The civic inequality of woman has provoked among the more advanced members of the female s.e.x demand for political rights, to the end of wielding the power of legislation in behalf of their civic equality. It is the identical thought that moved the working cla.s.s everywhere to direct their agitation towards the conquest of the political powers.
What is right for the working cla.s.s can not be wrong for woman.
Oppressed, disfranchised, relegated everywhere to the rear, woman has not the right only, she has the duty to defend herself, and to seize every means she may deem fit to conquer a more independent position for herself. Against these efforts also the reactionary mob, of course, bristles up. Let us see how.
The great French Revolution, that, as is well known, started in 1789 and threw all old inst.i.tutions out of joint, conjured up a freedom of spirits such as the world had never seen before. Woman also stepped upon the stage. During the previous decades immediately preceding the outbreak of the Revolution, many of them had taken part in the great intellectual struggle that then raged throughout French society. They flocked in swarms to the great scientific discussions, attended political and scientific meetings, and did their share in preparing the Revolution, where theory was to crystalize into fact. Most historians have noted only the excesses of the Revolution,--and as always happens when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror against them--have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling cla.s.s. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, it will ever be thus.
In October, 1789, a number of women pet.i.tioned the National a.s.sembly "that equality be restored between man and woman, work and occupation be given them free, places be left for them that their faculties were fit for."
When in 1793 the Convention proclaimed "_le droit de l"homme_" (the Rights of Man), the more far-seeing women perceived that these were only the rights of males. Olympe de Gouges, Louise Lecombe and others paralleled these "Rights of Man" with 17 articles on the "Rights of Woman," which, on the 28th Brumaire (November 20, 1793) they defended before the Commune of Paris upon the principle: "If woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the tribune." Their demands remained unheeded. When, subsequently, upon the march of monarchic Europe against the Republic, the Convention declared the "Fatherland in danger," and called upon all men, able to carry arms, to defend the Fatherland and the Republic, inspired Parisian women offered to do what twenty years later inspired Prussian women likewise did against the domination of Napoleon,--defend the Fatherland, arms in hand. The radical Chaumette rose against those Parisian women and addressed them, asking: "Since when is it allowed to women to renounce their s.e.x and become men? Since when is it usage for them to abandon the sacred cares of their households, the cradles of their children, and to appear at public places, to speak from the tribunes, to step in the files of the troops,--in short, to fill duties that Nature has devolved upon man alone? Nature said to man: "Be thou _man_! Racing, the chase, the cultivation of the fields, politics and violent labors of all sorts are thy _privilege_!" It said to woman: "Be thou _woman_! The care of thy children, the details of thy household, the sweet inquietudes of motherhood,--that is thy _work_!" Unwise women, why wish you to become men? Is not mankind properly divided? What more can you want? In the name of Nature, remain what you are; and, far from envying us the perils of so stormy a life, rest satisfied to make us forget them in the lap of our families, by allowing our eyes to rest upon the fascinating spectacle of our children, made happy by your tender care."
The women allowed themselves to be silenced, and went away. There can be no doubt that the radical Chaumette voiced the innermost sentiments of most of our men, who otherwise abhor him. We also hold that it is a proper division of work to leave to men the defense of the country, and to women the care of the home and the hearth. In Russia, late in the fall of the year and after they have tended the fields, the men of whole village districts move to distant factories, and leave to the women the administration of the commune and the house. For the rest, the oratorical gush of Chaumette is mere phrases. What he says concerning the labors of the men in the fields is not even correct: since time immemorial down to to-day, woman"s was not the easy part in agriculture.
The alleged labors of the chase and the race course are no "labors" at all: they are amus.e.m.e.nts of men; and, as to politics, it has perils for him only who swims _against_ the stream, otherwise it offers the men at least as much amus.e.m.e.nt as labor. It is the egoism of man that speaks in that speech.
At about the same time when the French Revolution was under way, and engaged the attention of all Europe, a woman rose on the other side of the Channel also, in England, to labor publicly in behalf of equal rights for her s.e.x. She was Mary Wollstoncraft, born in 1759, and who, in 1790, published a book against Edmund Burke, the most violent enemy of the French Revolution. She later, 1792, wrote a second book--"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"--in which she took the stand for absolute equality of rights for her s.e.x. In this book she demands the suffrage for women in the elections for the Lower House. But she met in England with even less response than did her sisters in France.
Ridiculed and insulted by her contemporaries, she went under after trying ordeals. Before the Revolution it was the encyclopedist Condorcet who princ.i.p.ally took the field for the equal rights of both s.e.xes.
