Woman and Socialism

by August Bebel

King Louis XIV. of France, who had decimated his people by his numerous wars, found it necessary to counteract this devastation by exempting from taxes for from four to five years all taxpayers, who constituted a great majority of the population, if they became married before the twentieth or twenty-first year of age. Complete exemption from taxes was, furthermore, guaranteed to all who had ten living children, provided that none of these had become a priest, a monk or a nun. Noblemen having the same number of children, provided that none of them had become priests, monks or nuns, received an annual pension of from 1,000 to 2,000 livres. Citizens not subject to taxation under the same conditions received one-half of this amount. Marshal Maurice of Saxony even advised Louis XV. not to permit marriages to be contracted for a longer period than five years.

In Prussia, by laws enacted in the years 1688, 1721, 1726 and 1736, and by various government measures, endeavors were made to encourage immigration; especially were the immigrants welcomed who had been subjected to religious persecution in France and Austria. The theories in regard to population maintained by Frederick the Great were expressed with brutal frankness in a letter written by him to Voltaire on the 26th of August 1741. He wrote: “I consider men as a herd of deer in the deer park of some great lord, having no other task but to populate the park.” By his wars he certainly made it necessary to have his deer park repopulated. In Austria, Wurtemberg and Brunswick immigration was also encouraged and there, as in Prussia, emigration was forbidden. Furthermore, in the course of the eighteenth century, England and France removed all obstacles to marriage and settlement, and other nations followed their example. During three-fourths of the eighteenth century political economists as well as the governments considered a large population the greatest good fortune to the state. Only at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century a reversion of opinion took place. This was due to economic crises and to warlike and revolutionary events, that continued during the first half of the nineteenth century, especially in Germany and Austria. The age at which marriage was permitted was raised again, and proofs were required showing that the contracting parties were assured of a certain amount of wealth or a secure income, and could maintain a given standard of living. To the destitute, marriage was made impossible, and the municipalities were given a great influence in determining under what conditions marriages might be contracted. Occasionally peasants were even forbidden to build their little homes, or compelled to tear them down when they had been built without princely permission. Only in Prussia and Saxony the marriage laws remained comparatively liberal. Since human nature will not be suppressed, the result of all these hindrances to marriage was, that in spite of all the harassing and persecution, illicit relations greatly increased, and that in some German states the number of illegal children was almost as great as that of the legal ones. Such was the fruit of a paternal government that prided itself on its Christian morality.

[3.—The French Revolution and the Rise of Industry.]

In those days the married woman of the middle class lived in severe domestic retirement. The number of her domestic duties was so large, that it was necessary for the conscientious housewife to be at her post from morning till night, and frequently she could accomplish all her tasks only with the aid of her daughters. It was necessary to perform not only those daily domestic tasks that are still performed by the present-day housekeeper, but also many others from which modern woman has been freed by the industrial development. She had to spin, weave and bleach, cut and sew all the garments, manufacture tallow-candles and soap, and brew the beer. She was indeed a perfect Cinderella and her only relaxation was going to church on Sunday. Marriages were contracted only within the same social circle. A severe and ridiculous caste feeling dominated all social relations. The daughters were educated in the same spirit and were maintained in close domestic confinement. Their education was insignificant, and their intellectual horizon did not extend beyond the commonplace domestic relations. To this was added an empty superficial formality, that was supposed to make up for the lack of intellect and education, making woman’s life a sheer treadmill. The spirit of the reformation had degenerated into the worst kind of pedantry; the most natural human desires and the joy of life were crushed beneath a mass of apparently dignified, but soul-killing rules of behavior. Emptiness and narrow-mindedness dominated the middle class, and the lower classes lived under a leaden pressure and in wretched conditions.

Then came the French revolution. It swept away the old political and social order in France, and also wafted a breath of its spirit to Germany, that could not long be resisted. French rule especially had a revolutionizing effect upon Germany; it swept away what was old and decrepit or, at least hastened its destruction. Though strenuous efforts were made during the reactionary period after 1815 to turn the course of development backward, the new conceptions had become too powerful and were victorious in the end.

Guild privileges, lack of personal freedom, market privileges and proscription were gradually laid on the shelf in the more advanced states. New mechanical inventions and improvements, especially the invention of the steam engine, and the resultant cheapening of commodities, provided employment for the masses, including also the women. Capitalistic industry was born. Factories, railroads and steamboats were built, mines and foundries, the manufacture of glass and china, the textile industry in its various branches, manufacture of tools and machinery, the building trades, etc., rapidly developed. Universities and polytechnical institutes provided the intellectual forces required by this evolution. The new class that had come into existence, the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, supported by all those who favored progress, insisted upon the abolition of conditions that had become untenable. What had been shaken by the revolution from below during the movement of 1848 and 1849, was finally abolished by the revolution from above in 1866. Political unity, according to the desire of the bourgeoisie, was established, and this was followed by the final overthrow of all the remaining economic and social barriers. Freedom of trade, right of settlement and emigration, and the repeal of laws restricting marriage followed, creating those conditions that capitalism needed for its development. Besides the workingman, woman was the one to profit chiefly by this new development, since it opened up to her new avenues and brought her greater freedom.

Even before the new order had been introduced by the transformations of the year 1866, several German states had removed a number of the old, rigid barriers, which caused pedantic reactionaries to predict the destruction of decency and morality. In 1863 the Bishop of Mayence, von Ketteler, lamented that “to abolish the existing barriers to marriage meant the destruction of marriage itself, since now married couples were enabled to leave each other at will.” This lament contains the unintentional confession that in modern marriages the moral bonds are so weak, that man and wife can be kept together only by force.

Since marriages now were contracted much more frequently than before this period, a rapid increase of population resulted. This fact, and the fact that the new, rapidly developing industrial system created social problems that had not previously existed, caused the fear of over-population to spring up again, as it did in former periods. It will be shown what this fear of over-population amounts to; we will test its true value.