United States. The
+less the power of the State presses upon the masses, all the more must
+religion do the work. Hence the phenomenon that the bourgeoisie is most
+pious wherever the power of the State is laxest. Next to the United
+States, come England, Belgium and Switzerland in this matter. Even the
+revolutionary Robespierre, who played with the heads of aristocrats and
+priests as with nine-pin balls, was, as is known, very religious, whence
+he ceremoniously introduced the "Supreme Being," which shortly before
+had, with equal bad taste, been dethroned by the Convention. And seeing
+that the frivolous and idle aristocrats of France had been greatly
+bragging about their atheism, Robespierre regarded atheism as
+aristocratic, and denounced it in his speech to the Convention on the
+"Supreme Being" with these words: "Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of
+a Supreme Being, that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes
+triumphant crime, comes from the people. If there were no God, one would
+have to be invented." The virtuous Robespierre had his misgivings
+concerning the power of his virtuous republic to cancel the existing
+social antagonisms, hence his belief in a Supreme Being that wreaks
+vengeance and seeks to smooth the difficulties that the people of his
+time were unable to smooth. Hence also was such a belief a necessity to
+the first republic.
+
+One step in progress will bring another. Mankind will ever set new
+tasks to itself, and the accomplishment of the same will lead it to such
+a degree of social development that wars, religious quarrels and similar
+manifestations of barbarism will be unknown.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[228] "National and human interests stand to-day opposed to each other.
+At a higher stage of civilization these interests will coincide and
+become one."--v. Thuenen, "Der Isolirte Staat."
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+POPULATION _and_ OVER-POPULATION
+
+
+
+
+POPULATION AND OVER-POPULATION
+
+
+It has become quite fashionable with people who occupy themselves with
+the social question to consider the question of population as the most
+important and burning of all. They claim that we are threatened with
+"over-population;" aye, that the danger is upon us. This, more than any
+other division of the Social Question, must be treated from an
+international standpoint. The feeding and the distribution of the people
+have pre-eminently become international issues of fact. Since Malthus,
+the law underlying the increase of population has been the subject of
+extensive dispute. In his celebrated and now notorious "Essay on the
+Principles of Population," which Marx has characterized as a
+"school-boyish, superficial and pulpiteer piece of declamatory
+plagiarism on Sir James Stewart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace and others"
+and which "contains not one original sentence," Malthus lays down the
+proposition that mankind has the tendency to increase in geometric
+progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), while food could increase only
+in arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.); and that the
+consequence is a rapid disproportion between the numbers of the
+population and the supply of food, that inevitably leads to want and
+starvation. The final conclusion was the necessity of "abstinence" in
+the procreation of children, and abstinence from marriage without
+sufficient means for the support of a family, contrariwise there would
+be no place at "the banquet table of Nature" for the descendants.
+
+The fear of over-population is very old. It was touched upon in this
+work in connection with the social conditions of the Greeks and Romans,
+and at the close of the Middle Ages. Plato and Aristotle, the Romans,
+the small bourgeois of the Middle Ages were all swayed by it, and it
+even swayed Voltaire, who, in the first quarter of the eighteenth
+century, published a treatise on the subject. The fear ever turns up
+again--this circumstance must be emphasized--_at periods when the
+existing social conditions are disintegrating and breaking down_. Seeing
+on all sides privation and discontent at such periods, the privation and
+discontent are forthwith ascribed to the shortness of the supply of
+food, instead of to the manner in which the existing supply is
+distributed.
+
+All advanced social stages have hitherto rested upon class-rule, and the
+principal means of class-rule was the appropriation of the land. The
+land gradually slips from the hands of a large number of proprietors
+into those of a small number that utilize and cultivate it only
+partially. The large majority are rendered propertyless and are stripped
+of the means of existence; their share of food then depends upon the
+good will of their masters, for whom they now have to work. According to
+the social condition of things, the struggle for the land takes its form
+from period to period; the end, however, was that the land continued
+steadily to concentrate in the hands of the ruling class. If undeveloped
+means of transportation or political isolation impede the intercourse
+abroad of a community and interfere with the importation of food when
+the crops fail and provisions are dear, forthwith the belief springs up
+that there are too many people. Under such circumstances, every increase
+in the family is felt as a burden; the specter of over-population rises;
+and the terror that it spreads is in direct proportion to the
+concentration of the land in few hands, together with its train of
+evils--the partial cultivation of the soil, and its being turned to
+purposes of pleasure for its owners. Rome and Italy were poorest off for
+food at the time when the whole soil of Italy was held by about 3,000
+latifundia owners. Hence the cry: "The latifundia are ruining Rome!" The
+soil was converted into vast hunting-grounds and wonderful
+pleasure-gardens; not infrequently it was allowed to be idle, seeing
+that its cultivation, even by slaves, came out dearer to the magnates
+than the grain imported from Sicily and Africa. It was a state of things
+that opened wide the doors for usury in grain, a practice in which the
+rich nobility likewise led. In consideration of this usury of grain the
+domestic soil was kept from cultivation. Thereupon the impoverished
+Roman citizen and the impoverished aristocracy resolved to renounce
+marriage and the begetting of children; hence the laws placing premiums
+on marriage and children in order to check the steady decrease of the
+ruling classes.
+
+The same phenomenon appeared towards the close of the Middle Ages, after
+the nobility and clergy had, in the course of centuries and with the aid
+of all the crafty and violent means at their command, robbed unnumbered
+peasants of their property and appropriated the common lands to
+themselves. When, thereupon, the peasants revolted and were beaten down,
+the robber-trade gained new impetus, and it was then also practiced upon
+the Church estates by the Princes of the Reformation. The number of
+thieves, beggars and vagabonds was never larger than immediately before
+and after the Reformation. The expropriated rural population rushed to
+the cities; but there, due to causes that have been described in
+previous pages, the conditions of life were likewise
+deteriorating,--hence "over-population" was felt all around.
+
+The appearance of Malthus coincides with that period of English industry
+when, due to the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Watt, powerful
+changes set in both in mechanism and technique, changes that affected,
+first of all, the cotton and linen industries, and rendered breadless
+the workingmen engaged in them. The concentration of capital and land
+assumed at the time large proportions in England: along with the rapid
+increase of wealth, on the one hand, there went the deepening misery of
+the masses, on the other. At such a juncture, the ruling classes, who
+have every reason to consider the existing world the "best of all
+possible worlds," were bound to seek an explanation for so contradictory
+a phenomenon as the pauperization of the masses in the midst of swelling
+wealth and flourishing industry. Nothing was easier than to throw the
+blame upon the too-rapid procreation of the workingmen, and not upon
+their having been rendered superfluous through the capitalist process of
+production, and the accumulation of the soil in the hands of landlords.
