Disruption of the Family.
1.--Increase of Divorce.
The part played by church and state in this sort of “sacred marriage”
is not a worthy one. The state official or the officiating clergyman
whose task it is to perform the marriage ceremony, never pauses to
consider by what methods the couple he is about to join in wedlock
have been brought together. It may be quite evident, that the two
are in no wise mated either in regard to their ages or in regard to
physical and mental qualities; the bride may, for instance, be twenty
and the groom seventy, or vice versa; the bride may be beautiful and
full of vitality, the groom may be old, cross and inflicted with
infirmities, it makes no difference to the representative of state
and church. The marriage is consecrated, and the consecration is
most solemn in character where the monetary reward for this “holy
function” is most generous. But when such a marriage turns out to be
an exceedingly unhappy one, as could have been foreseen by anybody,
and frequently was foreseen by the unfortunate victim itself--the
woman generally being the victim--and when one or the other party
then seeks separation, both church and state place the greatest
difficulties in their way. Yet neither church nor state questioned
in advance whether love and moral sentiments, or shameless, coarse
egotism brought about the union. Moral revulsion is not considered
sufficient cause for separation; obvious proofs are demanded, proofs
that will degrade one or the other party in public opinion, to make
divorce possible. That the Catholic Church does not permit divorce
at all, except by special permission from the pope, which is very
hard to obtain, makes conditions particularly unfavorable among the
Catholic population. The German code of civil law has also made
divorce much more difficult. Thus divorce by mutual consent, that
had been permitted by Prussian law, was abolished. Many divorces
had been granted under this law, some for more serious reasons that
were concealed out of regard for the guilty party. In Berlin, for
instance, there were 5,623 divorces from 1886 until 1892; 1,400 of
these, approximately 25 per cent., were granted upon mutual consent.
In many cases divorce is granted only then, when the party seeking
divorce does so within six months after discovery of the cause for
divorce. According to Prussian law, the time limit is one year. Take,
for example, that a young wife discovers soon after her marriage, that
she is tied to a man who is no husband to her at all. It is asking a
great deal that she should determine on divorce within six months,
a step that requires a considerable amount of moral strength. To
justify the increased difficulty in divorce, the following argument
is advanced: “Only by making divorce increasingly difficult, can the
advancing disruption of the family be counteracted and the family
bonds be strengthened.” This argument is a contradiction in itself. A
disrupted marriage is not made bearable by forcing husband and wife
to continue living together in spite of their inward estrangement
and mutual aversion. A condition of this sort, maintained by law, is
profoundly immoral. The result is that in a large number of cases
adultery is made a cause for divorce, since this cause cannot be
ignored by the law; neither the state nor society are improved
by this process. It must also be regarded as a concession to the
Catholic Church, that in many cases separation takes the place of
divorce which was formerly not the case according to civil law. It
is no longer considered a cause for divorce, when through the fault
of the one party, a marriage remains childless. The new German code
of civil law contains the following paragraph: “The religious duties
in regard to marriage are not touched upon in the rules laid down
in this paragraph.” This likewise is a concession to the church. It
is merely ornamental in character, but it is characteristic of the
spirit still prevailing in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth
century. For our purposes the admission is important, that divorce
was made more difficult to counteract the advancing disruption of
the family.
Human beings then remain chained to one another for lifetime against
their will. One party becomes a slave to the other and is forced in
fulfillment of “matrimonial duties,” to endure intimate embraces
that perhaps seem more loathsome than harsh words and ill treatment.
Rightly Mantegazza says: “There is no greater torture than to suffer
the caresses of an unloved person....”[50] Is such marriage not
worse than prostitution? Even the prostitute has a certain degree
of liberty of withdrawing from her abominable trade, and if she is
not the inmate of a public brothel, she may refuse herself to a man
she does not wish for some reason or other. But a woman sold in
marriage must endure the embraces of her husband, even though she
have a hundred reasons to hate and despise him.
