Inversely, a number of capable and healthy men and women remain celibate and sterile for want of money. Capital exploits them as workers and prevents them from reproducing their race; or else their own foresight induces them to avoid procreation.
A characteristic sign is observed in military circles, especially in the German army where officers who are not well-to-do are forbidden to marry a woman unless she has a certain income. The officer must bring up his family in accordance with his position. This system, which it is sought to justify by all kinds of reasons, shows how the worship of the golden calf and class prejudices may degenerate our manners and customs. Without fortune one cannot serve the country as an officer, or marry, except by selling oneself to a rich woman. In other terms, an officer cannot marry according to his own inclination unless he possesses a certain fortune. No doubt there are officers who marry for love; nevertheless, they are not only obliged to have a certain fortune, but the woman they marry must have a certain social position and have been well educated. The wife of an officer has to take part in balls and official gatherings. She is forbidden to carry on openly any business, and her parents must not even be shopkeepers! In a German town, one of my relatives heard a rich mother say to her daughter, who could not make up her mind to marry a gentleman who proposed to her: "If you do not want him, let him go; we do not wish to persuade you. We have plenty of money, and if you want to marry later on we can easily buy you an officer!"
In the tyranny of class marriages, it is money which almost always decides the question. Formerly birth and nobility were everything, and it was these which brought power and fortune; nowadays money has replaced them, and has monopolized universal power. If an energetic and intelligent man revolts, by returning to modest and primitive customs, if he dresses simply, performs manual labor, takes his meals at the same table as his servants, etc., he is despised and is not received into what is called good society.
It is only up to a certain point, and with the exercise of great prudence, that any attempt can be made to react against the whirlwind of our unbridled luxury, and it is in marriage that this becomes most delicate and most difficult. A well-brought-up and well-educated man with no money, who wishes to marry while he is a student, so as to avoid prostitution or other evils; who is content to live in humble quarters with his wife, each doing their own work, will have great difficulty in finding a well-nurtured girl to consent to such an arrangement. Everything has to be regulated according to the fashion, customs and prejudices of the class in which he lives, and this usually renders marriage impossible, as long as he has not what is called a position. But no one will blame the same student for living in concubinage with a grisette. Why cannot the same means of existence which allow concubinage suffice for marriage? With this question I only touch on a problem to which we shall return, at the same time pointing out the canker which corrupts our modern sexual life.
By marriage for money we understand marriage which is based on interest and not on love. It is not always a question of money; for position, name, titles and convenience often complicate the question. Sometimes a ruined aristocrat marries a rich tradesman's daughter, in order to repair his fortune, while the vanity of his fiancée makes a title a desirable acquisition. Sometimes a coquette, by clever flirtation, will simulate a love which she does not feel, to catch a rich man in her net. But more commonly there is calculation on both sides and both are duped.
Marriage for money is not confined to the rich but also occurs among peasants and working people. Everywhere it constitutes one of the principal corrupting elements of sexual intercourse and procreation. Hard-working servants who have succeeded in saving a few hundred dollars are often married for the sake of this small sum, and then abandoned as soon as the husband has squandered it. I do not pretend that a marriage for money can never be happy; it may happen that the contract is an honest one and that love follows it more or less haltingly, especially when the calculators have taken into account character and health, etc., as well as money.
There is no need for me to continue this theme any further, and I shall conclude by stating that this system opens the door to hypocrisy, deceit and abuse of all kinds. It is not without reason that marriage for money has been branded with the name of fashionable prostitution.
PROSTITUTION AND PROXENETISM
Prostitution is a very ancient institution and a sign of degeneration which is found more or less among all nations. When woman is an article for sale it is not surprising that those whose moral worth is weak take the traffic into their own hands when they can, and sell themselves to men to satisfy their sexual appetites, instead of allowing themselves to be passively exploited as articles of commerce. Man being the stronger finds it advantageous in the lower and barbarous states of civilization to monopolize this traffic for his own profit, and deliver the women under his domination to prostitution. We have seen that fathers give their daughters, and husbands their wives to prostitution.
For the same reason, the woman who prostitutes herself in our modern civilization, always runs the risk of being abused without payment; which is not to be wondered at considering the doubtful quality of the usual clients of the prostitute. It is therefore natural that she should seek for a means of protection. She thus takes a male protector, or "bully," whom she pays; or else she joins the service of those who make a business of prostitution—or proxenetism. Proxenetism and protectors are thus the parasites of prostitution.