To-day, matters lie somewhat differently. Since then, conditions have changed mightily,--the position of woman along with them. Whether married or unmarried, more than ever before woman now has a deep interest in social and political conditions. It can not be a matter of indifference to her whether the Government chains every year to the army hundreds of thousands of vigorous, healthy men; whether a policy is in force that favors wars, or does not; whether the necessaries of life are made dearer by taxes, that promote, besides, the adulteration of food, and are all the harder upon a family in the measure of its size, at a time, at that, in which the means of life are most stingily measured for the large majority. Moreover, woman pays direct and indirect taxes out of her support and her income. Again, the system of education is of highest interest to her: it goes far towards determining the position of her s.e.x: as a mother, she has a double interest therein.
Furthermore, as has been shown, there are to-day millions of women, in hundreds of pursuits, all of them with a lively personal interest in the manner that our laws are shaped. Questions concerning the hours of work; night, Sunday and child-labor; payment of wages and notice of discharge; safety appliances in factory and shop; etc.--all are political questions that concern them as well as the men. Workingmen know little or nothing about conditions in many branches of industry, where women are mainly, or exclusively, engaged. Employers have all the interest in the world to hush up evils that they are responsible for. Factory inspection frequently does not extend to branches of industry in which women are exclusively employed: such as it is, it is utterly inadequate: and yet these are the very branches in which protective measures frequently are most needed. It suffices to mention the workshops in which seamstresses, dressmakers, milliners, etc., are crowded together in our larger cities.
From thence, hardly a complaint issues; thither no investigation has as yet penetrated. Finally, as a trader, woman is also interested in laws on commerce and tariffs. There can, accordingly, be no doubt that woman has an interest and a right to demand a hand in the shaping of things by legislation, as well as man. Her partic.i.p.ation in public life would impart a strong stimulus thereto, and open manifold new vistas.
Such demands, however, are met with the curt rebuff: "Women know nothing of politics, and most of them don"t want to, either; neither do they know how to use the ballot." True, and not true. True enough, until now, very few women, in Germany at least, have ventured to demand political equality also. The first woman, who, as a writer, came out in its favor in Germany was, as far as we know, Frau Hedwig Dohm. More recently, it is mainly the Socialist working-women, who are vigorously agitating for the idea; and their number is ever larger.
Nothing is proved with the argument that women have, until now, shown little interest in the political movement. The fact that, hitherto, women have troubled themselves little about politics, is no proof that they should continue in the same path. The same reasons, advanced to-day against female suffrage, were advanced during the first half of the sixties in Germany against manhood suffrage. Even as late as 1863, the author of this book himself was of those who opposed manhood suffrage; four years later he owed to it his election to the Reichstag. Thousands of others went through the same mill: from Sauls they became Pauls. Many are the men, who either do not care or do not know how to use their important political rights. And yet that fact was no reason to withhold the suffrage from them, and can be none to now deprive them of it. At the Reichstag elections in Germany, 25 to 30 per cent. of the qualified voters do not vote at all. These non-voters are recruited from _all_ cla.s.ses: among them are scientists and laborers. Moreover, of the 70 to 75 per cent. of those who partic.i.p.ate in the election, the majority, according to our judgment, vote in a way that they would not, if they realized their true interests. That as yet they have not realized them comes from defective political training, a training, however, that these 70 to 75 per cent. possess in a higher degree than the 25 to 30 per cent., who stay away altogether. Among the latter, those must be excepted who remain away from the hustings because they cannot, without danger, vote according to their convictions.
Political education is not gained by keeping the ma.s.ses from public affairs; it is gained by admitting them to the exercise of political rights. Practice makes perfect. The ruling cla.s.ses have hitherto found their account in keeping the large majority of the people in political childhood. Hence it has ever been the task of a cla.s.s-conscious minority to battle with energy and enthusiasm for the collective interest of society, and to shake up and drag the large inert ma.s.s after them. Thus has it been in all great Movements: it is neither astonishing nor discouraging that the experience made with the Movement of the working cla.s.s is repeated in the Movement for the emanc.i.p.ation of woman.
Previous successes prove that pains, labor and sacrifices are rewarded; the future brings triumph.
