In Austria and Italy also foundling asylums were established, and their support assumed by the State. "Ici on fait mourir les enfants" (Here children are killed) is the inscription that a certain King is said to have recommended as fit for foundling asylums. In Austria, they are gradually disappearing; there are now only eight of them left; also the treatment and care of the children has considerably improved to what it was. In 1888, there were 40,865 children cared for in Austria, including Galicia; of these 10,466 were placed in public institutions, 30,399 under private care, at a joint cost of 1,817,372 florins. Mortality was slighter among the children in the public institutions than among those placed under private care. This was especially the case in Galicia. There, 31.25 per cent. of the children died during the year 1888 in the public establishments, by far more than in the public establishments of other countries; but of those under private care, 84.21 per cent. died,—a veritable mass-assassination. It almost looks as though the Polish slaughterhouse system aimed at killing off these poor little worms as swiftly as possible. It is a generally accepted fact that the percentage of deaths among children born out of wedlock is far higher than among those born in wedlock. In Prussia there died, early in the sixties, during the first year of their lives 18.23 per cent. of children born in wedlock, and 33.11 per cent. of children born out of wedlock, accordingly twice as many of the latter. In Paris there died, 100 children born in wedlock to every 139 born out of wedlock, and in the country districts 215. Italian statistics throw up this picture: Out of every 10,000 live-births, there died—

Legitimate children: 1881. 1882. 1883. 1884. 1885. One month old 751 741 724 698 696 Two to twelve months 1,027 1,172 986 953 1,083 Illegitimate children: One month old 2,092 2,045 2,139 2,107 1,813 Two to twelve months 1,387 1,386 1,437 1,437 1,353

The difference in the mortality between legitimate and illegitimate children is especially noticeable during the first month of life. During that period, the mortality of children born out of wedlock is on an average three times as large as that of those born in wedlock. Improper attention during pregnancy, weak delivery and poor care afterwards, are the very simple causes. Likewise do maltreatment and the infamous practice and superstition of "making angels" increase the victims. The number of still-births is twice as large with illegitimate than with legitimate children, due, probably, mainly to the efforts of some of the mothers to bring on the death of the child during pregnancy. The illegitimate children who survive revenge themselves upon society for the wrong done them, by furnishing an extraordinary large percentage of criminals of all degrees.

Yet another evil, frequently met, must also be shortly touched upon. Excessive sexual indulgence is infinitely more harmful than too little. A body, misused by excess, will go to pieces, even without venereal diseases. Impotence, barrenness, spinal affections, insanity, at least intellectual weakness, and many other diseases, are the usual consequences. Temperance is as necessary in sexual intercourse as in eating and drinking, and all other human wants. But temperance seems difficult to youth. Hence the large number of "young old men," in the higher walks of life especially. The number of young and old roues is enormous, and they require special irritants, excess having deadened and surfeited them. Many, accordingly, lapse into the unnatural practices of Greek days. The crime against nature is to-day much more general than most of us dream of: upon that subject the secret archives of many a Police Bureau could publish frightful information. But not among men only, among women also have the unnatural practices of old Greece come up again with force. Lesbian love, or Sapphism, is said to be quite general among married women in Paris; according to Taxal,[121] it is enormously in practice among the prominent ladies of that city. In Berlin, one-fourth of the prostitutes are said to practice "tribady;" but also in the circles of our leading dames there are not wanting disciples of Sappho. Still another unnatural gratification of the sexual instinct manifests itself in the violation of children, a practice that has increased greatly during the last thirty years. In France, during 1851-1875, 17,656 cases of this nature were tried. The colossal number of these crimes in France is intimately connected with the two-child system, and with the abstinence of husbands towards their wives. To the German population also we find people recommending Malthusianism, without stopping to think what the sequels will be. The so-called "liberal professions," to whom belong mainly the members of the upper classes, furnish in Germany about 5.6 per cent. of the ordinary criminals, but they furnish 13 per cent. of the criminals indicted for violation of children; and this latter percentage would be still higher were there not in those circles ample means to screen the criminals, so that, probably, the majority of cases remain undiscovered. The revelations made in the eighties by the "Pall Mall Gazette" on the violation of children in England, are still fresh in the public memory.

The moral progress of this our best of all possible worlds is recorded in the below tables for England, the "leading country in civilization." In England there were:—

Immoral Acts Deaths from Year. of Violence. Syphilis. Insane. 1861 280 1,345 39,647 1871 315 1,995 56,755 1881 370 2,334 73,113 1882 466 2,478 74,842 1883 390 ... 76,765 1884 510 ... ... Increase since 1861 82 per cent. 84 per cent. 98 per cent.

A frightful increase this is of the phenomena that point to the rising physical and moral ruin of English society.

The best statistical record of venereal diseases and their increase is kept by Denmark, Copenhagen especially. Here venereal diseases, with special regard to syphilis, developed as follows:—

Venereal Of these, Year. Population. Diseases. Syphilis. 1874 196,000 5,505 836 1879 227,000 6,299 934 1885 290,000 9,325 1,866

Among the personnel of the navy in Copenhagen, the number of venereal diseases increased 1224 per cent. during the period mentioned; in the army and for the same period, 227 per cent.[122] And how stands it in Paris? From the year 1872 to the year 1888, the number of persons treated for venereal diseases in the hospitals Du Midi, de Lourcine and de St. Louis was 118,223, of which 60,438 suffered of syphilis and 57,795 of other venereal affections. Besides these, of the number of outside persons, who applied to the clinics of the said three hospitals, there was a yearly average of 16,385 venereals.[123]

We have seen how, as a result of our social conditions, vice, excesses, wrongs and crimes of all sorts are bred. All society is kept in a state of unrest. Under such a state of things woman is the chief sufferer.

Numerous women realize this and seek redress. They demand, first of all, economic self-support and independence; they demand that woman be admitted, as well as man, to all pursuits that her physical and mental powers and faculties qualify her for; they demand, especially, admission to the occupations that are designated with the term "liberal professions." Are the efforts in these directions justified? Are they practical? Would they mend matters? These are questions that now crowd forward.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] "Geschichte, Statistik und Regelung der Prostitution in Wien."

[101] "Die Bestrafung und polizelliche Behaundlung der gewerbsmaessigen Unzucht."

[102] "Ueber Gelegenheitsmacherei und oeffentliches Tanzvergnuegen."

[103] "Die Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert vom sanitaetspolizeilichen Standpunkt."

[104] Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Koenigl. Polizei-Praesidiums von Berlin fuer die Jahre 1881-1890; pp. 351-359

[105] "Korrespondenzblatt zur Bekaempfung der oeffentlichen Sittenlosigkeit," August 15, 1893.

[106] "Die gesundheitschaedliche Tragweite der Prostitution," Dr. Oskar Lassar.

[107] "Die Behandlung der Geschlechtskrankheiten in Krankenkassen und Heilanstalten."

[108] In the English hospitals, during 1875, fully 14 per cent. of the children under treatment were suffering of inherited venereal diseases. In London, there died of these diseases 1 man out of every 190 cases of death; in all England, 1 out of every 159 cases; in the poor-houses of France, 1 out of 160.5.

[109] "Was die Strasse verschlingt."

[110] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, "The Moral Education."

[111] Montegazza, "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."

[112] "Aus Japan nach Deutschland durch Sibirien."

[113] "Zweiter Verwaltungsbericht des Kgl. Polizei-Praesidiums von Berlin vom Jahre 1881-1890."

[114] In the large trades union sick-benefit associations of Berlin the number of syphilitic diseases increased from 4326 in 1881 to 9420 in 1890. Dr. A. Blaschko, ubi supra.

[115] Karl Marx, "Capital," p. 461, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896.

[116] Ubi supra.

[117] "Das Kellnerinnen-Elend In Berlin," Berlin, 1893.

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

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

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

[121] Lombroso and Ferrero, ubi supra.

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

[123] Report of the Sanitary Commission on the organization of sanitation relative to prostitution in Paris, addressed to the Municipal Council of Paris, 1890.



CHAPTER IV.

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

The endeavor of woman to secure economic self-support and personal independence has, to a certain degree, been recognized as legitimate by bourgeois society, the same as the endeavor of the workingman after greater freedom of motion. The principal reason for such acquiescence lies in the class interests of the bourgeoisie itself. The bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, requires the free and unrestricted purveyance of male and female labor-power for the fullest development of production. In even tempo with the perfection of machinery, and technique; with the subdivision of labor into single acts requiring ever less technical experience and strength; with the sharpening of the competitive warfare between industry and industry, and between whole regions—country against country, continent against continent—the labor-power of woman comes into ever greater demand.

