Woman under socialism

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. Hirt127 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 attaché 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.