+With such circumstances for its setting, the "school-boyish, superficial
+and pulpiteer piece of declamatory plagiarism," that Malthus published,
+was a work that gave drastic utterance to the secret thoughts and wishes
+of the ruling class, and justified their misdeeds to the world. Hence
+the loud applause that it met from one side, and violent opposition from
+another. Malthus had spoken the right word at the right time for the
+English bourgeoisie; hence, although his essay "contained not one
+original sentence," he became a great and celebrated man, and his name a
+synonym for the doctrine.[229]
+
+Now, then, the conditions that caused Malthus thus to give his signal of
+alarm and proclaim his brutal doctrine--he addressed it to the working
+class, thus adding insult to injury--have since grown worse from decade
+to decade. They have grown worse, not alone in the fatherland of
+Malthus, Great Britain, but in all the countries of the world run by the
+capitalist system of production, whose consequences ever are the robbery
+of the soil and the dependence and subjugation of the masses through
+machinery and the factory. This system consists, as has been shown, in
+the separation of the workingman from his means of production--be these
+land or tools--and in the transfer of the latter to the capitalist
+class. That system produces ever new branches of industry, develops and
+concentrates them, and thereby throws ever larger masses of the people
+upon the street as "superfluous." On the field of agriculture it
+promotes, as the Rome of old, the latifundia ownership with all its
+sequences. Ireland, in this respect the classic land of Europe, and
+afflicted worst of all by the English system of land-grabbing, had in
+1887 an area of 884.4 square miles of meadow and pasture land, but only
+263.3 square miles of agricultural fields and the conversion of
+agricultural fields into meadows and pastures for sheep and cattle and
+into hunting grounds for the landlords makes every year further
+strides.[230]
+
+Moreover the agricultural fields of Ireland are, in great measure, in
+the hands of a large number of small tenants, who are not able to
+cultivate the land in the most profitable manner. Thus Ireland presents
+the aspect of a country that is retrogressing from an agricultural into
+a pastoral condition. The population, that at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century was over eight million strong, has declined to about
+five million, and still several millions are "in excess." Ireland's
+normal state of rebellion against England is thus easily explained; and
+yet the struggle of the "Home Ruler" aims only at the creation of an
+Irish landlord class and no wise carries the wished-for deliverance to
+the mass of the Irish people. The Irish people will perceive that so
+soon as the Home Ruler shall carry out his plans. Scotland presents a
+picture similar to that of Ireland with regard to the ownership and
+cultivation of its soil.[231]
+
+A similar development reappears in Hungary, a country that entered upon
+the modern field of development only recently. Hungary, a land in point
+of the fertility of her soil, as rich as few in Europe, is overloaded
+with debt, and her population, pauperized and in the hands of usurers,
+emigrates in large numbers. Hungary's soil is now concentrated in the
+hands of modern capitalist magnates, who carry on a ruinous system of
+cultivation in forest and field so that Hungary is not far from the
+time when it will have ceased to be a grain exporting country. It is
+quite similarly with Italy. In Italy, just as in Germany, the political
+unity of the nation has taken capitalist development powerfully under
+the arm; but the thrifty peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy, of Tuscany,
+Romagna and Sicily are ever more impoverished and go to ruin. Swamps and
+moors are reappearing on the sites occupied but recently by the well
+cultivated gardens and fields of small peasants. Before the very gates
+of Rome, in the so-called Campagna, a hundred thousand hectares of land
+lie fallow in a region that once was the "garden of Rome." Swamps cover
+the ground, and exhale their poisonous miasmas. If, with the application
+of the proper means the Campagna were thoroughly drained and properly
+irrigated, the population of Rome would have a fertile source of food.
+But Italy suffers of the ambition to become a "leading power:" she is
+ruining herself with military and naval armaments and with African
+colonization plans, and, consequently, has no funds left for such tasks
+as the reclaiming of the Campagna for cultivation. And as the Campagna,
+so are South Italy and particularly Sicily. The latter, once the granary
+of Rome, sinks ever more into deepening poverty. There is no more
+sucked-out, poverty-stricken and maltreated people in all Europe than
+the Sicilian. The easily-contented sons of the most beautiful region of
+all Europe overrun half Europe and the United States as lowerers of
+wages because they care not to starve to death upon the native soil that
+has ceased to be their property. Malaria, that frightful fever, is
+spreading over Italy to an extent that, frightened at the prospect, the
+government instituted in 1882 an investigation, which brought to light
+the deplorable fact that, of the 69 provinces of the country, 32 were
+severely afflicted by the disease, 32 were infected, and only 5 had so
+far remained free. The disease, once known only in the rural districts,
+penetrated the cities, where the urban, increased by the rural
+proletariat, constitutes a center of infection.
+
+These facts, together with what has been said touching the effects and
+results of the capitalist system of production, teach us that want and
+misery with the masses are not the results of insufficiency in the means
+of existence, but of an unequal distribution, that furnishes some with a
+superfluity and condemns others to privation. It causes the destruction
+and squandering of supplies, and, along with that, negligence in
+producing these. The Malthusian assertions have sense only from the
+standpoint of the system of capitalist production. Whoever stands on
+that principle has every reason to defend it, otherwise the ground would
+slip from under him.
+
+On the other side, however, the capitalist system itself favors the
+production of children, in so far as it needs cheap "hands" in the shape
+of such in its factories. The begetting of children, moreover, often
+becomes a matter of calculation with the proletariat. They cost the
+parents little or nothing: they soon earn their own support. In the
+house industries the proletarian is even obliged to have many children:
+they equip him all the better for the competitive struggle. It certainly
+is an abominable system: it conceals the pauperization of the workingman
+and it provokes his own rendering of himself superfluous through the
+children who work for the most miserable of wages. The immorality and
+harmfulness of this system are obvious, and they spread with the
+extension of capitalism. It is precisely for that reason that the
+bourgeois ideologists--and all bourgeois economists are that--defend the
+Malthusian theories. Hence in Germany also and in particular the notion
+of "over-production" ever finds support among the bourgeoisie. Capital
+is the innocent defendant, the workingman is the criminal.
+
+Unfortunately, however, for this theory Germany has "superfluity," not
+of proletarians only, but also of "intellectuals." Capital brings about
+not only an over-production of soil, goods, workingmen, women and
+children, but also of "officials and learning"--as we shall show. There
+is only one thing that is not "superfluous" in this capitalist
+world--capital and its owner, the capitalist.
+
+If the capitalist economists are Malthusians they are simply what their
+capitalist interests compel them to be. Only, they should not shift
+their bourgeois whims to the shoulders of Socialist society. John Stuart
+Mill says among other things: "But Communism is precisely the state of
+things in which opinion might be expected to declare itself with
+greatest intensity against this kind of selfish intemperance. An
+augmentation of numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the
+toil of the mass, would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and
+unmistakable inconvenience to every individual in the association;
+inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of
+employers, or the unjust privileges of the rich. In such altered
+circumstances, opinion could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation
+did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some description, this or
+any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community. The
+Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection
+drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending
+in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil." And Prof. Ad.
+Wagner says: "Least of all could freedom of marriage or freedom of
+procreation be tolerated in a Socialist community."[232] These authors
+proceed from the theory that the tendency towards over-population is
+one common to all social conditions, but both allow that Socialism is
+better able than any other social system to establish the equilibrium
+between population and food. The latter is true, not so the former.
+
+True enough, there were one time Socialists, who, tainted by the
+Malthusian theories, perceived the "imminent danger" of over-population.
+But these Socialist Malthusians have disappeared. A clearer insight into
+the nature of bourgeois society, together with the fact that, judging
+from the plaintive songs of our Agrarians, we produce not too little but
+too much food, and that the resulting low prices render the production
+of foodstuffs unprofitable, has enlightened them on the subject.
+
+A part of our Malthusians imagine--and the chorus of the mouth-pieces of
+the bourgeoisie parrot-like echo their utterances--that a Socialist
+society, in which there is freedom in the choice of love and ample
+provision for a livelihood worthy of human beings, must soon degenerate
+into a rabbit warren: it would succumb to excessive sexual indulgence
+and to excessive procreation. Exactly the reverse is most likely to
+happen, as certain observations go to prove. Until now the largest
+number of children were had, not by the best, but by the worst situated.