If the marriage has been contracted from the outset and by mutual
understanding, as a mere marriage of convenience, matters are not
quite as bad. Mutual obligations are considered and a bearable
mode of life is found. Scandal is avoided, especially out of
consideration for the children, where such exist; and yet it must
be said that the children are the ones to suffer most when their
parents lead a cold, indifferent life, devoid of love, even if it
does not deteriorate into a life of open hostility. More frequently
yet an agreement is accomplished to avoid material loss. Usually
the husband’s misbehavior is the cause of trouble in marriage; that
may be seen from the divorce cases. When a man remains dissatisfied
with his marriage his domineering position enables him to find
compensation elsewhere. The woman is far less inclined to go astray,
firstly because physiological reasons make a transgression much more
dangerous in her case, and secondly because when she is the one to
break the marital vow, it is considered a crime that society will
not condone. The woman alone--be she wife, widow or maiden--has
“fallen”; the man, when he commits the same sin, has, at the worst,
behaved with impropriety. The same action then is judged by entirely
different standards, according to whether it has been committed by
a man or by a woman, and the women themselves are often most bitter
and unmerciful in their condemnation of a “fallen” sister.[51]
As a rule, women will seek divorce only in cases of flagrant infidelity
or gross ill-treatment, because they are in a dependent position
and are obliged to regard marriage as a means of subsistence; also
because the social position of a divorced woman is not an enviable
one. She is regarded and treated more or less as a cipher. If in
spite of all this women constitute the majority of plaintives in
divorce cases, this goes to prove what moral tortures they must
endure. In France, even before the introduction of the new divorce
laws, by far the most proceedings for separation were instituted
by women. Until 1884 a woman in France could sue for divorce only
in case her husband brought the woman with whom he maintained an
intimate relation into the domicile of his wife against her will.
Thus proceedings for separation were instituted annually by:
Women. Men.
1856–1861 1,729 184
1861–1866 2,135 260
1866–1871 2,591 330
1901–1905 2,368 591
Not only were the majority of proceedings instituted by women, the
figures also show that their number steadily increased. By information
gathered from reliable sources it may be seen, that elsewhere also the
greater number of actions for divorce and separation are instituted
by women, as the following table shows:[52]
PERCENTAGE OF NUMBER OF PLAINTIVES.
DIVORCES.
During Husbands
the years. Husbands. Wives. and wives.
Austria 1893–1897 4.4 5.0 90.6
Roumania 1891–1895 30.6 68.9 0.5
Switzerland 1895–1899 26.4 45.4 8.2
France 1895–1899 40.0 59.1 ..
Baden 1895–1899 36.0 59.1 4.9
England & Wales 1895–1899 60.4 39.6 ..
Scotland 1898–1899 43.3 56.7 ..
SEPARATIONS.
Austria 1897–1899 4.9 16.6 78.5
France 1895–1899 15.9 84.1 ..
England & Wales 1895–1899 3.0 97.0 ..
Scotland 1898–1899 .. 100. ..
In the United States, where the divorce statistics cover a period
of forty years, we find the following ratio:
1867–1886. P. C. 1887–1906. P. C. 1906. P. C.
Men 112,540 34.2 316,149 33.4 23,455 32.5
Women 216,176 65.8 629,476 66.6 48,607 67.5
---------------------------------------------------
Total 328,716 100 945,625 100 72,062 100
The above table shows that in more than two-thirds of all divorce
cases women were the plaintiffs.[53]
In Italy we find a similar ratio. During 1887 there were 1,221 divorce
cases; 593 of these were instituted by wives, 214 by husbands, 414
by both husbands and wives. In 1904 there were 2,103 cases; 1,142
by wives, 454 by husbands, and 507 by both.
Statistics teach us that the majority of divorces are sought by
women, and they furthermore teach us that the number of divorces is
rapidly increasing. Since the introduction of the new divorce law
in France in 1884, the divorces have increased from year to year,
as follows:
Years 1884. 1885. 1890. 1895. 1900. 1905. 1906. 1907.
Divorces 1,657 4,123 6,557 7,700 7,820 10,019 10,573 10,938
In Switzerland, too, the divorce-rate is increasing. From 1886 to 1890
there were 882 divorces. From 1891 to 1895 there were 898 divorces;
in 1897, 1,011; in 1898, 1,018; in 1899, 1,091; in 1905, 1,206; in
1906, 1,343. In Austria during 1899 there were 856 divorces and 133
separations. In 1900 there were 1,310 divorces and 163 separations.
In 1905 there were 1,885 divorces and 262 separations. The number
of divorces and separations have been doubled during a decade. In
Vienna there were 148 divorces in 1870 and 1871; they increased with
each succeeding year until in 1878 and 1879 there were 319 cases.
Vienna being a Catholic city, divorces are not easily obtained.
Nevertheless, a Viennese judge exclaimed during the eighties: “The
charge of broken marriage vows is as frequent as the charge of broken
windows.”
The following shows the increasing divorce-rate in the United States:
Years 1867. 1886. 1895. 1902. 1906.
Divorces 9,937 25,535 40,387 61,480 72,062
If the number of divorces in relation to the population had remained
the same in 1905 as in 1870, the exact number of divorces in 1905
would have been 24,000, and not 67,791, as actually was the case. The
total number of divorces from 1867 to 1886 was 328,716; from 1887
to 1906, 945,625. The United States have the highest divorce-rate.
For every thousand marriages there were the following number of
divorces: In 1870, 81; in 1880, 107; in 1890, 148; in 1900, 200.
Why is divorce more frequent in the United States than in any other
country? Firstly, because in some of the states the divorce laws are
less rigorous than in most of the other countries, and, secondly,
~because women enjoy a freer, more independent position than in any
other country of the world, and are accordingly less willing to
submit to the tyranny~ of husbands.
The following shows the number of divorces in Germany from 1891 to
1900:
KEY
Y: Years
D: Divorces
Y 1891. 1892. 1893. 1894. 1895. 1896. 1897. 1898. 1899. 1900.
D 6,678 6,513 6,694 7,502 8,326 8,601 9,005 9,143 9,563 7,928
We see that from 1899 to 1900, the number of divorces have decreased
by 1,635, because on the first of January, 1900, the new code of civil
law went into effect which made divorce more difficult. But life is
stronger than law. After there was a decrease in the divorce-rate
from 1900 to 1902, there has been a rapid increase ever since, as
the following table shows:
Years 1901. 1902. 1903. 1904. 1905. 1906. 1907.
Divorces 7,964 9,069 9,933 10,868 11,147 12,180 12,489
In Saxony, too, in spite of various fluctuations, there has been a
steady increase, as may be seen from the following table:
For each 1,000
Years. Divorces. marriages.
1836–1840 356 121
1846–1850 395 121
1871–1875 581 122
1891–1895 921 138
1896–1900 1,130 151
1901–1905 1,385 168
For each thousand marriages in Prussia there were the following
number of divorces: 1881 to 1885, 67.62; 1886 to 1890, 80.55; 1891
to 1895, 86.77; 1896, 101.97; 1905, 106; 1908, 121. That is a
tremendous increase. The increase of divorce is not a national but
an international symptom. For each thousand marriages there were
the following number of divorces in:
At the close
1876–1880. 1881–1885. 1886–1890. of the century.
Austria .. 19.4 19.7 31.
Hungary 31.6 30.4 30.5 58.
Roumania 37.3 52.3 73.1 98.
Italy 11.8 11.3 10.6 15.
France 33.9 75.9 80.9 129.
England & Wales 6.5 7.4 7. 10.6
Scotland 12.3 13. 16.7 26.
Ireland 0.6 0.4 1.1 1.
Belgium 25.5 31.9 43. 72.
Netherlands .. .. .. 78.
Norway 13.9 12.1 19.3 33.
Sweden 28.5 28.6 31.6 45.
Finland 16.1 7.8 10.0 29.
Switzerland 220. 200. 188. 199.9
It would be a great mistake to draw conclusions from these widely
diverging figures about the moral status of the various countries
enumerated above. No one would claim, that cause for divorce is four
times greater among the Swedish people than among the English people.
