[270] Among 2521 dwellings erected in Wilmersdorf during 1908, the following number were equipped with:
| Central heating | 1001 | or | 39.71 | per | cent. |
| Hot water supply | 1373 | “ | 54.46 | “ | “ |
| Electric light | 1288 | “ | 51.09 | “ | “ |
| Baths | 2063 | “ | 81.83 | “ | “ |
| Elevators | 699 | “ | 27.73 | “ | “ |
| Vacuum cleaners | 304 | “ | 12.06 | “ | “ |
All of them were supplied with gas.
In and near Berlin there also are a number of houses furnished with a central kitchen. In this common kitchen the food for all the residents of the house is prepared. Thus bourgeois society contains all the germs of future transformation. “The garden city of the future will not only contain the town hall, the central gas, electric lighting and heating plant, the schools and libraries, but a central kitchen also. It is not impossible that the underground passages, containing the electric cables and heating-pipes, will be expanded, and that through them small automatic wagons will carry the food directly into the residences upon an order by telephone, similar to the underground, electric mail-carriers that have been planned, for transporting the mail from one post-office to another in the large cities. That is much simpler and can be attained much more easily than the solution of the problem of aerial navigation that still seemed utterly utopian a short while ago.” E. Lilienthal—The Reform of Domestic Work, “Documents of Progress,” 1909.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.
Woman in the Future.]
This chapter may be brief. It merely contains the conclusions that may be drawn in regard to the position of woman in future society, from all that has been said so far; conclusions that every reader can easily draw for himself.
In the new society woman will be entirely independent, both socially and economically. She will not be subjected to even a trace of domination and exploitation, but will be free and man’s equal, and mistress of her own lot. Her education will be the same as man’s, with the exception of those deviations that are necessitated by the differences of sex and sexual functions. Living under normal conditions of life, she may fully develop and employ her physical and mental faculties. She chooses an occupation suited to her wishes, inclinations and abilities, and works under the same conditions as man. Engaged as a practical working woman in some field of industrial activity, she may, during a second part of the day, be educator, teacher or nurse, during a third she may practice a science or an art, and during a fourth she may perform some administrative function. She studies, works, enjoys pleasures and recreation with other women or with men, as she may choose or as occasions may present themselves.
In the choice of love she is as free and unhampered as man. She woos or is wooed, and enters into a union prompted by no other considerations but her own feelings. This union is a private agreement, without the interference of a functionary, just as marriage has been a private agreement until far into the middle ages. Here Socialism will create nothing new, it will merely reinstate, on a higher level of civilization and under a different social form, what generally prevailed before private property dominated society.
Man shall dispose of his own person, provided that the gratification of his impulses is not harmful or detrimental to others. The satisfaction of the sexual impulse is as much the private concern of each individual, as the satisfaction of any other natural impulse. No one is accountable to any one else, and no third person has a right to interfere. What I eat and drink, how I sleep and dress is my private affair, and my private affair also is my intercourse with a person of the opposite sex. Intelligence and culture, personal independence,—qualities that will become natural, owing to the education and conditions prevailing in the new society,—will prevent persons from committing actions that will prove detrimental to themselves. Men and women of future society will possess far more self-control and a better knowledge of their own natures, than men and women of to-day. The one fact alone, that the foolish prudery and secrecy connected with sexual matters will disappear, will make the relation of the sexes a far more natural and healthful one. If between a man and woman who have entered into a union, incompatibility, disappointment or revulsion should appear, morality commands a dissolution of the union which has become unnatural, and therefore immoral. As all those circumstances will have vanished that have so far compelled a great many women either to chose celibacy or prostitution, men can no longer dominate over women. On the other hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed the many hindrances and harmful influences that affect married life to-day and frequently prevent its full development or make it quite impossible.
The impediments, contradictions and unnatural features in the present position of woman are being recognized by ever wider circles, and find expression in our modern literature on social questions, as well as in modern fiction; only the form in which it is expressed sometimes fails to answer the purpose. That present day marriage is not suited to its purpose, is no longer denied by any thinking person. So it is not surprising that even such persons favor a free choice of love and a free dissolution of the marriage relation, who are not inclined to draw the resulting conclusions that point to a change of the entire social system. They believe that freedom in sexual intercourse is justifiable among members of the privileged classes only. In a controversy,[271] in which she opposes the emancipation of women as set forth by the writer, Fanny Lewald, Matilde Reichhardt-Stromberg says the following: