CHAPTER I.

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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.