The laws must be taken into consideration that make divorce more or
less difficult as the case may be.[54] The moral status, that is, the
causes making divorce appear desirable to either man or woman, are a
secondary consideration. But the figures show, that the divorce-rate
is increasing more rapidly than the population; that is ~increasing~,
in fact, ~while the marriage-rate is decreasing~. We will return
to this phase of the question later on. Great differences of age
between husband and wife play a considerable part in divorce. That
is shown by the following table gathered from official statistics
in Switzerland:
NUMBER OF DIVORCES FOR EACH 1,000 MARRIAGES WITH SAME DIFFERENCE
OF AGE.
1881–1890. 1891–1900.
Man older; 26 years and more 271 328
Man older; 11 to 25 years 189 198
Man older; 1 to 10 years 193 181
Husband and wife of same age 195 190
Man younger; 1 to 10 years 226 226
Man younger; 11 to 25 years 365 431
Man younger; 26 years and more 759 870
The following statistics from Saxony during 1905 and 1906, and from
Prussia from 1895 to 1905, show the divorce-rate in its relation to
the various strata of society:
ANNUAL DIVORCES FOR EACH 100,000 MARRIED MEN.
Saxony. Prussia.
Agriculture 59 34
Industry 220 158
Commerce 297 229
Public service and learned professions 346 165
In Saxony divorces were most frequent among officials and professional
men. In Prussia they were most frequent among those employed in
commerce. In Saxony those employed in commerce came second; in Prussia,
officials and professional men. Men employed in industry come third;
220 in Saxony, and 158 in Prussia. Those employed in agriculture
furnished the lowest figures. When we compare the growing number of
divorces in the cities with those among the rural population, we
are led to the conclusion that the rapid development of industry,
accompanied by an increasing instability of public life, makes the
marriage relation more unfavorable, and adds to the factors that
make for the disruption of marriage. On the other hand, the growing
divorce-rate shows, that the number of women are increasing who
resolve to cast off a yoke that has become unbearable.
[50] The Physiology of Love.
[51] Alexander Dumas correctly says in “Monsieur Alphonse”: “Man
has created two standards of morality: one for himself, and one for
woman, one that permits him to love all women, and another that
permits woman as a compensation for her lost freedom, to be loved
by but one man.” See also Marguerite’s self-accusation in “Faust.”
[52] George v. Mayer: “Statistics and Social Science.”
[53] Marriage and Divorce. 1887–1906. Bureau of the Census,
Bulletin 96, p. 12. Washington, D. C., 1908.
[54] In England divorce is a privilege enjoyed by the rich. The cost
of a trial is so exorbitant, that divorce becomes almost impossible
to people of moderate means, especially as it necessitates a journey
to London. In the whole country there is only one divorce court,
which is situated in London.
2.--Bourgeois and Proletarian Marriage.
The corruption of marriage increases at the same rate at which the
struggle for existence grows more severe, making matrimony more
and more an object of mercenary speculation. As it is becoming
increasingly difficult to support a family, many men choose to
refrain from marrying, and so the declamations about it being woman’s
duty to practice her natural profession of wifehood and motherhood,
are just so many ~meaningless phrases~. On the other hand, these
conditions are bound to foster illegitimate relations and to increase
the number of prostitutes; they also increase the number of those
who fall victims to an unnatural satisfaction of the sexual impulse.
Among the ruling classes the wife is frequently degraded, just as she
was in ancient Greece, to the mere functions of bearing legitimate
children, acting as housekeeper, or serving as nurse to a husband
ruined by a life of debauchery. For his amusement, or to gratify
his desire for love, the man maintains courtesans or mistresses who
live in elegance and luxury. Others who do not have the means of
maintaining mistresses, associate with prostitutes during marriage
as before marriage, and a number of wives are sufficiently corrupted
to consider such relations quite proper.[55]
In the upper and middle classes of society the chief evil in marriage
is its mercenary character. But this evil is still heightened by
the mode of life that prevails among these classes. That applies
to the women as well as to the men, since they frequently lead
lives of idleness or devote themselves to corrupting occupations.