+It may even be said without being guilty of exaggeration: the poorer the
+condition of a proletarian stratum, the more numerous also is its
+average blessing of children, conceding exceptions here and there. Even
+Virchow confirms this. He says: "As the English workingman in his
+deepest degradation, in the utter vacancy of the mind, finally knows but
+two sources of enjoyment, drunkenness and coition, so did the population
+of Upper Silesia, until recent years, concentrate all its wishes, all
+its desires upon these two things. Liquor and the gratification of
+sexual cravings had become sovereign with it. Hence it is easy to
+understand that its population gained as rapidly in numbers as it lost
+in physical vigor and moral fibre." Karl Marx expresses himself
+similarly when he says in "Capital:" "As a matter of fact, not only the
+number of births and deaths but the absolute size of families is in
+reverse ratio to the height of wages, i. e., to the means of subsistence
+which the various categories of workmen have at their disposal. _This
+law of capitalist society would sound absurd among savages, or even
+civilized colonists._ It reminds us of the enormous power of
+reproduction among animals that are individually weak and much hunted
+down;" and Marx furthermore quotes Laing, who says: "If all the world
+were in comfortable circumstances, the earth would soon be depopulated."
+We see Laing's views are opposed to Malthus: he is of the opinion that a
+good living is not conducive to the increase but to the decrease of
+births. In the same vein says Herbert Spencer: "Always and everywhere
+progress and procreative capacity are opposed to each other. It follows
+that the higher development, that mankind looks forward to, will
+probably have as a result a decline in procreation."
+
+Thus we see men, who otherwise differ, absolutely at one on this head,
+and their views coincide wholly with ours.
+
+The whole question of population could be practically disposed of off
+hand with the observation that there is no danger of over-population
+within sight: we find ourselves in front of such a superabundance of
+food, which even threatens to increase, that the greatest worry, now
+afflicting the producers of means of subsistence, is to furnish this
+wealth of food at tolerable prices. A rapid increase of consumers would
+even be the most desirable thing for producers. But our Malthusians are
+tireless in the raising of objections: thus we are forced to meet these,
+lest they have the excuse that they can not be refuted.
+
+They claim that the danger of an over-population in a not-distant future
+lies in the law of a "decreasing yield of the soil." Our fields become
+"tired of cultivation;" increasing crops are no longer to be looked for;
+seeing that fields, fit for cultivation, become daily rarer, the danger
+of a scarcity of food is imminent, if the population continue to
+increase. We believe to have proved beyond doubt, in the passages on the
+agricultural utilization of the soil, what enormous progress mankind can
+make with respect to the acquisition of new masses of nutriment. But we
+shall give further illustrations. A very able landlord of wide acres and
+economist of acknowledged worth, a man, accordingly who excelled Malthus
+in both respects, said as early as 1850--a time when chemical
+agriculture was still in its swaddling clothes--on the subject of
+agricultural production: "The productivity of raw products, especially
+foodstuffs, will in future no longer lag behind the productivity of the
+factory and of transportation.... Chemical agriculture has only started
+in our days to open to agriculture prospects that will no doubt lead to
+many false roads, but that in the end will place the production of
+foodstuffs as fully in the power of society, as it lies now in its power
+to furnish yards of cloth, if but the requisite supply of wool is at
+hand."[233]
+
+Justus v. Liebig, the founder of chemical agriculture, holds that "if
+human labor and manure are available in sufficient quantity, the soil is
+inexhaustible, and can yield uninterruptedly the richest harvests." The
+"law of a decreasing yield of the soil" is a Malthusian notion, that had
+its justification at a time when agriculture was in an undeveloped
+state; the notion has long since been refuted by science and
+experience. The law is rather this: "The yield of a soil stands in
+direct ratio to the human labor expended (science and technique being
+included), and to the proper fertilizers applied to it." If it was
+possible for small-peasant France to more than quadruple the yield of
+her soil during the last ninety years, without the population even
+doubling, much better results are to be expected from a Socialist
+society. Our Malthusians, furthermore, overlook the fact that, under our
+existing conditions, not our soil merely is to be taken into account,
+but the soil of the whole earth, that is, to a great extent, territories
+whose fertility yields twenty, thirty and many more times as much as our
+corresponding fields of the same size. The earth is now extensively
+appropriated by man; nevertheless, a small fraction excepted, it is
+nowhere cultivated and utilized as it could be cultivated and utilized.
+Not Great Britain alone could, as has been shown, produce a much larger
+quantity of food than she does to-day, but France, Germany, Austria and
+to a still much greater extent the other countries of Europe also could
+do the same. In little Wurtemberg, with her 879,970 hectares of grain
+soil, the mere application of the steam plow would raise the average
+crop of 6,410,000 to 9,000,000 cwts.
+
+European Russia--measured by the present standard of the population of
+Germany--would be able to nourish, instead of her present population, of
+90,000,000, one of 475,000,000 souls. To-day European Russia has about
+1,000 inhabitants to the square mile, Saxony over 12,000.
+
+The objection that Russia contains vast stretches of territory, whose
+climate renders impossible any higher degree of cultivation, is true; on
+the other hand, however, she has to the south a climate and fertility of
+soil by far unknown in Germany. Then, again, due to the denseness of
+population and the improved cultivation of soil therewith connected,
+such as clearings of woods, draining, etc., changes, wholly
+unmeasureable to-day, will be brought on in climate. Wherever man
+aggregates in large numbers climatic changes are perceived. To-day we
+attach too little importance to this phenomenon; we are even unable to
+realize the same to its full extent, seeing that we have no occasion
+therefor, and, as things are to-day, lack the means to undertake the
+needed experiments on an adequate scale. Furthermore, all travelers are
+agreed that in the high latitudes of Northern Siberia, where spring,
+summer and autumn crowd together in rapid succession within a few
+months, an astonishing luxuriance of vegetation suddenly springs forth.
+Thus Sweden and Norway, to-day so sparsely populated, would, with their
+mammoth woods and positively inexhaustible mineral wealth, their
+numerous rivers and long stretch of coast lines, furnish rich sources of
+food for a dense population. The requisite means and appliances are not
+obtainable under present circumstances, and thus even that sparse
+population casts off its shoals of emigrants.
+
+What may be said of the north applies with still more force to the south
+of Europe--Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Danubian States, Hungary,
+Turkey, etc. A climate of surpassing quality, a soil so luxuriant and
+fertile as is hardly found in the best regions of the United States,
+will some day furnish an abundance of food to unnumbered people. The
+decrepit political and social conditions of those countries cause
+hundreds of thousands of our own people to prefer crossing the ocean
+rather than to settle in those much nearer and more comfortably located
+States. Soon as rational social conditions and international relations
+will prevail there, new millions of people will be needed to raise those
+large and fertile lands to a higher grade of civilization.
+
+In order to be able to reach materially higher rungs on the ladder of
+civilization we shall, for a long time to come, have in Europe, not a
+superfluity, but a dearth of people. Under such circumstances, it is an
+absurdity to yield to the fear of over-population. It must ever be kept
+in mind that the utilization of existing sources of food, by the
+application of science and labor, knows no limit: every day brings new
+discoveries and inventions which increase the yield of the sources of
+food.
