Woman under socialism Part 10

In the upper and middle cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances of the lower cla.s.ses. 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 circ.u.mstance 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 hara.s.sed, 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 ent.i.tled 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 circ.u.mstances, marriage is shattered ever more among the working cla.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.days to their family. And yet it is expected of family life that it thrive under such circ.u.mstances.

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 s.e.x 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 compet.i.tion of capitalists among themselves, together with the compet.i.tive 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, compet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sages 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 prost.i.tute their bodies for a side-source of income. A large number of the prost.i.tutes 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 s.e.xes, 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 compet.i.tor. 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 c.u.mulate.

When, in the early sixties of last century, due to the American Civil War for the emanc.i.p.ation 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances, would fill them with disgust. In 1877 it was authentically established in Munich that, among the prost.i.tutes, 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, prost.i.tute 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 circ.u.mstance 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt, 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 inst.i.tutions in which girls and women are prematurely delivered: many American papers contain the advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstance 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 inst.i.tutions and places increase in which married and unmarried women of the property cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tuted under the pretext that the female s.e.x should be frightened against seducing the men. As you see, everywhere it is the weak man, this limb of the stronger s.e.x, 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s--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'