The special causes, from which flows this ever increasing enlistment of woman in ever increasing numbers, have been detailed above in extenso. Woman is increasingly employed along with man, or in his place, because her material demands are less than those of man. A circumstance predicated upon her very nature as a sexual being, forces woman to proffer herself cheaper. More frequently, on an average, than man, woman is subject to physical derangements, that cause an interruption of work, and that, in view of the combination and organization of labor, in force to-day in large production, easily interfere with the steady course of production. Pregnancy and lying-in prolong such pauses. The employer turns the circumstance to advantage, and recoups himself doubly for the inconveniences, that these disturbances put him to, with the payment of much lower wages.

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

These female "virtues" are fully appreciated by the virtuous capitalist, and thus, along with the development of industry, woman finds from year to year an ever wider field for her application—but, and this is the determining factor, without tangible improvement to her social condition. If woman labor is employed, it generally sets male labor free. The displaced male labor, however, wishes to live; it proffers itself for lower wages; and the proffer, in turn, re-acts depressingly upon the wages of the working-woman. The reduction of wages thus turns into an endless screw, that, due to the constant revolutions in the technique of the labor-process, is set rotating all the more swiftly, seeing that the said technical revolutions, through the savings of labor-power, set also female labor free,—all of which again increases the supply of hands. New industries somewhat counteract the constant supply of relatively superfluous labor-power, but are not strong enough to establish lasting improvement. Every rise of wages above a certain measure causes the employer to look to further improvements in his plant, calculated to substitute will-less, automatic mechanical devices for human hands and human brain. At the start of capitalist production, hardly any but male labor confronted male labor in the labor-market; now sex is played against sex, and, further along the line, age against age. Woman displaces man, and, in her turn, woman is displaced by younger folks and child-labor. Such is the "Moral Order" in modern industry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Industries. Males. Females. Flax and jute factories 26 Marks 10-11 Marks Manufacture of glass 38 " 12 " Printing 32-36 " 10-12 " Carpet factories 29 " 15 " Weaving 26 " 16 " Shoemaking 29 " 15 " Dyeing 25-29 " 12-13 "

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

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

"One of the features of the factory towns of Maine is a class of men that may be termed 'housekeepers.' In almost every town, where much factory work is done, these men are to be found in large numbers. Whoever calls shortly before noon will find them, with aprons tied in front, washing dishes. At other hours of the day they can be seen scrubbing, making the beds, washing the children, tidying up the place, or cooking. Whether any of them attend to the sewing and mending of the family we are not quite sure. These men attend to the household for the simple reason that their wives can earn more in the factory than they, and it means a saving of money if the wife goes to work."[126]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Per Industries. Males. Females. Cent.

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

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

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

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

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

In 1882, there were to every 1,000 persons engaged in industry 176 women; in commerce and transportation, 190; in agriculture, 312.

In 1892, the number of women, employed in the factories of Germany, were of the following ages:

Number Age. Employed. 12-14 3,897 14-16 68,735 16-21 223,538 Over 21 337,499 Besides (for Reuss younger line without designation of ages) 6,197 ———- 639,866

In the Kingdom of Saxony, notedly the most industrial portion of Germany, the number of working-women employed in the factories was:—

Year. 16 Years and Over. 12 to 16. 1883 72,716 8,477 1892 110,555 13,333 ———- ———- Increase 37,839 4,856 52 per cent. 57 per cent.

As a result of the new factory regulations, which limited the hours of female labor, between the ages of 14 to 16, to 10 a day, and wholly forbade factory work to children of school age, the number of working-women between the ages of 14 to 16 sank to 6,763, and of girls between the ages of 12 to 14, sank by 6,334. The strongest increase in the number of working-women, as far as we are informed, took place in the tobacco industry of Baden. According to the reports of the Baden Factory Inspector, Dr. Woerishoffer, the number of persons engaged in the said industry and their subdivisions by sexes; was as follows:

Total Number Year. Employed. Males. Females. 1882 12,192 5,193 6,999 1892 24,056 7,932 16,124 ——— ——- ——— Increase 11,864 2,739 9,125 or 52.8 or 130 per cent. per cent.

This increase in the number of female tobacco workers, denotes the sharpening competitive struggle, that has developed during the last ten years in the German tobacco as well as many other industries, and which compels the ever intenser engagement of the cheaper labor of woman.

And, as in the rest of Germany, so likewise in Baden the industrial development in general shows a larger increase of female than of male workers. Within a year, it recorded the following changes:—

Year. Males. Females. 1892 79,218 35,598 1893 84,470 38,557 ——— ——— Increase 5,252 2,959 or 6.6 or 8.3 per cent. per cent.

Of the working-women over 16 years of age, 28.27 were married. In the large ammunition factory at Spandau, there were, in 1893, 3,000 women out of a total of 3,700 employes.

As in England, in Germany also, female labor is paid worse than male. According to the report of the Leipsic Chamber of Commerce for the year 1888, the weekly wage for equal hours were:—

Males. Females. Industries. Marks. Marks. Lace manufacture 20 —35 7 —15 Cloth glove manufacture 12 —30 6 —25 Linen and jute weaving 12 —27 5 —10 Wool-carding 15 —27 7.20—10.20 Sugar refinery 10.50—31 7.50—10 Leather and leather goods 12 —28 7 —18 Chemicals 8.50—25 7.50—10 Rubber fabrics 9 —28 6 —17 One factory of paper lanterns 16 —22 7.50—10

In an investigation of the wages earned by the factory hands of Mannheim in 1893, Dr. Woerishoffer divided the weekly earnings into three classes: one, the lowest, in which the wages reached 15 marks; one from 15 to 24; and the last and highest in which wages exceeded 24 marks. According to this subdivision, wages in Mannheim presented the following picture:—

Low. Medium. High. Both sexes 29.8 per cent. 49.8 per cent. 20.4 per cent. Males 20.9 per cent. 56.2 per cent. 22.9 per cent. Females 99.2 per cent. 0.7 per cent. 0.1 per cent.

The working-women earned mostly veritable starvation wages. They received per week:—

Percentage Marks. of Females. Under 5 4.62 5—6 5.47 6—8 43.96 8—10 27.45 10—12 12.38 12—15 5.38 Over 15 0.74

In the Thueringer Wald district, in 1891, the workingmen engaged in the slate works received 2.10 marks a day; the women 0.70. In the spinning establishments, the men received 2 marks, the women from 0.90 to 1 mark.

Worst of all are the earnings in the tenement industry, for men as well as for women, but for the women it is still more miserable than for the men. In this branch, hours of work are unlimited; when the season is on, they transcend imagination. Furthermore, it is here that the sweating system is generally in vogue, i. e., work given out by middlemen (contractors) who, in recompense for their irksome labor of superintendence, keep to themselves a large part of the wages paid by the principal. Under this system, women are also expected to submit to indignities of other nature.

How miserably female labor is paid in the tenement industries, the following figures on Berlin conditions may indicate. Men's colored shirts, paid for in 1889 with from 2 marks to 2.50, the employer got in 1893 for 1 mark 50 pfennig. A seamstress of average skill must work from early till late if she means to make from 6 to 8 of these shirts. Her earnings for the week are 4 or 5 marks. An apron-maker earns from 2 marks 50 pfennig to 5 marks a week; a necktie-maker, 5 to 6 marks; a skilled blouse-maker, 6 marks; a very skilled female operator on boys' clothing, 8 to 9 marks; an expert jacket-maker, 5 to 6 marks. A very swift seamstress on men's shirts may, in the good season, and working from 5 in the morning to 10 at night, make as much as 12 marks. Millinery workers, who can copy patterns independently, make 30 marks a month. Quick trimmers, with years of experience, earn from 50 to 60 marks a month during the season. The season usually lasts five months. An umbrella-maker, working twelve hours a day, makes 6 to 7 marks. Such starvation wages force the working-women into prostitution: even with the very plainest wants, no working-women can live in Berlin on less than 8 or 9 marks a week.

According to a statistical report on wages, ordered by the Chamber of Commerce of Reichenberg for its own district, 91 per cent. of all the working-women came under the wage category of from 2 to 5 guilders a week. Upon the enforcement in Austria of the law on sick insurance, the authorities discovered that in 116 districts (21.6 per cent. of all) the working-women earned at most 30 kreuzer a day, 90 guilders a year; and in 428 districts (78.4 per cent. of the total) from 30 to 50 kreuzer, or from 90 to 150 guilders a year. The young working-women, under 16 years of age, earned in 173 districts (30.9 per cent.) 20 kreuzer a day at the most, or at the most 60 guilders a year; and in 387 districts (69.1 per cent.) from 20 to 30 kreuzer, or from 60 to 90 guilders a year.

Similar differences between the wages of male and female labor exist in all countries on earth. According to the report on Russian industry at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, a workingman made in cotton weaving 66 marks a month, a working-woman 18; a male cotton spinner 66 marks, a female 14. In the lace industry men earned up to 130 marks, women 26; in cloth manufacture, with the power loom, a working man made 90 marks, a working-woman 26 a month.