The society woman’s spiritual nourishment usually consists of the
following: Reading ambiguous novels, visiting frivolous plays,
enjoying sensuous music, resorting to intoxicating stimulants, and
indulging in scandal-mongering. Idleness and ennui frequently entice
her into love-intrigues, that are sought more eagerly still by the
men of her circles. In the mad pursuit of pleasure she rushes from
one banquet and entertainment to another, and in summer she goes to
watering-places and summer resorts to rest from the exertions of the
winter and to seek new amusement. Scandals are a daily occurrence
with this mode of life; men seduce and women allow themselves to be
seduced.
Among the lower classes mercenary marriage is practically unknown.
The workingman generally marries for love, but nevertheless many
harmful and destructive influences exist in the proletarian marriage
also. Blessed with many children, cares and worries ensue, and all
too often bitter poverty prevails. Disease and death are frequent
guests in the proletarian family, and unemployment heightens the
misery. Many are the factors that lessen the workingman’s income and
frequently deprive him of that meagre income altogether. Hard times
and industrial crises throw him out of employment; the introduction of
new machinery or of new methods of production, makes him superfluous;
wars, unfavorable tariff and commercial treaties, the imposition of
new indirect taxes, or black-listing by his employers as a result
of his political convictions, destroy his means of subsistence or
gravely injure them. From time to time one or another thing occurs
that entails a longer or shorter period of unemployment with its
accompanying misery and starvation. Uncertainty is the mark of his
existence. Such vicissitudes are productive of ill temper and bitter
feelings that most frequently lead to outbursts in domestic life
where demands are made daily and hourly that cannot be satisfied.
This leads to quarrels and harsh words and eventually to a rupture
in the marriage relation.
Frequently both husband and wife must work for a living. The children
are left to themselves or to the care of older brothers and sisters,
who are still in need of care and education themselves. The noon-day
meal, usually of the poorest quality, is devoured in utmost haste,
provided that the parents have time to come home for this meal. In
the majority of cases this is impossible, owing to the distances
between homes and factories and to the brevity of the time allowed
for rest. Weary and worn, both parents return at night. Instead of a
cheerful, pleasant home to come to, theirs is only a small, unsanitary
dwelling, frequently wanting in fresh air and light and devoid of
the most elementary comforts. The scarcity of available lodgings
with all the resulting evils, is one of the darkest phases of our
social system that leads to countless vices and crimes. In spite of
all attempts at relief, the housing problem is becoming more serious
every year in all the larger centers of industry; and other strata of
society, such as professional people, clerks, officials, teachers,
small dealers, etc., are affected by it. The workingman’s wife who
returns to her “home” at night exhausted from a day’s hard labor,
must begin work anew. She must toil in feverish haste to attend to
the most necessary details of housekeeping. After the children have
been put to bed, she still continues to mend and sew until far into
the night. Rest and recuperation are unknown to her. The man often
is ignorant and the woman still more so, and the little they have to
say to one another is quickly said. The man goes to a saloon where
he at least finds some of the comforts that he lacks at home; he
drinks, and no matter how little he spends, he is spending too much
for his income. Sometimes he falls a victim to the vice of gambling,
that claims many victims in the upper strata of society also, and
then still loses more than he spends on drink. Meanwhile the woman
is brooding at home full of grudge. She must toil like a beast of
burden, there is no rest or recreation for her; but the man enjoys
the liberty that is his, just because he had the good fortune of
having been born a man. Thus discord arises. If the woman is less
conscientious; if she, too, seeks pleasure and diversion when she has
returned from a hard day of work, to which she is surely entitled,
her household goes to ruin and the misery becomes greater still.
Nevertheless, we are living in “the best of worlds.”
Thus marriage is constantly being disrupted among the proletariat
also. Even favorable periods of employment often have a detrimental
influence, for they involve over-time work and sometimes also work on
Sunday, thereby depriving the worker of the little time he is able to
devote to his family. Often the distances from the workingmen’s homes
to their places of employment are so great, that they must leave at
day-break, when the children are still soundly asleep, and do not
return until late at night when they are sleeping again. Thousands
of workingmen, especially those connected with the building trades,
remain away from home during the entire week and only return to
their families on Saturday night. How can family relations prosper
under such conditions?! At the same time the number of women workers
is constantly growing, especially in the textile industries, for
thousands of spinning-machines and power-looms are being tended by
women and children, whose labor is cheap. Here matrimonial relations
have been reversed. While the wife and the children go to the factory,
the unemployed man not infrequently, remains at home performing the
domestic duties. “In a number of cloth factories in Chemnitz we find
women who are employed there only during the winter months, because
their husbands who are road-builders, masons or carpenters, earn
little or nothing in winter. During the absence of the women, the
men attend to the housekeeping.”[56] In the United States, where
capitalism has developed so rapidly, that all its evils are manifest
on a much larger scale than in the industrial countries of Europe,
a characteristic name has been coined for this state of affairs.
Industrial centers where women are mainly employed while men remain
at home, have been called “she-towns.”[57]
At present it is generally conceded that women should be admitted to
all trades. Capitalistic society in its mad chase of profits has long
since recognized, that women can be more profitably exploited than
men, since they are by nature more pliant and meek.[58] Accordingly
the number of trades in which women may find employment are increasing
with every year. The constant improvement of machinery, the simplifying
of the process of labor by an increased division of labor, and the
competitive warfare among individual capitalists, as also among rival
industrial countries--all favor the steady increase of woman labor.
The phenomenon is common to all industrially advanced countries. As
the number of women in industry increases, the competition between
them and the male workers grows more severe. The reports of factory
inspectors and statistical investigations prove this.
The position of women is especially unfavorable in those trades in
which they predominate as, for instance, the clothing trades, and
particularly in those branches in which the workers perform the work
in their own home. Investigations concerning the condition of women
workers in the manufacture of underwear and the clothing trades,
were made in Germany in 1886. This investigation showed among other
things that the miserable pay these workers received frequently
drove them to prostitution.
Our Christian government, whose Christianity is sought in vain where
it is really needful, but is met with where it is superfluous--our
Christian government is like our Christian bourgeoisie, whose
interests it serves. This government finds it exceedingly difficult
to decide upon the enactment of laws which would limit the work of
women to a bearable degree and prohibit child-labor entirely. This
same government also fails to grant a normal work-day and sufficient
rest on Sundays to its own employees, thereby harming their family
relations. Frequently men employed in the mail and railroad service
and in prisons must work many hours overtime without receiving
adequate remuneration.
As the rents are also far too high in comparison with the incomes of
the workers, they must content themselves with the poorest quarters.
Lodgers of one sex or the other, sometimes of both, are taken into
the workingman’s home.[59] Old and young of both sexes live together
in a small space and frequently witness the most intimate relations.
How modesty and decency fare under such conditions, has been shown
by horrible facts. The increasing demoralization and brutalization
of the young that is being discussed so much, is partly due to these
conditions. Child-labor, too, has the worst possible influence on
children, both physically and morally.
The increasing industrial activity of married women has the most
detrimental effect during pregnancy and at child-birth and during the
early babyhood of the children, when they depend upon the mother for
nourishment. During pregnancy it may lead to a number of diseases
that are destructive to the unborn child and harmful to the organism
of the woman, and bring about premature births and still-births. When
the child has been born, the mother is compelled to return to the
factory as soon as possible, lest some one else take her place. The
inevitable result for the poor, little babes is neglect and improper
or insufficient nourishment. They are given opiates to be kept quiet;
and as a further result of all this, they perish in masses or grow
up sickly and deformed. It means race degeneration. Frequently the
children grow up without ever having experienced real parental love.
Thus proletarians are born, live and die; and society and the state
marvel at it that brutality, immorality and crime are increasing.
