| Percentage of Males. | |||||
| Percentage of Landed Property by Hectares. | Married of the Age of | Unmarried of the Age of | |||
| Districts. | Up to 5. | 5-20. | Over 20. | 25-30. | 40-50. |
| Upper Neurenburg | 79.6 | 20.4 | 0.0 | 63.6 | 4.4 |
| East of Stuttgart | 78.9 | 17.7 | 3.4 | 51.3 | 8.1 |
| South of Stuttgart | 67.6 | 24.8 | 7.6 | 48.6 | 8.7 |
| North of Stuttgart | 56.5 | 34.8 | 8.8 | 50.0 | 10.0 |
| Schwarzwald | 50.2 | 42.2 | 7.6 | 48.6 | 10.1 |
| Upper Neckar | 43.6 | 40.3 | 16.1 | 44.3 | 10.8 |
| Eastward | 39.5 | 47.6 | 12.8 | 48.7 | 10.0 |
| Northeast, except north of Hall | 22.2 | 50.1 | 27.7 | 38.8 | 10.6 |
| Swabian Alb | 20.3 | 40.8 | 38.3 | 38.8 | 7.5 |
| North Upper Swabia | 19.7 | 48.0 | 32.3 | 32.5 | 9.7 |
| From Hall eastward | 15.5 | 50.0 | 34.5 | 32.5 | 13.8 |
| Bodensee district | 14.2 | 61.4 | 24.4 | 23.5 | 26.4 |
| Middle and South Upper Swabia | 12.6 | 41.1 | 46.3 | 30.0 | 19.1 |
There can be no doubt: small landed property favors marriages: it makes a living possible for a larger number of families, although the living be modest. Large landed property, on the contrary, works directly against marriage, and promotes celibacy. All the figures here quoted prove, accordingly, that, not morals, but purely material causes are the determining factor. The number of marriages, like the moral conditions of a commonwealth, depends upon its material foundations.
The fear of want, the mental worry lest the children be not educated up to their station,—these are further causes that drive the wives, in particular, of all ranks to actions that are out of keeping with nature, and still more so with the criminal code. Under this head belong the various means for the prevention of pregnancy, or, when, despite all care, this does set in, then the removal of the unripe fruit—abortion. It were an error to claim that these measures are resorted to only by heedless, unconscionable women. Often, rather, it is conscientious women, who wish to limit the number of children, in order to escape the dilemma of either having to deny themselves their husbands, or of driving them to paths that they are naturally inclined to. It often is such women who prefer to undergo the dangers of abortion. Besides these, there are other women, especially in the higher walks of life, who, in order to conceal a "slip," or out of aversion for the inconveniences of pregnancy, of child-birth and of nursing, perhaps, out of fear of sooner losing their charms, and then forfeiting their standing with either husband or male friends, incur such criminal acts, and, for hard cash, find ready medical and midwife support.
To conclude from diverse indications, artificial abortion is coming ever more into practice; nor is the practice new. Artificial abortion was in frequent use among the ancient peoples, and is, to this day, from the most civilized down to the barbarous. According to Jules Roget,[80] the women of Rome took recourse to abortion for several reasons: They either sought to destroy the evidence of illicit relations—a reason that even to-day is often at its bottom; or they wished to be able to indulge their excesses without interruption. There were also other reasons: they wished to avoid the changes that pregnancy and child-birth work upon woman's physique. Among the Romans, a woman was old from twenty-five years to thirty. Accordingly, she sought to avoid all that might impair her charms. In the Middle Ages, abortion was punishable with severe bodily chastisement, often even with death; the free woman, guilty thereof, became a serf. At present, abortion is especially in use in the United States. In all large cities of the Union, there are institutions in which girls and women are prematurely delivered: many American papers contain the advertisements of such places: abortion is talked of there almost as freely as of a regular birth. In Germany and Europe, opinion on the subject is different: the German criminal code, for instance, makes the act of both the principal and the accessory a penitentiary offense.[81]
Abortion is, in many cases, accompanied by the most serious results. The operation is dangerous; death not infrequently occurs; often the result is a permanent impairment of health. "The troubles of troublesome pregnancy and child-birth are infinitely less than the sufferings consequent upon artificial abortion."[82] Barrenness is one of its most common consequences. All that, notwithstanding, abortion is practiced also in Germany, ever more frequently, and for the reasons given. Between 1882-1888, the number of cases in Berlin, of which the criminal courts took cognizance, rose 155 per cent. The chronique scandaleuse of the last years dealt frequently with cases of abortion, that caused great sensation, due to the circumstance that reputable physicians and women, prominent in society, played a role in them. Furthermore, to judge from the rising number of announcements in our newspapers, the institutions and places increase in which married and unmarried women of the property class are offered an opportunity to await the results of a "slip" in perfect secrecy.