These facts show that woman is increasingly torn from family life by modern developments. Marriage and the family, in the bourgeois sense, are undermined by this development, and dissolved. From the view point afforded by this fact also, it is an absurdity to direct women to a domestic life. That can be done only by such people, who thoughtlessly walk the path of life; who fail to see the facts that shape themselves all around, or do not wish to see them, because they have an interest in plying the trade of optimism. Facts furnish a very different picture from that presented by such gentlemen.

In a large number of industries women are employed exclusively; in a larger number they constitute the majority; and in most of the others women are more or less numerously found. Their number steadily increases, and they crowd into ever newer occupations, that they had not previously engaged in. Finally, the working-woman is not merely paid worse than the working man; where she does as much as a man, her hours are, on an average, longer.

The German factory ordinances of the year 1891 fixed a maximum of eleven hours for adult working-women. The same is, however, broken through by a mass of exceptions that the authorities are allowed to make. Nightwork also is forbidden for working-women in factories, but here also the Government can make exceptions in favor of factories where work is continuous, or for special seasons; in sugar refineries, for instance. German legislation has not yet been able to rise to the height of really effective measures for the protection of working-women; consequently, these are exploited by inhumanly long hours, and physically wrecked in the small factories, especially in the tenement house industry. Their exploitation is made all the easier to the employer through the circumstance that, until now, a small minority excepted, the women have not realized that, the same as the men, they must organize in their trades, and, there where also men are employed, they must organize jointly with them, in order to conquer for themselves better conditions of work. The ever stronger influx of women in industrial pursuits affects, however, not those occupations only that their correspondingly weaker physique especially fits them for, but it affects also all occupations in which the modern system of exploitation believes it can, with their aid, knock off larger profits. Under this latter head belong both the physically exhausting and the most disagreeable and dangerous occupations. Thus the fantastic pretence of seeing in woman only a tender, finely-strung being, such as poets and writers of fiction love to depict for the delectation of men, a being, that, if it exists at all exists only as an exception, is again reduced to its true value.

Facts are obstinate things, and it is only they that concern us. They alone preserve us from false conclusions, and sentimental twaddle. These facts teach us that to-day we find women engaged in the following occupations, among others:—in cotton, linen and woolen weaving; in cloth and flannel making; in mechanical spinning, calico printing and dyeing; in steel pen and pin making; in the preparation of sugar, chocolate and cocoa; in manufacturing paper and bronzes; in making glass and porcelain and in glass painting; in the manufacture of faience, majolica and earthen ware; in making ink and preparing paints; making twine and paper bags; in preparing hops and manure and chemical disinfectants; in spinning and weaving silk and ribbons; in making soap, candles and rubber goods; in wadding and mat making; in carpet weaving; portfolio and cardboard making; in making lace and trimmings, and embroidering; making wall-paper, shoes and leather goods; in refining oil and lard and preparing chemicals of all sorts; in making jewelry and galvanoplastic goods; in the preparation of rags and refuse and bast; in wood carving, xylography and stone coloring; in straw hat making and cleaning; in making crockery, cigars and tobacco products; in making lime and gelatine fabrics; in making shoes; in furriery; in hat making; in making toys; in the flax, shoddy and hair industries; in watchmaking and housepainting; in the making of spring beds, pencils and wafers; in making looking-glasses, matches and gunpowder preparations; in dipping phosphorus match-sticks and preparing arsenic; in the tinning of iron; in the delicacy trade; in book printing and composition; in the preparation of precious stones; in lithography, photography, chromo-lithography and metachromotype, and also in the founding of types; in tile making, iron founding and in the preparation of metals generally; in the construction of houses and railroads; in electrical works; in book-binding, wood-carving and joining; in the making of footwear and clothing; file making; the making of knives and brass goods; in manufacturing combs, buttons, gold thread and gas implements; in the making of tanned goods and trunks; in making starch and chicory preparations; in metallurgy, wood-planing, umbrella making and fish manufacturing; the preservation of fruit, vegetables and meat; in the making of china buttons and fur goods; in mining above ground—in Belgium also underground after the women are 21 years old; in the natural oil and wax production; in slate making and stone breaking; in marble and granite polishing; in making cement; the transportation of barges and canal boats. Also in the wide field of horticulture, agriculture and cattle-breeding, and all that is therewith connected. Lastly, in the various industries in which they have long been considered to have the right of way: in the making of linen and woman's clothing, in the several branches of fashion, also as saleswomen, and more recently as clerks, teachers, kindergarten trainers, writers, artists of all sorts. Thousands upon thousands of women of the middle class are being utilized as slaves in the shops and in the markets, and are thereby withdrawn from all domestic functions, the training of children in particular. Finally, there is one occupation to be mentioned, in which young, especially pretty, girls are ever more in demand, to the great injury of their physical and moral development: it is the occupation in public resorts of all sorts as bar-maids, singers, dancers, etc., to attract men in quest of pleasure. This is a field in which impropriety runs riot, and the holders of white slaves lead the wildest orgies.

Among the occupations mentioned, not a few are most dangerous. Dangerous, for instance, are the sulphuric and alkaline gases in the manufacturing and cleaning of straw hats; so is the inhalation of chlorine gases in the bleaching of vegetable materials; the danger of poisoning is imminent in the manufacture of colored paper, colored wafers and artificial flowers; in the preparation of metachromotype, poisons and chemicals; in the painting of leaden soldiers and leaden toys. The on-laying of looking-glasses with quicksilver is simply deadly to the fruit of pregnant women. If, of the live-births in Prussia, 22 per cent. on an average die during the first year, there die, according to Dr. Hirt, 65 per cent. of the live-births of female on-layers of quicksilver, 55 per cent. of those of female glass-polishers, 40 per cent. of those of female lead-makers. In 1890, out of 78 lying-in women, who had been occupied in the type foundries of the district of Wiesbaden, only 37 had a normal delivery. Furthermore, according to Dr. Hirt, the manufacture of colored paper and artificial flowers, the so-called powdering of Brussels lace with white lead, the preparation of decalcomania pictures, the on-laying of mirrors, the manufacture of rubber goods, in short, all occupations at which the working-women are exposed to the inhalation of carbonic acid gases, are especially dangerous from the second half of pregnancy onward. Highly dangerous is also the manufacture of phosphorus matches and work in the shoddy mills. According to the report of the Baden Trades Inspector for 1893, the yearly average of premature births with women engaged in industry rose from 1,039 in the years 1882-1886, to 1,244 in the years 1887-1891. The number of births that had to be aided by an operation averaged for the period of 1882-1886 the figures of 1,118 a year, and for the period of 1886-1891 it averaged 1,385. Facts much graver than any of these would come to light if similar investigations were held also in the more industrially developed countries and provinces of Germany. As a rule the Inspectors are satisfied with stating in their reports: "No specially injurious effects were discovered in the employment of women in the factories." How could they discover any, with their short visits and without drawing upon medical advice? That, moreover, there are great dangers to life and limb, especially in the textile industry, in the manufacture of explosives and in work with agricultural machinery, is an established fact. Even a glance at the above and quite incomplete list will tell every reader that a large number of these occupations are among the hardest and most exhausting even to men. Let people say as they please, this work or that is not suitable for woman; what boots the objection if no other and more suitable occupation is furnished her?

Among the branches of industry, or special occupations in the same, that Dr. Hirt[127] considers girls should not be at all employed in, by reason of the danger to health, especially with an eye to their sexual functions, are: The preparation of bronze colors, of velvet and glazed paper, hat making, glass grinding, lithography, flax combing, horsehair twisting, fustian pulling, iron tinning, and work in the flax and shoddy mill.

In the following trades, young girls should be occupied only when the necessary protective measures (ventilation, etc.) are properly provided for: The manufacture of paper matting, china ware, lead pencils, shot lead, etherial oils, alum, blood-lye, bromium, chinin, soda, paraffin and ultramarine (poisonous) colored paper, wafers that contain poison, metachromotypes, phosphorous matches, Schweinfurt green and artificial flowers. Also in the cutting and sorting of rags, sorting and coloring of tobacco leaf, cotton beating, wool and silk carding, cleaning of bed feathers, sorting pencil hairs, washing (sulphur) straw hats, vulcanizing and melting rubber, coloring and printing calico, painting lead soldiers, packing snuff, wire netting, on-laying of mirrors, grinding needles and steel pens.

Truly, it is no inspiring sight to see women, and even pregnant ones, at the construction of railroads, pushing heavily laden wheelbarrows in competition with men; or to watch them as helpers, mixing mortar and cement or carrying heavy loads of stone at the construction of houses; or in the coal pits and iron works. All that is womanly is thereby rubbed off from woman, her womanliness is trodden under foot, the same as, conversely, all manly attributes are stripped from the men in hundreds of other occupations. Such are the sequels of social exploitation and of social war. Our corrupt social conditions turn things topsy-turvy.

