Woman under socialism Part 17

[118] Dr. Max Taube, "Der Schutz der unehelichen Kinder," Leipsic, 1893.

[119] "Die gefallenen Madchen und die Sittenpolizei," Wilh. Issleib, Berlin, 1889.

[120] In a work, "Kapital und Presse," Berlin, 1891, Dr. F. Mehring proves that a by no means indifferent actress was engaged at a well known theater at a salary of 100 marks a month, and that her outlay for wardrobe alone ran up to 1000 marks a month. The deficit was covered by a "friend."

[121] Lombroso and Ferrero, _ubi supra_.

[122] "Die venerischen Krankheiten in Danemark," Dr. Giesing.

[123] Report of the Sanitary Commission on the organization of sanitation relative to prost.i.tution in Paris, addressed to the Munic.i.p.al Council of Paris, 1890.

CHAPTER IV.

WOMAN'S POSITION AS A BREADWINNER; HER INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES; DARWINISM AND THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY.

The endeavor of woman to secure economic self-support and personal independence has, to a certain degree, been recognized as legitimate by bourgeois society, the same as the endeavor of the workingman after greater freedom of motion. The princ.i.p.al reason for such acquiescence lies in the cla.s.s interests of the bourgeoisie itself. The bourgeoisie, or capitalist cla.s.s, requires the free and unrestricted purveyance of male and female labor-power for the fullest development of production.

In even tempo with the perfection of machinery, and technique; with the subdivision of labor into single acts requiring ever less technical experience and strength; with the sharpening of the compet.i.tive warfare between industry and industry, and between whole regions--country against country, continent against continent--the labor-power of woman comes into ever greater demand.

The special causes, from which flows this ever increasing enlistment of woman in ever increasing numbers, have been detailed above _in extenso_.

Woman is increasingly employed _along with man, or in his place, because her material demands are less than those of man_. A circ.u.mstance predicated upon her very nature as a s.e.xual being, forces woman to proffer herself cheaper. More frequently, on an average, than man, woman is subject to physical derangements, that cause an interruption of work, and that, in view of the combination and organization of labor, in force to-day in large production, easily interfere with the steady course of production. Pregnancy and lying-in prolong such pauses. The employer turns the circ.u.mstance to advantage, and _recoups himself doubly for the inconveniences_, that these disturbances put him to, _with the payment of much lower wages_.

Moreover--as may be judged from the quotation on page 90, taken from Marx's "Capital"--the work of married women has a particular fascination for the employer. The married woman is, as working-woman, much more "attentive and docile" than her unmarried sister. Thought of her children drives her to the utmost exertion of her powers, in order to earn the needed livelihood; accordingly, she submits to many an imposition that the unmarried woman does not. In general, the working-woman ventures only exceptionally to join her fellow-toilers in securing better conditions of work. That raises her value in the eyes of the employer; not infrequently she is even a trump card in his hands against refractory workingmen. Moreover, she is endowed with great patience, greater dexterity of fingers, a better developed artistic sense, the latter of which renders her fitter than man for many branches of work.

These female "virtues" are fully appreciated by the virtuous capitalist, and thus, along with the development of industry, woman finds from year to year an ever wider field for her application--but, and this is the determining factor, _without tangible improvement to her social condition_. If woman labor is employed, it generally sets male labor free. The displaced male labor, however, wishes to live; it proffers itself for lower wages; and the proffer, in turn, re-acts depressingly upon the wages of the working-woman. The reduction of wages thus turns into an endless screw, that, due to the constant revolutions in the technique of the labor-process, is set rotating all the more swiftly, seeing that the said technical revolutions, through the savings of labor-power, set also female labor free,--all of which again increases the supply of hands. New industries somewhat counteract the constant supply of relatively superfluous labor-power, but are not strong enough to establish lasting improvement. Every rise of wages above a certain measure causes the employer to look to further improvements in his plant, calculated to subst.i.tute will-less, automatic mechanical devices for human hands and human brain. At the start of capitalist production, hardly any but male labor confronted male labor in the labor-market; now s.e.x is played against s.e.x, and, further along the line, age against age.

Woman displaces man, and, in her turn, woman is displaced by younger folks and child-labor. Such is the "Moral Order" in modern industry.

The endeavor, on the part of employers, to extend the hours of work, with the end in view of pumping more surplus values out of their employes, is made easier to them, thanks to the slighter power of resistance possessed by women. Hence the phenomenon that, in the textile industries, for instance, in which women frequently const.i.tute far more than one-half of the total labor employed, the hours of work are everywhere longest. Accustomed from home to the idea that her work is "never done," woman allows the increased demands to be placed upon her without resistance. In other branches, as in the millinery trade, the manufacture of flowers, etc., wages and hours of work deteriorate through the taking home of extra tasks, at which the women sit till midnight, and even later, without realizing that they thereby only compete against themselves, and, as a result, earn in a sixteen-hour workday what they would have made in a regular ten-hour day.[124] In what measure female labor has increased in the leading industrial countries may appear from the below sets of tables. We shall start with the leading industrial country of Europe,--England. The last census furnishes this picture:

Total Persons Year. Employed. Males. Females.

1871 11,593,466 8,270,186 3,323,280 1881 11,187,564 7,783,646 3,403,918 1891 12,898,484 8,883,254 4,016,230

Accordingly, within twenty years, the number of males employed increased 613,068, or 7.9 per cent.; the number of females, however, by 692,950, or 20.9 per cent. It is especially to be observed in this table that, in 1881, a year of crisis, the number of males employed fell off by 486,540, and the number of females increased by 80,638. The increase of female at the cost of male persons employed is thus emphatically brought to light. But within the increasing number of female employes itself a change is going on: _younger forces are displacing the older_. It transpired that in England, during the years 1881-1891, female labor-power of the age 10 to 45 had increased, while that above 45 had decreased.