+
+If we pass from Europe to the other parts of the earth, the lack of
+people and the excess of soil is still more glaring. The most luxuriant
+and fruitful lands of the earth still lie wholly or almost wholly idle:
+the work of bringing them under cultivation and turning them to use can
+not be undertaken with a few hundred or thousand people: it demands mass
+colonizations of many millions in order to be able to bring the
+but-too-luxuriant Nature under human control. Under this head belong,
+among others, Central and South America--a territory of hundreds of
+thousands of square miles. Argentina, for instance, had in 1892 about
+5,000,000 hectares under cultivation, the country has, however,
+96,000,000 hectares at its disposal. The soil of South America, fit for
+the cultivation of corn and lying fallow, is estimated at 200,000,000
+hectares, at least. The United States, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain
+and Ireland, Germany and France have all together only about 105,000,000
+hectares devoted to cereals. Carey maintains that the 360-mile long
+valley of the Orinoco alone could furnish enough food to supply the
+whole present human race. Let us halve the estimate, and there is still
+an abundance. At any rate, South America alone could feed the majority
+of the population now extant on earth. The nutritive value of a field
+planted with banana trees and one of equal size planted with wheat
+stands as 133 to 1. While our wheat yields in favorable soil 12 to 20
+times its seed, rice in its home yields 80 to 100, maize 250 to 300
+times as much. In many regions, the Philippine Islands among them, the
+productivity of rice is estimated at 400 times as much. The question
+with all these articles of food is to render them as nourishing as
+possible by the manner in which they are prepared. Chemistry has in this
+a boundless field for development.
+
+Central and South America, especially Brazil, which alone is almost as
+large as all Europe--Brazil has 152,000 square miles with about
+15,000,000 inhabitants, as against Europe's 178,000 square miles and
+about 340,000,000 inhabitants--are big with a luxuriance and fertility
+that stir the astonishment and wonderment of all travelers, besides
+being inexhaustibly rich in minerals. Nevertheless, until now they are
+almost closed to the world because their population is indolent and
+stands, both in point of numbers and of culture, too low to overmaster
+the power of Nature. How matters look in Africa we have been enlightened
+on by the discoveries of recent years. Even if a good part of Central
+Africa never be fit for European agriculture, there are other regions of
+vast size that can be put to good use the moment rational principles of
+colonization are applied. On the other hand, there are in Asia not only
+vast and fertile territories, able to feed thousands of millions of
+people, but the past has also shown how in places that are there now
+sterile and almost desert, the mild climate once conjured up an
+abundance of food from the soil, provided only man knows how to lead to
+it the blessing-bestowing water. What with the destruction of the
+marvelous aqueducts and contrivances for irrigation in Asia Minor and in
+the regions of the Tigris and the Euphrates, with vandalic wars of
+conquest and the insane oppression of the people by the conquerors,
+fields, thousands of square miles wide, have been transformed into sandy
+deserts. Likewise in Northern Africa, Spain, Mexico and Peru. Let there
+be produced millions of civilized human beings, and inexhaustible
+sources of food will be unlocked. The fruit of the date tree thrives
+marvelously in Asia and Africa, and it takes up so little room that 200
+trees can go on one acre of land. The durria bears in Egypt more than
+3,000 fold, and yet the country is poor--not by reason of excessive
+population, but as the result of a robber system that accomplishes the
+feat of spreading the desert ever further from decade to decade. The
+marvelous results attainable in all these countries by the agriculture
+and horticulture of middle Europe is a matter that eludes all
+calculation.
+
+With the present state of agriculture, the United States could easily
+feed fifteen and twenty times its present population (63,000,000)--that
+is, 1,200,000,000 people. Under the same conditions, Canada could feed,
+instead of 5,000,000 people, 100,000,000 people. Then there are
+Australia, the numerous and in some instances large and extraordinarily
+fertile islands of the great Indian Ocean, etc. "Multiply!"--such, and
+not "Reduce your numbers!"--is the call that in the name of civilization
+reaches the human race.
+
+Everywhere, it is the social conditions--the existing method of
+production and distribution--that bring on privation and misery, not the
+number of people. A few rich crops in succession lower the prices of
+food in such manner that a considerable number of our cultivators of the
+soil are ruined. Instead of the condition of the cultivator being
+improved, it declines. A large number of farmers to-day look upon a good
+crop as a misfortune: it lowers prices so that the cost of production is
+barely covered. And this is called a rational state of things! With the
+view of keeping far away from us the abundance of the harvests of other
+countries, high duties are placed on grain: thus the entry of foreign
+grain is made difficult and the price of the domestic article is raised.
+We have no scarcity but a superabundance of food, the same as of
+industrial products. The same as millions of people need the yield of
+the factories, but can not satisfy their wants under the existing system
+of property and production, so are millions in want of food, being
+unable to pay for it, although the prices are low and the necessaries of
+life abundant. We ask again, Can this be called a rational state of
+things? The craziness and insanity of it all is obvious. Our speculators
+in corn often, when the crops are good, deliberately allow a large part
+to perish: they know the prices rise in the measure that the products
+are scarce. And yet we are told to look out for overpopulation! In
+Russia, southern Europe and many other countries of the world, hundreds
+of thousands of loads of grain perish yearly for want of proper storage
+and transportation. Many millions of hundredweights of food are yearly
+squandered because the provisions for gathering in the crops are
+inadequate, or there is a scarcity of hands at the right time. Many a
+corn field, many a filled barn, whole agricultural establishments are
+burned down, because the insurance fetches higher gains. Food and goods
+are destroyed for the same reason that ships are caused to go to the
+bottom with their whole crews.[234] A large part of the crops is yearly
+ruined by our military manoeuvres; the costs of manoeuvres that last
+only a few days run up to hundreds of thousands of marks; and there are
+many of them every year. Moreover, as stated before, large fields are
+taken from cultivation for these purposes.
+
+Nor must it be forgotten that there is the sea yet to be added to the
+means for increasing the volume of food. The area of water is as 18 to 7
+to that of land,--two and a half times as large. Its enormous wealth of
+food still awaits a rational system of exploitation. The future opens a
+prospect to mankind, wholly different from the gloomy picture drawn by
+our Malthusians.
+
+Who can say where the line is to be drawn to our chemical, physical,
+physiologic knowledge? Who would venture to predict what giant
+undertakings--so considered from our modern standpoint--the people of
+future centuries will execute with the object in view of introducing
+material changes in the climates of the nations and in the methods of
+exploiting their soil?
+
+We see to-day, under the capitalist social system, undertakings executed
+that were thought impossible or insane a century ago. Wide isthmuses are
+cut through; tunnels, miles long and bored into the bowels of the earth,
+join peoples whom towering mountains separate; others are dug under the
+beds of seas to shorten distances, and avoid disturbances and dangers
+that otherwise the countries thus separated are exposed to. Where is the
+spot at which could be said: "So far and no farther?"
+
+If all these improvements were to be undertaken simultaneously, we would
+be found to have, not too many but too few people. The race must
+multiply considerably if it is to do justice to all the tasks that are
+waiting for it. Neither is the soil under cultivation utilized as it
+should be, nor are there people enough to cultivate three-fourths of its
+face. Our relative over-production, continuously produced by the
+capitalist system to the injury of the workingman and of society, will,
+at a higher grade of civilization, prove itself a benefit. Moreover, a
+population as large as possible is, even to-day, not an impediment to
+but a promoter of progress--on the same principle that the existing
+over-production of goods and food, the destruction of the family by the
+enlisting of women and children in the factories, and the expropriation
+of the handicrafts and the peasantry by capital have all shown
+themselves to be conditions precedent for a higher state of
+civilization.
+
+We now come to the other side of the question: Do people multiply
+indefinitely, and is that a necessity of their being?