It is, accordingly, easy to understand that, considering the extent to which female labor now prevails, and threatens to make still further inroads in all fields of productive activity, the men, highly interested in the development, look on with eyes far from friendly, and that here and there the demand is heard for the suppression of female labor and its prohibition by law. Unquestionably, with the extension of female labor, the family life of the working class goes ever more to pieces, the dissolution of marriage and the family is a natural result, and immorality, demoralization, degeneration, diseases of all natures and child mortality increase at a shocking pace. According to the statistics of population of the Kingdom of Saxony, child mortality has greatly increased in all those cities that became genuine manufacturing places during the last 25 or 30 years. During the period 1880-1885 there died in the cities of Saxony, on an average, 28.5 per cent. of the live-births during the first year of life. In the period of 1886-1890, 45.0 of the live-births died in Ernsthal during the first year of their lives, 44.5 in Stolling, 40.4 in Zschopau, 38.9 in Lichtenstein, 38.3 in Thum, 38.2 in Meerane, 37.7 in Crimmitschau, 37.2 in Burgstaedt, 37.1 in Werdau, 36.5 in Ehrenfriedersdorf, 35.8 in Chemnitz, 35.5 in Frankenberg, 35.2 in Buchholz, 35.1 in Schneeberg, 34.7 in Lunzenau, 34.6 in Hartha, 34.5 in Geithaim, etc.[128] Worse yet stood things in the majority of the large factory villages, quite a number of whom registered a mortality of 40 to 50 per cent. Yet, all this notwithstanding, the social development, productive of such sad results, is progress,—precisely such progress as the freedom to choose a trade, freedom of emigration, freedom to marry, and the removal of all other barriers, thus promoting the development of capitalism on a large scale, but thereby also giving the death-blow to the middle class and preparing its downfall.

The working class is not inclined to help the small producer, should he attempt the re-establishment of restrictions to the freedom to choose a trade and of emigration, or the restoration of the guild and corporation restrictions, contemplated with the end in view of artificially keeping dwarf-production alive for a little while longer,—more than that is beyond their power. As little is a return possible to the former state of things with regard to female labor, but that does not exclude stringent laws for the prevention of the excessive exploitation of female and child labor, and of children of school age. In this the interests of the working class coincides with the interests of the State, of humanity, in general, and of civilization. When we see the State compelled to lower the minimum requirements for military service—as happened several times during the last decades, the last time in 1893, when the army was to be further increased—and we see such lowering of the minimum requirements resorted to for the reason that, as a result of degenerating effects of our economic system, the number of young men unfit for military service becomes ever larger,—when we see that, then, forsooth, all are interested in protective measures. The ultimate aim must be to remove the ills, that progress—such as machinery, improved means of production and the whole modern system of labor—has called forth, while at the same time causing the enormous advantages, that such progress is instinct with for man, and the still greater advantages it is capable of, to accrue in full measure to all the members of society, by means of a corresponding organization of human labor.[129]

It is an absurdity and a crying wrong that the improvements and conquests of civilization—the collective product of all—accrue to the benefit of those alone who, in virtue of their material power, are able to appropriate them to themselves, while, on the other hand, thousands of diligent workingmen are assailed with fear and worry when they learn that human genius has made yet another invention able to multiply many fold the product of manual labor, and thereby opening to them the prospect of being thrown as useless and superfluous upon the sidewalks. Thus, that which should be greeted with universal joy becomes an object of hostility, that in former years occasioned the storming of many a factory and the demolition of many a new machine. A similar hostile feeling exists to-day between man and woman as workers. This feeling also is unnatural. The point, consequently, is to seek to establish a social condition in which the full equality of all without distinction of sex shall be the norm of conduct.

The feat is feasible—the moment all the means of production become the property of society; when collective labor, by the application of all technical and scientific advantages and aids in the process of production, reaches the highest degree of fertility; and when the obligation lies upon all, capable of work, to furnish a certain measure of labor to society, necessary for the satisfaction of social wants, in exchange whereof society guarantees to each and all the means requisite for the development of his faculties and for the enjoyment of life.

Woman shall be like man, a productive and useful member of society, equal-righted with him. Precisely like man, she shall be placed in position to fully develop all her physical and mental faculties, to fulfil her duties, and to exercise her rights. A free being and the peer of man, she is safe against degradation.

We shall point out how modern developments in society run out into such a state of things, and that it is these very crass and monstrous ills in modern development that compel the establishment of the New Order.

Although the development of the position of woman, as above characterized, is palpable, is tangible to the sight of all who have eyes to see, the twaddle about the "natural calling" of woman is heard daily, assigning her to domestic duties and the family. The phrase is heard loudest there where woman endeavors to penetrate into the sphere of the so-called higher professions, as for instance, the higher departments of instruction and of the civil service, the medical or legal careers, and the pursuit of the natural sciences. The most laughable and absurd objections are fetched up, and are defended with the air of "learning." Gentlemen, who pass for learned, appeal, in this as in so many other things, to science in order to defend the most absurd and untenable propositions. Their chief trump card is that woman is inferior to man in mental powers and that it is folly to believe she could achieve aught of importance in the intellectual field.

These objections, raised by the "learned," fit so well with the general prejudices entertained by men on the calling and faculties of woman that, whoever makes use of them can count upon the applause of the majority.

New ideas will ever meet with stubborn opposition so long as general culture and knowledge continue at so low an ebb as at present, especially if it lies in the interest of the ruling classes to confine culture and knowledge as much as possible to their own ranks. Hence new ideas will at the start win over but a small minority, and this will be scoffed at, maligned and persecuted. But if these new ideas are good and sound, if they are born as the necessary consequence of existing conditions, then will they spread, and the one-time minority finally becomes a majority. So has it been with all new ideas in the course of history: the idea of establishing the complete emancipation of woman presents the same experience.

Were not one time the believers in Christianity a small minority? Did not the Protestant Reformers and modern bourgeoisdom once face overpowering adversaries? And yet they triumphed. Was the Social Democracy crippled because gagged and pinioned by exclusion laws, so that it could not budge? Never was its triumph more assured than when it was thought to have been killed. The Social Democracy overcame the exclusion laws; it will overcome quite other obstacles besides.

The claim regarding the "natural calling of woman," according whereto she should be housekeeper and nurse, is as unfounded as the claim that there will ever be kings because, since the start of history, there have been such somewhere. We know not where the first king sprang up, as little as we know where the first capitalist stepped upon the scene. This, however, we do know: Kingship has undergone material changes in the course of the centuries, and the tendency of development is to strip it ever more of its powers, until a time comes, no longer far away, when it will be found wholly superfluous. As with the kingship, so with all other social and political institutions; they are all subject to continuous changes and transformations, and to final and complete decay. We have seen, in the course of the preceding historic sketch, that the form of marriage, in force to-day, like the position of woman, was by no means such "eternally"; that, on the contrary, both were the product of a long process of development, which has by no means reached its acme, and can reach it only in the future. If 2,400 or 2,300 years ago Demosthenes could designate the "bringing forth of legitimate children and officiating as a faithful warder of the house" as the only occupation of woman, to-day we have traveled past that point. Who, to-day, would dare uphold such a position of woman as "natural" without exposing himself to the charge of belittling her? True enough, there are even to-day such sots, who share in silence the views of the old Athenian; but none dare proclaim publicly that which 2,300 years ago one of the most eminent orators dared proclaim frankly and openly as natural. Therein lies the great advance made.

If, on the one hand, modern development, especially in industrial life, has wrecked millions of marriages, it, on the other hand, promoted favorably the development itself of marriage. Only a few decades ago, and it was a matter of course in every citizen's or peasant's house not only that woman sewed, knitted and washed—although even this has now extensively gone out of fashion—but she also baked the bread, spun, wove, bleached, brewed beer, boiled soap, made candles. To have a piece of wearing apparel made out of the house was looked upon as unutterable waste. Water-pipes, gaslight, gas and oil cooking ranges—to say nothing of the respective electric improvements—together with numberless others, were wholly unknown to the women of former times. Antiquated conditions exist even to-day, but they are the exception. The majority of women have discontinued many an occupation, formerly considered of course, the same being attended to in factory and shop better, more expeditiously and cheaper than the housewife could, whence, at least in the cities, all domestic requirements for them are wanting. Thus, in the period of a few decades, a great revolution for them has been accomplished within our family life, and we pay so little attention to the fact because we consider it a matter of course. Phenomena, that develop, so to speak, under the very eyes of man, are not noticed by him, unless they appear suddenly and disturb the even tenor of events. He bristles up, however, against new ideas that threaten to lead him out of the accustomed ruts.