The moment woman acquires equal rights with man, the sense of her duties will be quickened. Called upon to cast her ballot, she will ask, What for? Whom for? Immediately, emulation in many directions will set in between man and woman that, so far from injuring, will materially improve their mutual relations. The less posted woman will naturally turn to the better posted man. Interchange of ideas and mutual instruction follows,--a condition of things until now found most rarely between husband and wife: it will impart a fresh charm to life. The unhappy differences in education and view-points between the two s.e.xes,--differences, that so frequently lead to dissensions between husband and wife, that place the husband at variance with his many-sided duties, and that injure the well-being of all, will be wiped out.
Instead of a clog, the husband will gain a supporter in a compatible wife; whenever prevented by other duties from personal partic.i.p.ation, she will spur her husband to fulfil his own. She will find it legitimate that a fraction of his earnings be spent in a newspaper, for agitational purposes, because the paper serves to educate and entertain her also, and because she realizes the necessity of the sacrifice, a sacrifice that helps to conquer that which she, her husband and her children lack,--an existence worthy of human beings.
Thus, the joining of hands by husband and wife for the common weal, so closely connected with the weal of the individual, will exert a most enn.o.bling influence. The very reverse is called into life of that which is claimed by near-sighted people, or by the foes of a commonwealth based upon the equality of all. Nor would it end there. The relation between the two s.e.xes would be beautiful in the measure that the social inst.i.tutions will liberate husband and wife from material cares and from excessive work. Practice and education will, here as in all other cases, give further aid. If I go not in the water, I shall never learn to swim; if I study no foreign language and do not practice it, I shall never learn to speak it. Everyone finds that natural; and yet many fail to realize that the same holds good in the affairs of government and society. Are our women unfitter than the far lower negroes, to whom full political equality was conceded in North America? And shall a highly intellectual woman be vested with lesser rights than the rudest, least cultured man,--an ignorant day-laborer of the backwoods of Pomerania, or an ultramontane ca.n.a.lman, for instance, and all because accident let these come into the world as men? The son has greater rights than his mother, from whom, perchance, he derives his best qualities, the very qualities that alone make him what he is. Truly wonderful!
Moreover, we in Germany would no longer be running the risk of being the first to take the leap in the dark and the unknown. The United States, England and other countries have opened the way. In the State of Wyoming in the United States, woman suffrage has been tested since 1869. On November 12, 1872, writing from Laramie City, Wyo., on the subject, Judge Kingman says in the Chicago "Women"s Journal":
"Three years ago to-day women obtained the right of electing and of being elected to office in our Territory, in the same manner as the other electors. During this period they have voted and have been voted for; they have exercised the functions of jurors and arbiters; they have taken part in large numbers at our elections, and although I believe that some among us oppose the admission of women from motives of principle, no one, I think, can refuse to recognize that their influence on the elections has been an elevating one. It caused them to be conducted in a more peaceable and orderly manner, and at the same time enabled our courts of justice to discover and punish various kinds of crime that had until then remained unpunished.
"For instance, when the Territory was first organized, there was scarcely a man who did not carry a revolver and make use of it in the slightest dispute. I cannot remember a single case in which a jury composed of men brought in a verdict of guilty against one of those who had shot with a revolver, but when two or three women were among them, they have invariably attended to the instructions of the Court."
In what esteem woman suffrage was held in Wyoming twenty-five years after its introduction, may be gathered from the address issued on November 12, 1894, to the Parliaments of the world by the Legislature of that State. It says:
"The possession and exercise of suffrage by the women in Wyoming for the past quarter of a century has wrought no harm and has done great good in many ways; it has largely aided in banishing crime, pauperism, and vice from this State, and that without any violent or oppressive legislation; it has secured peaceful and orderly elections, good government, and a remarkable degree of civilization and public order; and we point with pride to the facts that after nearly twenty-five years of Woman Suffrage not one county in Wyoming has a poorhouse, that our jails are almost empty, and crime, except that committed by strangers in the State, almost unknown; and as the result of experience we urge every civilized community on earth to enfranchise its women without delay."[154]
While giving fullest credit to the political activity of the women of Wyoming, we cannot go to the extreme, reached by the enthusiastic defenders of woman suffrage in the Legislature of that State, of ascribing exclusively to the ballot in woman"s hands the enviable conditions, which, according to the account of the address, Wyoming rejoices in. A number of social causes of other nature contribute thereto. Nevertheless, the fact is unquestionable that female suffrage has been accompanied by the most beneficent results for that State, and without one disadvantage. That is the most brilliant justification of its introduction.