+
+With the view of proving this great reproductive power of man, the
+Malthusians usually refer to the abnormal instances of exceptional
+families and peoples. Nothing is proven by that. As against these
+instances there are others where, under favorable conditions, complete
+sterility shortly sets in. The quickness with which often well situated
+families die out is surprising. Although the United States offer more
+favorable conditions than any other country for the increase of
+population, and yearly hundreds of thousands of people immigrate at the
+most vigorous age, its population doubles only every thirty years. There
+are nowhere instances on a large scale of the assertion concerning a
+doubling period of twelve or twenty years.
+
+As indicated by the quotations from Marx and Virchow, which may be
+considered to state the rule, population increases fastest where it is
+poorest because, as Virchow justly claims, next to drunkenness, sexual
+intercourse is their only enjoyment. When Gregory VII. forced celibacy
+upon the clergy, the priests of lower rank in the diocese of Mainz
+complained, as stated before, that differently from the upper prelates,
+they did not have all possible pleasures, and the only enjoyment left
+them was their wives. A lack of varying occupation may be the reason why
+the marriages of the rural clergy are, as a rule, so fruitful of
+children. It is also undeniable that our poorest districts in
+Germany--the Silesian Eulengebirge, the Lausitz, the Erzgebirge and
+Fichtelgebirge, the Thuringian Forest, the Harz, etc.,--are the centers
+of densest population, whose chief food are potatoes. It is also certain
+that sexual cravings are strong with consumptives, and these often beget
+children at a state of physical decline when such a thing would seem
+impossible.
+
+It is a law of Nature--hinted at in the quotations made from Herbert
+Spencer and Laing--that she supplies in quantity what she loses in
+quality. The animals of highest grade and strength--lions, elephants,
+camels, etc., our domestic animals such as mares, asses, cows,--bring
+few young ones into the world; while animals of lower organization
+increase in inverse ratio--all insects, most fishes, etc., the smaller
+mammals, such as hares, rats, mice, etc. Furthermore, Darwin established
+that certain wild animals, so soon as tamed, forfeit their fecundity.
+The elephant is an illustration. This proves that altered conditions of
+life, together with the consequent change in the mode of life, are the
+determining factors in reproductive powers.
+
+It happens, however, that it is the Darwinians who lead in the fear of
+over-population, and upon whom our modern Malthusians bank. Our
+Darwinians are everywhere infelicitous the moment they apply their
+theories to human conditions: their method then becomes roughly
+empirical, and they forget that, while man is the highest organic
+animal, he, being in contradistinction to animals acquainted with the
+laws of nature is able to direct and utilize these.
+
+The theory of the struggle for existence, the doctrine that the germs
+of new life exist in much larger numbers than are maintainable with the
+existing means of existence, would be wholly applicable to man if man,
+instead of straining his brains and enlisting the services of technical
+arts for exploiting air, land and water, grazed like cattle, or like
+monkeys indulged his sexual impulses with cynic shamelessness,--in
+short, if he reverted to the monkey order. In passing be it observed
+that the fact that, besides man, monkeys are the only beings with whom
+the sexual impulse is not fixed to certain periods, is a striking proof
+of the relationship between the two. But though closely related, they
+are not identical, and are not to be placed on one level and measured by
+one standard,--a fact that we commend to Ziegler, who, in his book
+herein frequently referred to, holds up the two together.
+
+The circumstance that, under the conditions of ownership and production
+that have hitherto prevailed, the struggle for existence existed and
+continues to exist for man also and many fail to find the conditions for
+life, is perfectly true. But these failed, not because of the scarcity
+of the means of existence, but because, due to social conditions, the
+means of existence, though in greatest abundance, were kept from them.
+False also is the conclusion that, because such has hitherto been the
+state of things, it is unchangeable and will ever be so. It is here that
+the Darwinians slide and fall: they study natural science and
+anthropology, but not sociology, and thoughtlessly fall in line with our
+bourgeois ideologists. Hence they drop into their false conclusions.
+
+The sexual instinct is perennial in man; it is his strongest instinct
+and demands satisfaction, lest his health suffer. Moreover, as a rule,
+this instinct is strong in proportion to man's health and normal
+development--just as a good appetite and a good digestion bespeak a
+healthy stomach, and are the first prerequisites for a healthy body. But
+gratification of the sexual instinct and begetting and conceiving are
+not the same thing. The most varied theories have been set up on the
+fecundity of the human race. On the whole, we are still groping in the
+dark on this important field, mainly because for a couple of thousand
+years a senseless shyness has stood in the way of man's occupying
+himself freely and naturally with the laws of his own origin, and to
+study thoroughly the laws of human procreation. That is gradually
+changing and must change much more.
+
+On one side the theory is set up that higher mental development and
+strenuous mental exertion, in short, higher nervous activity, exert a
+repressing influence upon the sexual impulse and weaken the procreative
+power. This is disputed by the other side. The fact is pointed to that
+the better situated classes have, on an average, fewer children and
+that this is not to be ascribed solely to preventive measures.
+Undoubtedly, intense mental occupation has a depressing influence upon
+the sexual impulse, but that such occupation is indulged in by the
+majority of our property classes is not so certain. On the other hand,
+an excess of physical labor also has a repressing influence. But all
+excessive effort is harmful, and therefore objectionable.
+
+Others, again, claim that the manner of life, especially the food eaten,
+coupled with certain physical conditions on the part of the woman,
+determine the power to beget and to conceive. The nature of food more
+than any other cause, this side argues, determines, as experience shows
+in the instance of animals also, the effectiveness of the act of
+procreation. Possibly, this is in fact, the determining factor. The
+influence of the nature of nourishment on the organism of certain
+animals manifests itself surprisingly with bees: they produce at will a
+queen by the administering of special food. Bees, accordingly, are
+further advanced in the knowledge of sexual development than men. They
+have not, probably, been sermonized for two thousand years that it is
+"indecent" and "immoral" to concern themselves with sexual matters.
+
+It is also known that plants raised on good soil and well manured,
+thrive luxuriantly, but yield no seed. That the nature of the food has
+its influence upon the composition of the male sperm, and upon the
+fecundity of the female egg with human beings also, is hardly to be
+doubted. Thus mayhap the procreative power of the population depends in
+a high degree upon the nature of the food it lives on. Other factors,
+whose nature is still but little understood, also play a role. It is a
+striking circumstance that a young couple may have no children after
+long years of married life, yet, having separated, and each having mated
+again, both new marriages are followed by healthy children.
+
+One factor is of leading importance in the question of population in the
+future--_the higher, freer position which all women will then occupy_.
+Leaving exceptions aside, intelligent and energetic women are not as a
+rule inclined to give life to a large number of children as "the gift of
+God," and to spend the best years of their own lives in pregnancy, or
+with a child at their breasts. This disinclination for numerous
+children, which even now is entertained by most women, may--all the
+solicitude notwithstanding that a Socialist society will bestow upon
+pregnant women and mothers--be rather strengthened than weakened. In our
+opinion, there lies in this the great probability that the increase of
+population will proceed slower than in bourgeois society.
+
+Our Malthusians need really not break their heads on the future of the
+human race. Until now nations have gone down through the decline, never
+through the increase of their population. In the last analysis, the
+number of population is regulated without harmful abstinence and without
+unnatural preventives, in a society that lives according to the laws of
+Nature. On this head also the future will vindicate Karl Marx. His
+theory also that every period of economic development carries with it
+its own law of population will prove true under the rule of Socialism.