The revolution thus accomplished in our domestic life, and that progresses ever further, has altered the position of woman in the family, in other directions besides. Woman has become freer, more independent. Our grandmothers, if they were honest masters' wives, would not have dared, and, indeed the thought never crossed their minds, to keep their working people and apprentices from the table, and visiting, instead, the theatres, concerts and pleasure resorts, by day at that. Which of those good old women dared think of occupying her mind with public affairs, as is now done by many women? To-day they start societies for all manner of objects, establish papers, call conventions. As working-women they assemble in trades unions, they attend the meetings and join the organizations of men, and here and there—we are speaking of Germany—they have had the right of electing boards of labor arbitration, a right that the backward majority of the Reichstag took away again from them in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and ninety.

What sot would seek to annul the changes just described, although the fact is not to be gainsaid that, there are also dark sides to the bright sides of the picture, consequent upon our seething and decaying conditions? The bright sides, however, predominate. Women themselves, however conservative they are as a body, have no inclination to return to the old, narrow, patriarchal conditions of former times.

In the United States society still stands, true enough, on bourgeois foundations; but it is forced to wrestle neither with old European prejudices nor with institutions that have survived their day. As a consequence American society is far readier to adopt new ideas and institutions that promise advantage. For some time the position of woman has been looked upon from a viewpoint different than ours. There, for instance, the idea has long taken hold that it is not merely troublesome and improper, but not even profitable to the purse, for the wife to bake bread and brew beer, but that it is unnecessary for her to cook in her own kitchen. The private kitchen is supplanted by co-operative cooking, with a large central kitchen and machinery. The women attend to the work by turns, and the meals generally come out cheaper, taste better, offer a greater variety, and give much less trouble. Our army officers, who are not decried as Socialists and Communists, act on a similar plan. They establish in their casinos a co-operative kitchen; appoint a steward, who attends to the supply of victuals on a large scale; the bill of fare is arranged in common; and the food is prepared in the steam kitchen of the barracks. They live much cheaper than in a hotel, and fare at least as well. Furthermore, thousands of the rich families live the whole year, or part of the year, in boarding-houses or hotels, without in any way missing the private kitchen. On the contrary, they consider it a great convenience to be rid of it. The aversion of especially well-to-do women towards all matters connected with the kitchen does not seem to indicate that this function either belongs to the category of the "natural calling" of woman. On the contrary, the circumstance that princely and other prominent families do like the hotels, and all of them engage male cooks for the preparation of their food, would rather indicate that cooking is a male occupation.—All of which is stated for the benefit of those people who are unable to picture to themselves a woman not brandishing a kitchen ladle.

It is but a step to set up, beside the central kitchen, also the central laundry and corresponding steaming arrangements for public use—as already established in all large cities by rich private persons or speculators, and found highly profitable. With the central kitchen may also be connected central heating, warm water along with cold water pipes, whereby a number of bothersome and time-consuming labors are done away with. Large hotels, many private houses, hospitals, schools, barracks, etc., have now these and many other such arrangements, such as electric light and baths. The only fault to find is that only public establishments and the well-to-do classes enjoy these advantages. Placed within the reach of all, an enormous amount of time, trouble, labor and material could be saved, and the standard of life and the well-being of all raised considerably. In the summer of 1890, the papers published a description of the progress made in the United States in the matter of centralized heating and ventilation. It was there stated:

"The recent attempts, made especially in North America, to effect the heating of whole blocks of houses or city wards from one place have to record no slight success. From the constructive point of view, they have been carried out so carefully and effectively that, in view of the favorable results and the financial advantages which they offer, their further extension may be confidently expected. More recently the attempt is being made to furnish from central locations not heat alone, but also fresh air, either warm or cool, to certain extensive but not too wide areas of the city. These plans are found in execution in the so-called Timby System, which, according to the central organ of the Department of Buildings, gathered from a report of the technical attache in Washington, Government Architect Petri, has recently been thoroughly explained in Washington by the 'National Heating and Ventilating Company.' The said company originally planned to supply 50,000 people from one place. The difficulties presented by the requisite speed of transit and the size of the pneumatic machines, have, however, caused a limitation to 0.8 kilometers, and in instances of specially closely built business quarters, the building of a special central power place."

What was then only projected, has since been in great part executed. Philistine narrowness in Germany lives to shrug its shoulders at these and such like schemes, although in Germany also we find ourselves just now in the midst of one of those technical revolutions, that render the private kitchen, together with a number of other occupations, hitherto appertaining to the household, as superfluous as handicraft has been rendered by machinery and modern technique. In the early days of the nineteenth century, Napoleon pronounced insane the idea of constructing a ship that could be set in motion by steam. The idea of building a railroad was declared silly by many folks who passed for sensible: nobody, it was argued, could remain alive on such a conveyance: the rapidity of motion would deprive the passengers of breath. Identical treatment is to-day accorded to a number of new ideas. He who sixty years ago would have made to our women the proposition of replacing the carrying of water with water-pipes, would have been exposed to the charge of trying to lead women and servants into idleness.

Nevertheless the great revolution in technique is in full march on all fields; nothing can any longer hold it back; and bourgeois society, having conjured the same into life, has the historic mission of also carrying the revolution to perfection, and to promote on all fields the budding of the germs for radical transformations, which a social order, built on new foundations, would only have to generalize on a large scale, and make common property.

The trend, accordingly, of our social life is not to banish woman back to the house and the hearth, as our "domestic life" fanatics prescribe, and after which they lust, like the Jews in the Desert after the fleshpots of Egypt. On the contrary, the whole trend of society is to lead woman out of the narrow sphere of strictly domestic life to a full participation in the public life of the people—a designation that will not then cover the male sex only—and in the task of human civilization. Laveleye fully recognized this when he wrote:[130] "In the measure that what we are in the habit of designating as civilization advances, the sentiments of piety and the family bonds weaken, and they exercise a decreasing influence upon the actions of men. This fact is so general that a law of social development may be recognized therein." Not only has the position of woman changed, but also the relation of son and daughter to the family, who have gradually attained a degree of independence unknown in former days,—a fact noticeable especially in the United States, where the self-dependent and independent education of the individual is carried on much further than with us. The dark sides that to-day accompany also this form of development, are not necessarily connected with it; they lie in the social conditions of our times. Capitalist society evokes no beneficent phenomenon unaccompanied with a dark side: as Fourier long ago pointed out with great perspicacity, capitalist society is in all its progressive steps double-faced and ambiguous.

With Laveleye, Schaeffle also detects in the changed character of the family of our days the effect of social development. He says:[131] "It is true that the tendency described in Chapter II, to reduce and limit the family to its specific functions is traceable throughout history. The family relinquishes one provisional and temporary function after the other. In so far as it officiated only in a surrogate and gap-filling capacity it makes way to independent institutions for law, order, authority, divine service, education, technique, etc., as soon as these institutions take shape."

Women are pressing even further, though as yet only in a minority, and only a fraction of these with clear aims. They aspire to measure their power with men, not on the industrial field alone; they aspire not only after a freer and more independent position in the family; they also aspire at turning their mental faculties to the higher walks of life. The favorite objection raised against them is that they are not fit for such pursuits, not being intended therefor by Nature. The question of engaging in the higher professional occupations concerns at present only a small number of women in modern society; it is, however, important in point of principle. The large majority of men believe in all seriousness that, mentally as well, woman must ever remain subordinate to them, and, hence, has no right to equality. They are, accordingly, the most determined opponents of woman's aspirations.

The self-same men, who raise no objection whatever to the employment of woman in occupations, many of which are very exhausting, often dangerous, threaten the impairment of her feminine physique and violently compel her to sin against her duties as a mother,—these self-same men would exclude her from pursuits in which these obstacles and dangers are much slighter, and which are much better suited to her delicate frame.