During the sixties of the last century the cotton industry in
England almost came to a standstill, as a result of the Civil War
that was being waged in the United States. Accordingly, thousands
of working-women were unemployed, and among them physicians made
the astounding observation, that in spite of the existing want,
infant mortality was ~decreasing~. The reason was that the babies
now were being nursed by their mothers and more care was bestowed
on them than ever before. During the crisis of the seventies of the
last century similar observations were made in the United States,
especially in New York and Massachusetts. Unemployment enabled the
women to devote more time to their children. The same fact was noted
during the general strike in Sweden in August and September of 1909.
The mortality in Stockholm and other large Swedish cities had not
been as low for many years as during the weeks of this giant strike.
One of the eminent medical authorities of Stockholm declared that
the low rate of mortality and the general state of good health was
in close connection with the great strike. He pointed out that the
out-of-door life which was being led by the army of strikers was
chiefly responsible for this satisfactory state of health, for no
matter how extensive the sanitary regulations might be, the air in
the factories and workshops was always more or less detrimental to
the health of the workers. The same medical authority pointed out,
furthermore, that the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating drinks
during the great strike, also tended to improve the state of health.
Domestic industry, which is depicted so alluringly by the romancers
among political economists, is not more favorable to the workers.
Here man and wife both toil from dawn to darkness and the children
are trained as helpers from their earliest childhood on. The entire
family and perhaps some assistants live together in closest quarters
among rubbish and disagreeable odors. The bedrooms are similar to the
workshop, usually small, dark spaces with insufficient ventilation,
detrimental to the health of the persons who are obliged to sleep
in them.
The struggle for existence that is growing increasingly difficult,
also sometimes compels men and women to commit acts that they would
loathe under different circumstances. It was shown in 1877 in Munich
that among the prostitutes entered on lists by the police, there
were no less than 203 wives of workingmen and mechanics. Many more
married women are driven to occasional prostitution by need, without
submitting to police control that deeply degrades all modesty and
human dignity.
[55] In his book on “The Woman Question in the Middle Ages,” that I
have frequently quoted, Buecher laments the dissolution of marriage
and the family. He condemns the employment of women in industry, and
demands that woman should return to her “particular sphere,” the
only one where she creates “real values,” the home and the family.
The aims of the modern woman movement appear “amateurish” to him,
and he expresses the hope that “a better way may be found.” But he
fails to point out a successful way. From his bourgeois point of
view it would be impossible to do so. The matrimonial conditions as
also the position of women in general, are not the result of wilful
creation. They are the natural product of social evolution, and this
social evolution is consummated in accordance with inherent laws.
[56] Technics and Political Economy.
[57] The following clipping taken from an American newspaper in
1893 gives an adequate description of a “she-town”: “A singularity
that is met with in the factory towns of Maine, is a class of men
who may rightly be called housekeepers. Any one visiting some of
these workers’ homes shortly after the noon hour, will find the
men, wearing an apron, washing dishes. At other hours of the day
they may be seen making the beds, dressing the children, scrubbing
or cooking.... These men do the housekeeping for the simple reason
that their wives can earn more in the factories than they, and it is
more economical for them to remain at home while the women work.”
[58] “Mr. E., a manufacturer, informs me that he employs only women
at his power-looms. He prefers married women and especially those
who have a family at home depending upon them. They are much more
attentive and docile than unmarried women, and are obliged to exert
themselves to the utmost in order to earn the necessary means of
subsistence. Thus the peculiar virtues of woman’s character are turned
to her own detriment, and the gentleness and decency of her nature
become a means of her enslavement.” From an address by Lord Ashley
on the ten-hour bill, 1844.--Karl Marx, “Capital,” second edition.
[59] The Prussian census of 1900 has shown that in Prussia there are
3,467,388 persons not related to the families in whose midst they
live. In the entire state about one-quarter of these non-related
members of the households consisted of strange boarders and lodgers;
in the rural districts they constituted only one-seventh, but
in the cities one-third, and in the capital, Berlin, more than
one-half.--G. v. Mayer, “Statistics and Social Science.”