+
+The author of the work "Die kuenstliche Beschraenkung der Kinderzahl"
+(The Artificial Limitation of Progeny)[235] claims that Socialism is
+playing a tricky manoeuvre by its opposition to Malthusianism: a rapid
+increase of population promotes mass proletarianization, and this, in
+turn, promotes discontent: if over-population is successfully checked,
+the spread of Socialism would be done for, and its Socialist State,
+together with all its glory, buried for all time. Thus we see one more
+weapon added to the arsenal to kill Socialism with--Malthusianism. The
+grandiose ignorance of the Socialist-killer Ferdy on Socialism,
+transpires strongest from the following sentence, which he perpetrates
+on page 40 of his work:
+
+"Socialism will go further than the Neo-Malthusians in its demands. It
+will demand that the minimum wage be so fixed that every workingman
+shall be able to produce as many children as possible under given social
+facilities for the acquisition of food.... The moment the ultimate
+deductions of Socialism are drawn, and private property is abolished,
+even the dullest will then say to himself: 'Why should I have to work
+long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to
+shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic
+should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before
+presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous stuff at
+that!
+
+In Socialist society, where alone mankind will be truly free and planted
+on its natural basis, it will direct its own development knowingly along
+the line of natural law. In all epochs hitherto, society handled the
+questions of production and distribution, as well as of the increase of
+population without the knowledge of the laws that underlie them,--hence,
+unconsciously. In the new social order, equipped with the knowledge of
+the laws of its own development, society will proceed consciously and
+planfully.
+
+
+    SOCIALISM IS SCIENCE, APPLIED WITH FULL UNDERSTANDING
+             TO ALL THE FIELDS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[229] That Darwin and others also became devotees of Malthus only proves
+how the lack of economic knowledge leads to one-sided views.
+
+[230] Fred. Freiligrath sings in his fervid poem "Ireland":
+
+
+    Thus naught the Irish landlord cares,
+      While hart and ox by peasant's toil
+    For him are raised--he leaves undried
+      Great bogs and swamps on Erin's soil--
+
+    Extensive mirelands unreclaimed,
+      Where sheaf by sheaf rich crops could wave;
+    He vilely leaves--a wanton waste--
+      Where water-fowl and wild ducks lave.
+
+        Four million acres feels his rod;
+        A wilderness accursed of God.
+
+
+[231] "Two millions of acres ... totally laid waste, embracing within
+their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass
+of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The
+deer forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide
+district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best
+pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid
+waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the
+fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The
+resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss
+sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000
+sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest
+ground in Scotland.... It might, &c.... All that forest land is as
+totally unproductive.... It might thus as well have been submerged under
+the waters of the German Ocean."--From the London "Economist," July 2,
+1866, cited by Karl Marx in "Capital," p. 757, edition Swan-Sonnenschein
+& Co., London, 1896.
+
+[232] Rau's "Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie," p. 367.
+
+[233] Rodbertus: "Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage."
+
+[234] Similar conditions must have existed at the time of St. Basil. He
+calls out to the rich: "Wretches that you are, what answer will you make
+to the divine Judge? You cover the nakedness of your walls with carpets,
+but do not cover the nakedness of human beings! You ornament your horses
+with costly and smooth coverlets, and you despise your brother who is
+covered with rags. You allow your corn to rot and be devoured in your
+barns and your fields, and you do not spare even a look for those who
+have no bread." Moral homiletics have since old done precious little
+good with the ruling class, and they will do no better in the future.
+Let the social conditions be changed so that none can act unjustly
+towards his fellowman; the world will then get along easy enough.
+
+[235] Hans Ferdy.
+
+
+
+
+PART VI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+Our arguments have shown that, with Socialism, the issue is not an
+arbitrary tearing down and raising up, but a natural process of
+development. All the factors active in the process of destruction, on
+the one hand, and of construction, on the other, _are factors that
+operate in the manner that they are bound to operate_. Neither
+"statesmen of genius" nor "inflammatory demagogues" can direct events at
+will. They may imagine they push; but are themselves pushed. But we are
+near the time when "the hour has sounded."
+
+Due to her own peculiar development, Germany, more than any other
+country, seems designated as that which is to assume the leading _role_
+in the pending revolution.[236]
+
+In the course of this work we often spoke of an over-production of
+goods, which brings on the crises. This is a phenomenon peculiar to the
+capitalist world only; it was seen at no previous period of human
+development.
+
+But the capitalist world yields not merely an over-production of goods
+and of men, it also yields _an over-production of intelligence_. Germany
+is the classic land in which this over-production of intelligence, which
+the bourgeois world no longer knows what to do with, is yielded on a
+large scale. A circumstance, that for centuries was a misfortune to
+Germany's development, has largely contributed to this state of things.
+It consisted in the multiplicity of small States and the check exercised
+by these political formations upon the development of upper capitalism.
+The multiplicity of small States decentralized the intellectual life of
+the nation: it raised numerous small centers of culture, and these
+exercised their influence upon the whole. In comparison with a large
+central government, the numerous small ones required an extraordinarily
+large administrative apparatus, whose members needed a certain degree of
+higher culture. Thus high schools and universities sprung up more
+numerous than in any other country of Europe. The jealousy and ambition
+of the several governments played in this no small _role_. The same
+thing repeated itself when some governments began introducing compulsory
+education for the people. The passion not to be left behind a
+neighboring State had here its good effect. The demand for intelligence
+rose when increasing culture, hand in hand with the material progress of
+the bourgeoisie, quickened the longing for political activity, popular
+representation and self-government on the part of municipalities. These
+were small governmental bodies for small countries and circles,
+nevertheless they contributed towards the general schooling, and caused
+the sons of the bourgeoisie to covet seats in them and to adapt their
+education accordingly.
+
+As science, so did art fare.--No country of Europe has, relatively
+speaking, so many painting and other art academies, technical schools,
+museums and art collections, as Germany. Other countries may be able to
+make better showings in their capitals, but none has such a distribution
+over its whole territory as Germany. In point of art, Italy is the only
+exception.
+
+While the bourgeoisie of England had conquered a controlling power over
+the State as early as the middle of the seventeenth, and the bourgeoisie
+of France towards the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie of
+Germany did not succeed until 1848 to secure for itself a comparatively
+moderate influence over the government. That was the birth year of the
+German bourgeoisie as a self-conscious class: it now stepped upon the
+stage as an independent political party, in the trappings of
+"liberalism." The peculiar development that Germany had undergone now
+manifested itself. It was not manufacturers, merchants, men of commerce
+and finance who came forward as leaders, but chiefly professors, squires
+of liberal proclivities, writers, jurists and doctors of all academic
+faculties. It was the German ideologists: And so was their work. After
+1848 the German bourgeoisie was temporarily consigned to political
+silence; but they utilized the period of the sepulchral silence of the
+fifties in the promotion of their task. The breaking-out of the
+Austro-Italian war and the commencement of the Regency of Prussia,
+stirred the bourgeoisie anew to reach after political power. The
+"National Verein" (National Union) movement began. The bourgeoisie was
+now too far developed to tolerate within the numerous separate States
+the many political barriers, that were at the same time
+economic--barriers of taxation, barriers of communication. It assumed a
+revolutionary air. Herr von Bismarck understood the situation and turned
+it to account in his own manner so as to reconcile the interests of the
+bourgeoisie with those of the Prussian Kingdom, towards which the
+bourgeoisie never had been hostile, seeing it feared the revolution and
+the masses. The barriers finally came down that had hampered its
+material progress. Thanks to Germany's great wealth in coal and
+minerals, together with an intelligent and easily satisfied working
+class, the bourgeoisie made within few decades such gigantic progress as
+was made by the bourgeoisie of no other country, the United States
+excepted, within the same period. Thus did Germany reach the position of
+the second industrial and commercial State in Europe; and she covets the
+first.