The dread of a large increase of children—due to the smallness of means, and the cost of bringing up—has, among all classes and even peoples, developed the use of preventatives into a system, that here and yonder has grown into a public calamity. It is a generally known fact that, in all strata of French society, the "two-child system" is in force. In few countries of civilization are marriages relatively as numerous as in France, and in no country is the average number of children so small, and the increase of population so slow. The French capitalist, like the small-holder and allotment peasant, pursues the system; the French workingman follows suit. In many sections of Germany the special situation of the peasants seems to have led to similar conditions. We know a charming region in Southwest Germany, where, in the garden of every peasant, there stands the so-called "Sevenbaum," whose properties are applied to abortive purposes. In another district of the same country the regular two-child system prevails among the peasants: they do not wish to divide the places. Moreover, striking is the measure in which literature, that treats with and recommends the means of "facultative sterility," increases in Germany both in volume and demand,—of course, always under the colors of science, and in allusion to the alleged threatening danger of over-population.
Along with abortion and the artificial prevention of conception, crime plays its role. In France, the murder of children and their exposure is perceptibly on the increase, both promoted by the provision of the French civil code that forbids all inquiry after the paternity of the child. Section 340 of the Code Civil decrees: "La recherche de la paternite est interdite;" on the other hand, Section 314 provides: "La recherche de la maternite est admise." To inquire after the paternity of a child is forbidden, but is allowed after its maternity,—a law that glaringly brings out the injustice contemplated towards the seduced woman. The men of France are free to seduce as many women and girls as they are able to; they are free from all responsibility; they owe no support to the child. These provisions were instituted under the pretext that the female sex should be frightened against seducing the men. As you see, everywhere it is the weak man, this limb of the stronger sex, who is seduced, but never seduces. The result of Section 340 of the Code Civil was Section 312, which provides: "L'enfant conçu pendant le marriage a pour pere le mari."[83] Inquiry after the paternity being forbidden, it is logical that the husband, crowned with horns, rest content with having the child, that his wife received from another, considered his own. Inconsistency, at any rate, can not be charged to the French capitalist class. All attempts to amend Section 340 have so far failed. Lately, February, 1895, the Socialist deputies in the French Chamber of Deputies presented a bill intended to put an end to the disfranchised position of the seduced or betrayed woman. Whether the attempt will be crowned with success is doubtful.
On the other hand, the French capitalist class—sensible of the cruelty it committed in so framing the law as to make it impossible for the deceived woman to turn for support to the father of her child—sought to make up for its sins by establishing foundling asylums. According to our famous "morals," there is no paternal feeling towards the illegitimate child; that exists only for "legitimate heirs." Through the foundlings' asylums the mother also is taken from the new-born child. According to the French fiction, foundlings are orphans. In this way, the French capitalist class has its illegitimate children brought up, at the expense of the State, as "children of the fatherland." A charming arrangement. In Germany, things bid fair to be switched on the French track. The provisions in the bill for a civil code for the German Empire contain maxims on the legal status of illegitimate children, strongly in contrast with the humane law still in force.
According to the bill, a dishonored girl—even if blameless, or seduced with the promise of subsequent marriage, or induced to consent to coition through some criminal act—has no claim against the seducer except as indemnity for the costs of delivery, and for support during the first six weeks after the birth of the child, and then only within the bounds of what is strictly necessary. Only in some of the cases of the worst crimes against morality, can a slight money indemnity be granted to the seduced girl, at the discretion of the court, and without the necessity of proving actual damages. The illegitimate child has no claim upon the seducer of his mother, except for the merest necessaries of life, and then only until its fourteenth year. All claims of the child on its father are, however, barred if, within pregnancy, any other man cohabit with its mother. The plaintiff child has, moreover, to prove that its mother has not accepted the embraces of any other man.