Among the learned men, who in Germany want to hear nothing of the admission of women to the higher studies, or who will yield only a qualified assent, and express themselves publicly on the subject are Prof. L. Bischoff, Dr. Ludwig Hirt, Prof. H. Sybel, L. von Buerenbach, Dr. E. Reich, and many others. Notedly has the livelier agitation, recently set on foot, for the admission of women to the Universities, incited a strong opposition against the plan in Germany. The opposition is mainly directed against woman's qualifications for the study of medicine. Among the opponents are found Pochhammer, Fehling, S. Binder, Waldeyer, Hegar, etc. Von Buerenbach is of the opinion that both the admission to and the fitness of woman for science can be disposed of with the argument that, until now, no genius has arisen among woman, and hence woman is manifestly unfit for philosophic studies. It seems the world has had quite enough of its male philosophers: it can, without injury to itself, well afford to dispense with female. Neither does the objection that the female sex has never yet produced a genius seem to us either to hold water, or to have the weight of a demonstration. Geniuses do not drop down from the skies; they must have opportunity to form and mature. This opportunity woman has lacked until now, as amply shown by our short historic sketch. For thousands of years she has been oppressed, and she has been deprived or stunted in the opportunity and possibility to unfold her mental faculties. It is as false to reason that the female sex is bereft of genius, by denying all spark of genius to the tolerably large number of great women, as it would be to maintain that there were no geniuses among the male sex other than the few who are considered such. Every village schoolmaster knows what a mass of aptitudes among his pupils never reach full growth, because the possibilities for their development are absent. Aye, there is not one, who, in his walk through life, has not become acquainted, some with more, others with fewer persons of whom it had to be said that, had they been able to mature under more favorable circumstances, they would have been ornaments to society, and men of genius. Unquestionably the number of men of talent and of genius is by far larger among the male sex than those that, until now, have been able to reveal themselves: social conditions did not allow the others to develop. Precisely so with the faculties of the female sex, a sex that for centuries has been held under, hampered and crippled, far worse than any other subject beings. We have absolutely no measure to-day by which to gauge the fullness of mental powers and faculties that will develop among men and women so soon as they shall be able to unfold amid natural conditions.

It is with mankind as in the vegetable kingdom. Millions of valuable seeds never reach development because the ground on which they fall is unfavorable, or is taken up by weeds that rob the young and better plant of air, light and nourishment. The same laws of Nature hold good in human life. If a gardener or planter sought to maintain with regard to a given plant that it could not grow, although he made no trial, perhaps even hindered its growth by wrong treatment, such a man would be pronounced a fool by all his intelligent neighbors. Nor would he fare any better if he declined to cross one of his female domestic animals with, a male of higher breed, to the end of producing a better animal.

There is no peasant in Germany to-day so ignorant as not to understand the advantage of such treatment of his trees or animals—provided always his means allow him to introduce the better method. Only with regard to human beings do even men of learning deny the force of that which with regard to all other matters, they consider an established law. And yet every one, even without being a naturalist, can make instructive observations in life. Whence comes it that the children of peasants differ from city children? It comes from the difference in their conditions of life and education.

The one-sidedness, inherent in the education for one calling, stamps man with a peculiar character. A clergyman or a schoolmaster is generally and easily recognized by his carriage and mien; likewise an officer, even when in civilian dress. A shoe maker is easily told from a tailor, a joiner from a locksmith. Twin brothers, who closely resembled each other in youth, show in later years marked differences if their occupations are different, if one had hard manual work, for instance, as a smith, the other the study of philosophy for his duty. Heredity, on one side, adaptation on the other, play in the development of man, as well as of animals, a decisive role. Indeed, man is the most bending and pliable of all creatures. A few years of changed life and occupation often suffice to make quite a different being out of the same man. Nowhere does rapid external change show itself more strikingly than when a person is transferred from poor and reduced, to materially improved circumstances. It is in his mental make-up that such a person will be least able to deny his antecedents, but that is due to the circumstance that, with most of such people, after they have reached a certain age, the desire for intellectual improvement is rarely felt; neither do they need it. Such an upstart rarely suffers under this defect. In our days, that look to money and material means, people are far readier to bow before the man with a large purse, than before a man of knowledge and great intellectual gifts, especially if he has the misfortune of being poor and rankless. Instances of this sort are furnished every day. The worship of the golden calf stood in no age higher than in this,—whence it comes that we are living "in the best possible world."

The strongest evidence of the effect exercised upon man by radically different conditions of life is furnished in our several industrial centers. In these centers employer and employe present externally such a contrast as if they belonged to different races. Although accustomed to the contrast, it struck us almost with the shock of a surprise on the occasion of a campaign mass meeting, that we addressed in the winter of 1877 in an industrial town of the Erzgebirge region. The meeting, at which a debate was to be held between a liberal professor and ourselves, was so arranged that both sides were equally represented. The front part of the hall was taken by our opponents,—almost without exception, healthy, strong, often large figures; in the rear of the hall and in the galleries stood workingmen and small tradesmen, nine-tenths of the former weavers,—mostly short, thin, shallow-chested, pale-faced figures, with whom worry and want looked out at every pore. One set represented the full-stomached virtue and solvent morality of bourgeois society; the other set, the working bees and beasts of burden, on the product of whose labor the gentlemen made so fine an appearance. Let both be placed for one generation under equally favorable conditions, and the contrast will vanish with most; it certainly is blotted out in their descendants.

It is also evident that, in general, it is harder to determine the social standing of women than of men. Women adapt themselves more readily to new conditions; they acquire higher manners more quickly. Their power of accommodation is greater than that of more clumsy man.

What to a plant are good soil, light and air, are to man healthy social conditions, that allow him to unfold his powers. The well known saying: "Man is what he eats," expresses the same thought, although somewhat one-sidedly: The question is not merely what man eats; it embraces his whole social posture, the social atmosphere in which he moves, that promotes or stunts his physical and mental development, that affects, favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because, beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal surroundings, unfavorable circumstances of a social nature operate upon them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on wrong tracks. The general conditions under which a man lives are even of far greater importance than those of the home and the family. If the conditions for social development are equal to both sexes, if to neither there stand any obstacles in the way, and if the social state of society is a healthy one, then woman also will rise to a point of perfection in her being, such as we can have no full conception of, such conditions having hitherto been absent in the history of the development of the race. That which some women are in the meantime achieving, leaves no doubt upon this head: these rise as high above the mass of their own sex as the male geniuses do above the mass of theirs. Measured with the scale usually applied to Princes, women have, on an average, displayed greater talent than men in the ruling of States. As illustrations, let Isabella and Blanche of Castile be quoted; Elizabeth of Hungary; Catharine Sforza, the Duchess of Milan and Imola; Elizabeth of England; Catharine of Russia; Maria Theresa, etc. Resting upon the fact that, in all races and all parts of the world, women have ruled with marked ability, even over the wildest and most turbulent hordes, Burbach makes the statement that, in all probability, women are fitter for politics than men.[132] For the rest, many a great man in history would shrink considerably, were it only known What he owes to himself, and what to others. Count Mirabeau, for instance, is described by German historians, von Sybel among them, as one of the greatest lights of the French Revolution: and now research has revealed the fact that this light was indebted for the concept of almost all of his speeches to the ready help of certain scholars, who worked for him in secret, and whom he understood to utilize. On the other hand, apparitions like those of a Sappho, a Diotima of the days of Socrates, a Hypatia of Alexander, a Madame Roland, Madame de Stael, George Sand, etc., deserve the greatest respect, and eclipse many a male star. The effect of women as mothers of great men is also known. Woman has achieved all that was possible to her under the, to her, as a whole, most unfavorable circumstances; all of which justifies the best hopes for the future. As a matter of fact, only the second half of the nineteenth century began to smooth the way for the admission of women in large numbers to the race with men on various fields; and quite satisfactory are the results attained.

But suppose that, on an average, women are not as capable of higher development as men, that they cannot grow into geniuses and great philosophers, was this a criterion for men when, at least according to the letter of the law, they were placed on a footing of equality with "geniuses" and "philosophers?" The identical men of learning, who deny higher aptitudes to woman, are quite inclined to do the same to artisans and workingmen. When the nobility appeals to its "blue" blood and to its genealogical tree, these men of learning laugh in derision and shrug their shoulders; but as against the man of lower rank, they consider themselves an aristocracy, that owes what it is, not to more favorable conditions of life, but to its own talent alone. The same men who, on one field, are among the freest from prejudice, and who hold him lightly who does not think as liberally as themselves, are, on another field,—the moment the interests of their rank and class, or their vanity and self-esteem are concerned—found narrow to the point of stupidity, and hostile to the point of fanaticism. The men of the upper classes look down upon the lower; and so does almost the whole sex upon woman. The majority of men see in woman only an article of profit and pleasure; to acknowledge her an equal runs against the grain of their prejudices:—woman must be humble and modest; she must confine herself exclusively to the house and leave all else to the men, the "lords of creation," as their domain: woman must, to the utmost, bridle her own thoughts and inclinations, and quietly accept what her Providence on earth—father or husband—decrees. The nearer she approaches this standard, all the more is she praised as "sensible, modest and virtuous," even though, as the result of such constraint, she break down under the burden of physical and moral suffering. What absurdity is it not to speak of the "equality of all" and yet seek to keep one-half of the human race outside of the pale!