+
+This rapid material development had its obverse. The system of mutual
+exclusion, that existed between the German States up to the
+establishment of German unity, had until then furnished a living to an
+uncommonly numerous class of artisans and small peasants. With the
+precipitous tearing down of all the protective barriers, these people
+suddenly found themselves face to face with an unbridled process of
+capitalist production and development. At first, the prosperity epoch of
+the early seventies caused the danger to seem slighter, but it raged all
+the more fearful when the crisis set in. The bourgeoisie had used the
+prosperity period to make marvelous progress, and thus now caused the
+distress to be felt ten-fold. From now on the chasm between the
+property-holding and the propertyless classes widened rapidly. This
+process of decomposition and of absorption, which--promoted by the
+growth of material power on the one hand, and the declining power of
+resistance on the other--proceeds with ever increasing rapidity, throws
+whole classes of the population into ever more straitened circumstances.
+They find themselves from day to day more powerfully threatened in their
+position and their condition of life; and they see themselves doomed
+with mathematical certainty.
+
+In this desperate struggle many seek possible safety in a change of
+profession. The old men can no longer make the change: only in the
+rarest instances are they able to bequeath an independence to their
+children: the last efforts are made, the last means applied towards
+placing sons and daughters in positions with fixed salaries, which
+require no capital to carry on. These are mainly the civil service
+offices in the Empire, States or municipalities--teacherships, the Post
+Office and railroad positions, and also the higher places in the service
+of the bourgeoisie in the counting rooms, stores and factories as
+managers, chemists, technical overseers, engineers, constructors, etc.;
+finally the so-called liberal professions: law, medicine, theology,
+journalism, art, architecture and lastly pedagogy.
+
+Thousands upon thousands, who had previously taken up a trade, now--the
+possibility of independence and of a tolerable livelihood having
+vanished--seek for any position in the said offices. The pressure is
+towards higher education and learning. High schools, gymnasiums,
+polytechnics, etc., spring up like mushrooms, and those in existence are
+filled to overflowing. In the same measure the number of students at the
+universities, at the chemical and physical laboratories, at the art
+schools, trade and commercial schools and the higher schools of all
+sorts for women are on the increase. In all departments, without
+exception, there is a tremendous overcrowding, and the stream still
+swells: fresh demands are constantly raised for the establishment of
+more gymnasiums and high schools to accommodate the large number of
+pupils and students.[237] From official and private sources warnings
+upon warnings are issued, now against the choice of one then against
+that of another career. Even theology, that a few decades ago threatened
+to dry up for want of candidates, now receives its spray from the
+superabundance, and again sees its livings filled. "I am ready to preach
+belief in ten thousand gods and devils, if required, only procure me a
+position that may support me"--that is the song that re-echoes from all
+corners. Occasionally, the corresponding Cabinet Minister refuses his
+consent to the establishment of new institutions of higher education
+"because those in existence amply supply the demand for candidates of
+all professions."
+
+This state of things is rendered all the more intolerable by the
+circumstance that the competitive and mutually destructive struggle of
+the bourgeoisie compels its own sons to seek for public places.
+Furthermore, the ever increasing standing army with its swarms of
+officers, whose promotion is seriously paralyzed after a long peace,
+leads to the placing of large numbers of men in the best years of their
+lives upon the pension lists, who thereupon, favored by the State, seek
+all manner of appointments. Another swarm of lower grade in the army,
+takes the bread from the mouths of the other stratas. Lastly, the still
+larger swarm of children of the Imperial, State and municipal officials
+of all degrees are and can not choose but be trained especially for such
+positions in the civil service. Social standing, culture and
+pretensions--all combine to keep the children of these classes away from
+the so-called low occupations, which, however, as a result of the
+capitalist system, are themselves overcrowded.
+
+The system of One Year Volunteers, which allows the reduction of the
+compulsory military service to one instead of two or three years for
+those who have obtained a certain degree of education and can make the
+material sacrifice, is another source from which the candidates for
+public office is swollen. Many sons of well-to-do peasants, who do not
+fancy a return to the village and to the pursuit of their fathers, come
+under this category.
+
+As a result of all these circumstances, Germany has an infinitely more
+numerous proletariat of scholars and artists than any other country, as
+also a strong proletariat in the so-called liberal professions. This
+proletariat is steadily on the increase, and carries the fermentation
+and discontent with existing conditions into the higher strata of
+society. This youth are roused and spurred to the criticism of the
+existing order, and they materially aid in hastening the general work of
+dissolution. Thus the existing condition of things is attacked and
+undermined from all sides.
+
+All these circumstances have contributed to cause the German Social
+Democratic party to take a hand in the leadership of the giant struggle
+of the future. It was German Socialists who discovered the motor laws of
+modern society, and who scientifically demonstrated Socialism to be the
+social form of the future. First of all Karl Marx and Frederick Engels;
+next to them and firing the masses with his agitation, Ferdinand
+Lassalle. Finally German Socialists are the chief pioneers of Socialist
+thought among the workingmen of all nations.
+
+Almost half a century ago--grounded on his studies of the German mind
+and culture--Buckle could say that, although Germany had a large number
+of the greatest thinkers, there was no country in which the chasm
+between the class of the scholars and the mass of the population was as
+wide. This is no longer true. It was so only so long as knowledge was
+confined to learned circles that stood aloof from practical life. Since
+Germany has been economically revolutionized, science was compelled to
+render itself useful to practical life. Science itself became practical.
+It was felt that science attained its full worth only when it became
+applicable to human life; and the development of large capitalist
+production compelled it thereto. All the tranches of science have been,
+accordingly, strongly democratized during the last decades. The large
+number of young men, educated for the higher professions, contributed to
+carry science among the people; then also the general schooling, higher
+to-day in Germany than in most European countries, facilitated the
+popular reception of a mass of intellectual products. But above all, the
+Socialist Movement--with its literature, its press, its unions and
+meetings, its parliamentary representation, and finally the incessant
+criticism thereby promoted on all the fields of public life--materially
+raised the mental level of the masses.
+
+The exclusion law against the Social Democratic party did not check this
+current. It somewhat hemmed in the Movement, and slightly reduced its
+tempo. But, on the other hand, it caused the roots of the Movement to
+sink deeper, and aroused an intense bitterness against the ruling
+classes and the government. The final abandonment of the exclusion law
+was but the consequence of the progress made by the Social Democratic
+party under that very law, together with the economic development of the
+nation. And thus the Movement goes marching onward, as march it must
+under existing conditions.
+
+As in Germany, the Socialist Movement has made unexpected progress in
+all European civilized nations, a fact eloquently attested to by the
+International Congresses of Labor, which, with intervals of two or three
+years, gather with ever increased representations.
+
+Thus with the close of the nineteenth century the great battle of minds
+is on in all the countries of civilization, and is conducted with fiery
+enthusiasm. Along with social science, the wide field of the natural
+sciences, hygiene, the history of civilization and even philosophy are
+the arsenals from which the weapons are drawn. The foundations of
+existing society are being assailed from all sides; heavy blows are
+being dealt to its props. Revolutionary ideas penetrate conservative
+circles and throw the ranks of our enemies into disorder. Artisans and
+scholars, farmers, and artists, merchants and government employes, here
+and there, even manufacturers and bankers, in short, men of all
+conditions, are joining the ranks of the workingmen, who constitute the
+bulk of the army, who combat for victory, and who will win it. All
+support and mutually supplement one another.