Industries in which female exceeded considerably the number of male labor, were mainly the following:

Industries. Females. Males.

Manufacture of woman's clothing 415,961 4,470 Cotton industry 332,784 213,231 Manufacture of worsted goods 69,629 40,482 Manufacture of shirts 52,943 2,153 Manufacture of hosiery 30,887 18,200 Lace industry 21,716 13,030 Tobacco industry 15,880 13,090 Bookbinding 14,249 11,487 Manufacture of gloves 9,199 2,756 Teachers 144,393 50,628

Again the wages of women are, in almost all branches, considerably lower than the wages of men _for the same hours_. In the year 1883, the wages in England were for men and women as follows, per week:--

Industries. Males. Females.

Flax and jute factories 26 Marks 10-11 Marks Manufacture of gla.s.s 38 " 12 "

Printing 32-36 " 10-12 "

Carpet factories 29 " 15 "

Weaving 26 " 16 "

Shoemaking 29 " 15 "

Dyeing 25-29 " 12-13 "

Similar differences in wages for men and women are found in the Post Office service, in school teaching, etc. Only in the cotton industry in Lancashire did both s.e.xes earn equal wages for equal hours of work in the tending of power looms.

In the United States, according to the census of 1890, there were 2,652,157 women, of the age of ten years and over engaged in productive occupations:--594,510 in agriculture, 631,988 in manufacture, 59,364 in trade and transportation, and 1,366,235 in personal service, of whom 938,910 were servants. Besides that, there were 46,800 female farmers and planters, 5,135 Government employes, 155,000 school teachers, 13,182 teachers of music, 2,061 artists.[125] In the city of New York, 10,961 working-women partic.i.p.ated in strikes during the year 1890, a sign that working-women in the United States, like their European fellow-female wage slaves, understand the cla.s.s distinctions that exist between Capital and Labor. In what measure women are displacing the men in a number of industries in the United States also, is indicated by the following item from the "Levest. Journ." in 1893:

"One of the _features_ of the factory towns of Maine is a cla.s.s of men that may be termed 'housekeepers.' In almost every town, where much factory work is done, these men are to be found in large numbers.

Whoever calls shortly before noon will find them, with ap.r.o.ns tied in front, washing dishes. At other hours of the day they can be seen scrubbing, making the beds, washing the children, tidying up the place, or cooking. Whether any of them attend to the sewing and mending of the family we are not quite sure. These men attend to the household for the simple reason that _their wives can earn more in the factory than they_, and it means a saving of money if the wife goes to work."[126]

The closing sentence should read: "Because the women work for wages that the men can no longer work for, and the employer therefore prefers women,"--which happens in Germany also. The towns here described are the so-called "she-towns," already more fully referred to.

In France, there were, in 1893, not less than 15,958 women engaged in the railroad service (in the offices and as ticket agents); in the provincial Post Office there were 5,383 women employed; as telegraphers and telephonists, 9,805; and in the State Savings Banks 425. Altogether the number of women in France engaged in gainful occupations, inclusive of agriculture and personal service, was, in 1893, in round figures 4,415,000. Of 3,858 decisions, rendered by the trades courts of Paris, not less than 1,674 concerned women.

To what extent female labor was applied in the industries of Switzerland as early as 1886, is told by the following figures of the "Bund":

Industries. Males. Females.

Silk industry 11,771 51,352 Cotton industry 18,320 23,846 Linen and half-linen industry 5,553 5,232 Embroidery 15,724 21,000

Altogether, there were then in the textile industries, 103,452 women engaged, besides 52,838 men; and the "Bund" expressly declares that there is hardly an occupation in Switzerland in which women are not found.

In Germany, according to the census of occupations of 1882, of the 7,340,789 persons engaged in gainful occupations, 1,506,743 were women; or 20.6 per cent. The proportions were, among others, these:--

Per Industries. Males. Females. Cent.

Commercial occupations 536,221 181,286 25.2 Service and restaurants 172,841 141,407 45.0 Messengers and day laborers 9,212 3,265 26.2 Spinning 69,272 100,459 60.0 Weaving 336,400 155,396 32.0 Embroidery 42,819 31,010 42.0 Lace and crochet work 5,676 30,204 84.0 Lace manufacture 13,526 17,478 56.4 Bookbinding and paste-board box-making 31,312 10,409 25.0 Paper manufacture 37,685 20,847 35.6 Tobacco working 64,477 48,919 43.1 Clothes-making, etc. 279,978 440,870 61.2

To these must be added 2,248,909 women engaged in agriculture, 1,282,400 female servants, also school teachers, artists, Government office-holders, etc.

According to the census of occupations for 1875-1882, the following was the result. There were employed in industrial occupations in the German Empire:--

Total Total Persons Employed.

Persons Employed. In the Small Trades. In the Large Trades.

Year. Males. Females. Males. Females. Males. Females.

1875 5,463,856 1,116,095 3,453,357 705,874 2,010,499 410,221 1882 5,815,039 1,506,743 3,487,073 989,422 2,327,966 514,321 --------- --------- --------- ------- --------- ------- Increase in 1882 351,183 390,648 33,716 283,548 317,966 107,100 or 6.4 or 35 or 1 or 40.2 or 15.8 or 26.1 per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.

According to these figures, not only did female labor increase by 35 per cent. during the period of 1875-1882, while male labor increased only by 6.4 per cent., but the great increase of female labor, especially in small industries, tells the tale that _only by dint of a strong application of female labor, with its correspondingly low wages, can small production keep itself afloat, for a while_.