Woman has the same right as man to unfold her faculties and to the free exercise of the same: she is human as well as he: like him, she should be free to dispose of herself as her own master. The accident of being born a woman, makes no difference. To exclude woman from equality on the ground that she was born female and not male—an accident for which man is as little responsible as she—is as inequitable, as would be to make rights and privileges dependent upon the accident of religion or political bias; and as senseless as that two human beings must look upon each other as enemies on the ground that the accident of birth makes them of different stock and nationality. Such views are unworthy of a truly free being. The progress of humanity lies in removing everything that holds one being, one class, one sex, in dependence and in subjection to another. No inequality is justified other than that which Nature itself establishes in the differences between one individual and another, and for the fulfillment of the purpose of Nature. The natural boundaries no sex can overstep: it would thereby destroy its own natural purpose.

The adversaries of full equality for woman play as their trump card the claim that woman has a smaller brain than man, and that in other qualities, besides, she is behind man, hence her permanent inferiority (subordination) is demonstrated. It is certain that man and woman are beings of different sexes; that they are furnished with different organs, corresponding to the sex purpose of each; and that, owing to the functions that each sex must fill to accomplish the purpose of Nature, there are a series of other differences in their physiologic and psychic conditions. These are facts that none can deny and none will deny; nevertheless, they justify no distinction in the social and political rights of man and woman. The human race, society, consists of both sexes; both are indispensable to its existence and progress. Even the greatest male genius was born of a mother, to whom frequently he is indebted for the best part of himself. By what right can woman be refused equality with man?

Based upon information furnished us by a medical friend, we shall here sketch with a few strokes the essential differences, that, according to leading authorities, manifest themselves in the physical and mental qualities of man and woman. The bodily size of man and woman stands, on an average, in the relation of 100 to 93.2. The bones of woman are shorter and thinner, the chest smaller, wider, deeper and flatter. Other differences depend directly upon the sex purpose. The muscles of woman are not as massive. The weight of the heart is 310 grains in man, 255 in woman.

The composition of the blood in man and woman is as follows: Water, man, 77.19; woman, 79.11. Solid matter, man, 22.10; woman, 20.89. Blood corpuscles, man, 14.10; woman, 12.79. Number of blood corpuscles in a cubic millimeter of blood, man, 4 1/2 to 5 millions; woman, 4 to 4 1/2 millions. According to Meynert, the weight of the brain of man is from 1,018 to 1,925 grams; of woman, from 820 to 1,565; or in the relation of 100 to 90.93. LeBon and Bischoff agree that, while weight of brain corresponds with size of body, nevertheless short people have relatively larger brains. With woman, the smaller size of the heart, the narrower system of blood vessels and probably also the larger quantity of blood, has a lower degree of nourishment for its effect.[133] That, however, the larger skulls of larger persons, coupled with the quantitative changes occasioned by the size of the skull promote the vigor of the several sections of the brain is a matter that cannot be asserted.[134]

Of 107 mentally healthy men and 148 women of the ages of 20 to 59, the weight of the brain per thousand was:

Average Medulla Length in Sex. Oblongata. Cerebellum. Pons. Centimeters.

Men 790 107.5 102 166.5 Women 787 110.0 103 156.0

The absolute and relative excess in the weight of the cerebellum of woman has an enormous significance. With animals that run immediately upon birth, the cerebellum is much more powerfully developed than with animals that are born blind, are helpless, and that learn to walk with difficulty. Accordingly, and in consequence of its connection with the cerebrum, subcortical center and the spinal cord, the cerebellum is a station of the muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack of quickly sizing up a situation, and finding her way in the midst of a confusion of associations. Woman is furthermore aided in the latter faculty through the greater excitability of her cerebral cortex. Meynert says:—

1. All structural anomalies associated with anaemia of the blood—including also a small heart and narrow arteries—should be considered as subject structural defects. Upon this depends not only the ready exhaustibility of the cortex, but also the phenomena of irritability, named by Meynert, localized irritable weakness.

2. The branches of blood vessels, supplying the subcortical centers from the base, are short, thick, straight, palisade-like, while those on the surface of the brain, supplying the cortex, run in long tortuous lines. And it is because of that, since with the increased length of the blood vessels the resistance to the propulsive force of the heart is increased, that the subcortical centers, the moment fatigue supervenes, are better supplied with blood than the cortex, they are less readily fatigued than the more readily exhaustible cerebrum.

3. Because of this and because of the more watery character of woman's blood and great extent of subcortical centers in woman in comparison with cerebrum, the physical equilibrium of woman is more unstable than of man.

4. All nerves (except the optic and olfactory, which spread out directly in the cortex, save some of their filaments terminating in the subcortical centers) terminate in the subcortical center; the cortex of the cerebrum acts as a checking organ for the subcortical center; as the cerebral cortex in woman, as already stated, is at a disadvantage not only from the anatomical standpoint, but also in the quality of its blood supply, woman is not only more easily fatigued, but also more readily excitable (irritable, nervous).

These facts explain, on the one hand, what is called the superior endowment of woman, and, on the other, her inclination to sudden changes of opinion, as well as to hallucinations and illusions. This state of unstable equilibrium between the dura mater and the pons becomes particularly normal during menstruation, pregnancy, lying-in, and at her climacteric. As a result of her physical organization, woman is more inclined to melancholy than man, and likewise is the inclination to mental derangement stronger with her; on the other hand, the male sex excels her in the number of cases of megalomania.

Such, in substance, is the information furnished us by the authority whom we have been quoting.

As a matter of course, in so far as the cited differences depend upon the nature of the sex-distinctions, they can not be changed; in how far these differences in the make-up of the blood and the brain may be modified by a change of life (nourishment, mental and physical gymnastics, occupation, etc.) is a matter that, for the present, lies beyond all accurate calculation. But this seems certain: modern woman differs more markedly from man than primitive woman, or than the women of backward peoples, and the circumstance is easily explained by the social development that the last 1,000 or 1,500 years forced upon woman among the nations of civilization.

According to Lombroso and Ferrero, the mean capacity of the female skull, the male skull being assumed at 1,000, is as follows:—

Negro 984 Slav 903 Australian 967 Gipsy 875 Hindoo 944 Chinese 870 Italian 921 German 838-897 Hollander 919 (Tiedemann) Englishman 860 Hollander 883 (Davis) Parisian 858

The contradictory findings for Hollanders and Germans show that the measurements were made on very different quantitative and qualitative materials, and, consequently, are not absolutely reliable. One thing, however, is evident from the figures: Negro, Australian and Hindoo women have a considerably larger brain capacity than their German, English and Parisian sisters, and yet the latter are all more intelligent. The comparisons established in the weight of the brain of deceased men of note, reveal similar contradictions and peculiarities. According to Prof. Reclam, the brain of the naturalist Cuvier weighed 1,861 grams, of Byron 1,807, of the mathematician Dirichlet 1,520, of the celebrated mathematician Gauss 1,492, of the philologist Hermann 1,358, of the scientist Hausmann 1,226. The last of these had a brain below the average weight of that of women, which, according to Bischoff, weighs 1,250 grams. But a special irony of fate wills it that the brain of Prof. Bischoff himself, who died a few years ago in St. Petersburg, weighed only 1,245 grams, and Bischoff it was who most obstinately grounded his claim of woman's inferiority on the fact that woman, on the average, had 100 grams less brain than man. The brain of Gambetta also weighed considerably below the average female brain, it weighed only 1,180 grams, and Dante, too, is said to have had a brain below the average weight for men. Figures of the same sort are found in Dr. Havelock Ellis' work. According thereto, an every day person, whose brain Bischoff weighed, had 2,222 grams; the poet Turgeniew 2,012; while the third heaviest brain on the list belonged to an idiot of the duchy of Hants. The brain of a common workingman, also examined by Bischoff, weighed 1,925 grams. The heaviest woman's brains weighed 1,742 and 1,580 grams, two of which were of insane women.

The conclusion is, accordingly, justified that as little as size of body justifies inferences as to strength of body, so little does the weight of the brain-mass warrant inferences as to mental powers. There are very small animals (ants, bees) that, in point of intelligence, greatly excel much larger ones (sheep, cows), just as men of large body are often found far behind others of smaller or unimposing stature. Accordingly, the important factor is not merely the quantity of brain matter, but more especially the brain organization, and, not least of all, the exercise and use of the brain power.

The brain, if it is to fully develop its powers, must be diligently exercised, the same as any other organ, and also correspondingly fed. Where this is not done, or where the training is turned into wrong channels, instead of the sections of the understanding being developed, those are developed in which imagination has its seat. In such cases, not only is the organ stunted, but even crippled. One section is developed at the expense of another.

No one, approximately familiar with the history of the development of woman, will deny that, for thousands of years, woman has been and continues to be sinned against in that direction. When Prof. Bischoff objects that woman could have trained her brain and intelligence as well as man did, he reveals unpardonable and unheard of ignorance on the subject. The sketch, drawn in this work, of the position of woman in the course of the progress of civilization, explains fully how the thousands of years of continued male supremacy over woman are mainly responsible for the great differences in the mental and physical development of the two sexes.