+
+To woman also in general, and as a female proletarian in particular, the
+summons goes out not to remain behind in this struggle in which her
+redemption and emancipation are at stake. It is for her to prove that
+she has comprehended her true place in the Movement and in the struggles
+of the present for a better future; and that she is resolved to join. It
+is the part of the men to aid her in ridding herself of all
+superstitions, and to step forward in their ranks. Let none underrate
+his own powers, and imagine that the issue does not depend upon him.
+None, be he the weakest, can be spared in the struggle for the progress
+of the human race. The unremitting dropping of little drops hollows in
+the end the hardest stone. Many drops make a brook, brooks make rivers,
+many rivers a stream, until finally no obstacle is strong enough to
+check it in its majestic flow. Just so with the career of mankind.
+Everywhere Nature is our instructress. If all who feel the call put
+their whole strength in this struggle, ultimate victory can not fail.
+
+And this victory will be all the greater the more zealously and
+self-sacrificingly each pursues the marked-out path. None may allow
+himself to be troubled with misgivings whether, despite all sacrifices,
+labor and pains he will live to see the beginning of the new and fairer
+period of civilization, whether he will yet taste the fruit of victory;
+least of all may such misgivings hold him back. We can foresee neither
+the duration nor the nature of the several phases of development that
+this struggle for the highest aims may traverse until final
+victory,--any more than we have any certainty on the duration of our own
+lives. Nevertheless, just as the pleasure in life rules us, so may we
+foster the hope of witnessing this victory. Are we not in an age that
+rushes forward, so to speak, with seven-mile boots, and therefore causes
+all the foes of a new and better world to tremble?
+
+Every day furnishes fresh proof of the rapid growth and spread of the
+ideas that we represent. On all fields there is tumult and push. The
+dawn of a fair day is drawing nigh with mighty stride. Let us then ever
+battle and strive forward, unconcerned as to "where" and "when" the
+boundary-posts of the new and better day for mankind will be raised. And
+if, in the course of this great battle for the emancipation of the human
+race, we should fall, those now in the rear will step forward; we shall
+fall with the consciousness of having done our duty as human beings, and
+with the conviction that the goal will be reached, however the powers
+hostile to humanity may struggle or strain in resistance.
+
+
+    OURS IS THE WORLD, DESPITE ALL;--THAT IS, FOR THE
+                   WORKER AND FOR WOMAN.
+
+                           FINIS.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[236] [Aside from the contradiction implied between this sentence and
+that other, on page 247, in which the internationally overshadowing
+economic development of the United States is admitted, the forecast,
+though cautiously advanced, that Germany may take the lead in the
+accomplishment of the pending Social Revolution, is justified neither by
+her economic nor her social development, least of all by her geographic
+location.
+
+As to her economic development, Germany has made rapid and long strides
+during the last twenty years; so rapid and so long that the progress has
+caused the Socialists of Germany, in more instances than one, to
+realize--and to say so--that, what with her own progress, and with
+outside circumstances, Germany was distancing England economically. This
+is true. But the same reason that argues, and correctly argues, the
+economic scepter off the hands of England places it, not in those of
+Germany, but in the hands of the United States.
+
+As to her social development, Germany is almost half a revolutionary
+cycle behind. Her own bourgeois revolution was but half achieved.
+Without entering upon a long list of specifications, it is enough to
+indicate the fact that Germany is still quite extensively feudal in
+order to suggest to the mind robust feudal boulders, left untouched by
+the capitalist revolution, and strewing, aye, obstructing the path of
+the Socialist Movement in that country. The social phenomenon has been
+seen of an oppressed class skipping an intermediary stage of vassalage,
+and entering, at one bound, upon one higher up. It happened, for
+instance, with our negroes here in America. Without first stepping off
+at serfdom, they leaped from chattel slavery to wage slavery. What
+happened once may happen again. But in the instance cited and all the
+others that we can call to mind, it happened through outside
+intervention. Can Germany perform the same feat alone, unaided? Do
+events point in that direction? Or do they rather point in the direction
+that the work, now being realized there as demanding immediate
+attention, and alone possible and practicable, is the completion of the
+capitalist revolution, first of all?
+
+But even discounting both these objections--granting that both in point
+of economic and of social development Germany were ripe for the
+Socialist Revolution--her geographic location prevents her leadership.
+No one single State of the forty-four of the Union, not even the Empire
+State of New York, however ripe herself, could lead in the overthrow of
+capitalist rule in America unless the bulk of her sister States were
+themselves up to a certain minimum of ripeness. Contrariwise, any
+attempt by even such a State would be promptly smothered. What is true
+of any single State of the Union is true of any one country of Europe.
+It is, therefore, true of Germany. Whatever doubt there be as to
+Germany's ripeness, there can be none as to the utter unripeness of all
+the other European countries with the single exceptions of France and
+Belgium,--and surely none as to Russia, that ominous cloud to the East,
+well styled the modern Macedon to the modern Greek States of the nations
+of Western Europe. Though there is no "District of Columbia" in Europe,
+the masses would be mobilized from the surrounding hives of the
+Cimmerian Darkness of feudo-capitalism, and they would be marched
+convergently with as much precision and despatch upon the venturesome
+leader. And what is true as to Germany on this head is true of any other
+European country. Facts and their relations to one another must be ever
+kept in sight. 'Tis the only way to escape illusions--and their train of
+troubles.
+
+For the rest, not the sordid competitive spirit of the bourgeois world,
+but that noble and ennobling emulation, cited by the Author in a
+quotation from John Stuart Mill, animates the nations of the world that
+are now racing towards the overthrow of capitalist domination. Surely
+none will begrudge laurels due that one that shall be the first to scale
+the ramparts of the international burg of capitalism, strike the first
+blow, and give the signal for the final emancipation of the human
+race.--THE TRANSLATOR.]
+
+[237] The number of students at the German universities averaged as
+follows per six months:
+
+
+                  Protestant Catholic
+  Quarter.         Theology. Theology. Law. Medicine. Philosophy. Total.
+
+  1841-42--1846       2117     1027    3467   1943       3072     11626
+  1846-47--1851       1798     1297    4061   1827       3046     12029
+  1851-52--1856       1751     1300    4169   2291       2840     12351
+  1861-62--1866       2437     1153    2867   2435       4392     13284
+  1866-67--1871       2154      982    3011   2838       4626     13611
+  1871-72--1876       1780      836    4121   3491       5896     16124
+  1876-77--1881       1961      682    5134   3734       8057     19568
+  1881-82--1886       3880      952    5034   6869       9123     25838
+  1886-87             4546     1178    5239   8450       8666     27828
+  1887                4803     1232    5505   8685       8424     28455
+  1887-88             4632     1137    4810   8435       8450     28480
+  1888                4835     1174    6106   8915       8204     29275
+  1888-89             4642     1207    6304   8886       8255     29294
+
+
+During the summer six months of 1893--notably the weaker of the two
+seasons--the total number of students, exclusive of the University of
+Brunswick, of which we had no returns, had risen to 31,976.
+Unfortunately we had no like classification of the students, and are
+hence prevented from inserting it in the above table.
+
+The table shows that from 1841-2 to 1871 the number of students
+increased little, and less than the population. From that date on the
+increase was by leaps and bounds, until 1886-7; from this date on the
+increase is again slow. From 1871 to 1888-9 the number of students
+increased more than 116 per cent. It is an interesting fact that the
+study of theology decreased steadily until 1881, but increased thereupon
+all the quicker until it reached high-water mark in 1888. The reason was
+that the excess of the supply for all the other posts increased in such
+measure that it was difficult to secure a place. People then turned to
+theology which had been neglected during the previous ten years.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman under socialism, by August Bebel
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