Our naturalists should recognize that the laws of their science are applicable to man also, and to his evolution. The laws of evolution, of heredity, of adaptation, hold good with human beings as with all other creatures of nature. Seeing that man is no exception in nature, the law of evolution must be applied to him also: forthwith light is shed upon what otherwise remains confused and dark, and, as such, becomes the fit subject for scientific mysticism, or mystic science.

The training of the brain took its course with the different sexes wholly in conformity with the difference in the education of the two—if such a term as "education" is at all allowable, with regard to woman in particular, during long stretches of the past, and the term "bringing up" is not the correcter. Physiologists are agreed that the organs of thought are located in the front part of the brain, and those especially of feeling and sentiment are to be looked for in the middle of the head. With man the front, with woman the middle of the head is more developed. The ideal of beauty, male and female, shaped itself accordingly. According to the Greek ideal, which is standard to this day, woman has a narrow, man a high and, particularly, broad forehead,—and this ideal an expression of their own degradation, is so stamped on their minds, that our women bewail a forehead that exceeds the average, as a deformity in their appearance, and seek to improve nature by art, drawing their hair over the sinning forehead, to make it look lower.

In a polemic in Nos. 39 and 40 of the "Sozialdemokrat" for 1890, which appeared in London, Sophie Nadejde had two articles in which she sought to refute the charges concerning the great inferiority of woman. She says therein that Broca, a well known Parisian physiologist, measured the cubic contents of 115 skulls from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and got an average of 1,426 cubic centimeters. The measurements of 125 skulls from the eighteenth century gave, however, an average of 1,462 cubic centimeters. According to this, the conclusion would be that, in the course of a few centuries, the brain had grown considerably. A measurement by Broca of skulls from the Stone Age resulted, however, in an average of 1,606 cubic centimeters for the skulls of men, and 1,581 for the skulls of women,—accordingly, both considerably larger than those of the eleventh, twelfth and eighteenth centuries. Mrs. Nadejde concluded therefrom that Herbert Spencer was right when he claimed in his physiology that brain weight depended upon the amount of motion and the variety of motions.

The lady furthermore emphasized the point that it depends a deal less on the brain-mass than on the proportion in the two sexes of the brain-weight to the weight of the body. Proceeding from these premises, it appeared that the female brain was heavier than the male. The argument on this head, Mrs. Nadejde presents in these words:

"Let us compare the average weights of the bodies, and let us take, as the difference between man and woman only 8 kilograms, although many naturalists, among them Gay, whom Delaunay quotes, takes 11 kilograms. According to the average weights of 9,157 American soldiers: 64.4 kilograms (average weight of the male body): 56 kilograms (average weight of the female body) = 1,141 or 1.14, i. e., the average weight of woman being taken as 100, that of man is represented by 114. According to the average weights of 12,740 Bavarians: 65.5 kilograms (average for males): 57.5 (average for females) = 1,139 or 1.14 as above. Assuming the average weight of woman as 100, that of man is found to be 114. According to the average weights of 617 Englishmen, 68.8 (average for males): 60.8 (average for females) = 1,131, or 1.13; the average weight of woman being assumed as 100, that of man is found to be 113.[135]

"Accordingly, it appears that, under otherwise equal conditions, women have 1/4 per cent. of brain-mass in excess of men. That is to say, for every 100 grams of female brain-mass, men should have 113 or 114 grams; in reality, however, they only have from 110 to 112 grams. The fact can be put still more plastically: According to this calculation, the male brain falls short 25 to 51 grams of brain-mass.[136]

"But L. Manouvrier proves more. He says:[137] 'The influence of the weight of the body strikes the eye when we note the figures among the vertebrates. The influence is equally manifest with man, and it is a wonder how so many naturalists have not yet recognized this truth, even after it was illustrated and treated by others.

"'There are a number of facts that prove the influence of the size of the body upon the weight of the brain. The lower races and of high stature, not only have a larger average weight of brain than the European, but also is the number of large brains greater with them. We must not imagine that the intelligence of a race is determined by the number of large brains: the Patagonians, Polynesians and Indians of North America (and according to the figures given above the people of the Stone Age may be added) greatly surpass us Parisians and all races of Europe, not only in the number of large brains, but also in the large average capacity of the skull.

"'The influence of the weight of the body upon the size of the brain is confirmed by the fact that the small skull capacities are found among races of slight stature, like the Bushmen, the Andamans, and the Hindoo pariahs.'

"All scientists who have treated the brain question in a really scientific manner, have expressed themselves with greatest caution on the difference shown by the two sexes. Other writers, on the contrary, especially during the last years, have treated the question with such levity, that it has been compromised in the public esteem. If there be any intellectual difference between man and woman, it must, at any rate, be very slight, a physiologist like Stuart Mill having declared that he failed to find the difference. Size of body, strength of muscle, mass—all of these present decided differences. Due to these differences woman has been termed the defective sex; and authors who were not able to understand these manifest differences, presumed to establish a physiologic difference; to solve a much more difficult and complex question, they raised their voices in praise of their own sex!

"It follows that the difference between the sexes in point of weight of brain and capacity of skull, considered scientifically, can not be scored to the disadvantage of woman. All the facts point to the conclusion that the difference depends upon the weight of the body. There is no anatomical reason to represent woman as a backward and, in point of intelligence, subordinate being, compared with man. I shall presently prove this.

"The proportion between the weight of the brain and the height of the body is smaller with the female than with the male sex.[138] But the fact is easily explained. The height of the body does not actually express the development, or, rather, the weight of the body.

"But when we compare the proportion of the brain-weights we find that women have more brain than men, in childhood as well as throughout life. The difference is not great, but it would be much more considerable, if we did not include in the weight of the body the fat, which is present in much larger quantity with women, and which, as an inert (inactive) mass, has no influence whatever upon the weight of the brain."

Later, in 1883, L. Manouvrier published in the seventh number of the "Revue Scientifique" the following results of his investigations:—

"If we designate with 100 each the weight of the brain, thighbone, skull, and lower jawbone, we find the following weights for woman:—

Brain 88.9 Skull 85.8 Lower jawbone 78.7 Thighbone 62.5

"It is, furthermore, an established fact that the weight of the skeleton (without skull) differs as with the thighbone. Hence we may compare the weight of the brain with that of the thighbone. It follows from the figures given above, that women have, relatively, 26.4 per cent. more brain-mass.

"Let us express the figures herein given somewhat more plastically.

"If a man has 100 grams of brain-mass, woman should have, instead of 100, only 62.5 grams; but she has 88.9 grams,—an excess of 26.4 grams. It follows that if we accept 1,410 grams (according to Wagner) as the average weight of the male brain, the female brain should weigh only 961.25 grams, instead of 1,262: woman, accordingly, has 301.75 grams more brain-mass than the proportion demands. If we take the figures of Huschel we find an excess of 372 grams; finally, the figures of Broca give us an excess of 383 grams. Under otherwise equal conditions woman has between 300 and 400 grams more brain-mass than man."

Although it is by no means proven that, by reason of their brain-mass, women are inferior to men, it is no cause for wonder that, women are mentally such as we know them to-day. Darwin is certainly right when he says that a list of the most distinguished men in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, science and philosophy side by side with a similar list of the most distinguished women on the same fields will not bear comparison with each other. But are we to wonder at that? Wonderful were it if it were otherwise. For that reason Dr. Dodel-Zurich[139] says with perfect right that matters would stand otherwise if through a number of generations women and men were educated equally, and trained in the exercise of those arts and of mental discipline. On an average, woman is also weaker than man, which is by no means the case with many wild peoples.[140] What exercise and training from early youth are able to change in this matter, we may see in the circus women and female acrobats, who in courage, foolhardiness, dexterity and physical strength achieve marvelous feats.

Seeing that such a development is a matter of the conditions of life and education—or, to express it in the naked language of science, of "breeding"—it may be taken for certain that the application of these laws to the physical and mental life of man would lead to the most brilliant results, the moment man sets his hand to the work with full consciousness of his object and his aim.

As plants and animals depend upon the conditions for existence that they live under—promoted by favorable, checked by unfavorable ones—and as forcible conditions compel them to change their appearance and character, provided such conditions are not unfavorable enough to destroy them wholly, so it is with man. The manner in which a person makes his living influences not his external appearance only, it influences also his feelings, his thoughts and his actions.[141] If, accordingly, man's unfavorable conditions of life—defective social conditions—are the cause of defective individual development, it follows that by changing his condition of life, man is himself changed. The question, therefore, is so to change the social conditions that every human being shall be afforded the possibility for the full and unhampered development of his being; that the laws of evolution and adaptation, designated after Darwin as "Darwinian," be consciously rendered effective to humanity. But this is possible only under Socialism.