The example of Wyoming found followers. To-day there are a number of countries in which woman enjoys political rights to greater or less extent. In the United States, women obtained several years ago the ballot in Colorado, and in 1894 they elected a number of representatives; likewise in Arizona, and still more recently in Minnesota. In New Zealand, they took a lively part in the parliamentary elections of 1893, livelier, in fact, than the men, although they were only qualified to elect: only men were qualified to be elected. In March, 1894, the Prime Minister declared to a deputation of women that he would advocate their qualification to be elected. In 1893, there were twenty-two States in the North American Union where women were qualified both to elect and be elected for the School Boards. In Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Oregon, Arizona, Dakota, Idaho, Minnesota and Montana they are fully qualified electors for munic.i.p.al officers, provided they are resident citizens. In Argonia, Kans., the wife of a physician was elected Mayor;[155] the same thing happened in Onehunga, New Zealand.
Since more than ten years ago, women in Sweden have the suffrage for departmental and munic.i.p.al elections, under the same restrictions as men.
In England, the struggle, for woman"s political rights has a regular history behind it. According to the old custom of the Middle Ages, women, seized of landed property, were also vested with the suffrage, and, as such also filled judicial functions. In the course of time they lost these rights. In the bill for Parliamentary Reform in 1832, the word "person" was used, a term that, according to English conceptions, includes the members of both s.e.xes, men and women. This notwithstanding, the law was interpreted adversely to women and they were turned back wherever they made the effort to vote. In the electoral reform Act of 1867, the word "man" was subst.i.tuted for the word "person." John Stuart Mill moved the re-insertion of "person" in place of "man," with the express purpose that women shall be vested with the suffrage under the same conditions as men. The motion was defeated by 196 votes against 83.
Sixteen years later, 1883, the attempt was again made in the Lower House to grant women the suffrage. A motion to that effect was defeated by a majority of 16. A further attempt in 1884 was defeated in a fuller House by more than 136 votes. But the minority did not evacuate the field. In 1886 it succeeded in carrying to a second reading a motion to grant women the suffrage; but the dissolution of Parliament prevented a final vote being taken. Again, on April 27, 1892, the Lower House defeated with 175 votes against 152, the second reading of a motion on the subject presented by Sir A. Rollit, and which provided as follows:
"Every woman who in Great Britain is registered or ent.i.tled to be registered as an elector for a Town Council or County Council or who in Ireland is a rate payer ent.i.tled to vote in the election of Guardians of the Poor, shall be ent.i.tled to be registered as a Parliamentary elector, and when registered, to vote at any Parliamentary election for the county, borough, or division wherein the qualifying property is situate."
On November 29, 1888, Lord Salisbury held a speech in Edinburgh, in the course of which he said: "I earnestly hope that the day is not far distant when women also will bear their share in voting for members in the political world and in the determining the policy of the country."
And Alfred Russell Wallace, celebrated as a naturalist and follower of Darwin, expressed himself upon the same question this wise: "When men and women shall have freedom to follow their best impulses, when both shall receive the best possible education, when no false restraints shall be imposed upon any human being by the reason of the accident of s.e.x, and when public opinion shall be regulated by the wisest and best and shall be systematically impressed upon youth, then shall we find that a system of human selection will arise that is bound to have a reformed humanity for its result. So long as woman is compelled to regard marriage as a means by which to escape poverty and avoid neglect, she is and remains at a disadvantage with man. Hence, the first step in the emanc.i.p.ation of woman is the removal of all restraints that prevent her from competing with man on all the fields of industry and in all pursuits. But we must go further, and allow woman the exercise of her _political rights_. Many of the restraints, under which woman has suffered until now, would have been spared to her, had she had direct representation in Parliament."
In most sections of England, married women have the same political rights as men in the elections for the School Boards and Guardians of the Poor, and in many places are themselves qualified for election. At the county elections, _unmarried_ women have the right to vote under the same restrictions as men, but are not themselves qualified for election.
Likewise did all independent tax-paying women obtain the right to vote by the Reform Act of 1869, but are not qualified for election. _Married women_ are in virtue of a court decision, rendered in 1872, excluded from the suffrage, because _in English law woman loses her independence by marriage_--a decided encouragement for women to keep away from the legal formality of legitimate marriage. Seeing that also in other respects unmarried or divorced women in England and Scotland are clothed with rights denied to married women, the temptation is not slight for women to renounce legitimate unions. It is not exactly the part of wisdom for the male representatives of bourgeois society to degrade bourgeois marriage into a sort of slave status for woman.[156]
In Austria, women who are landed proprietors, or conduct a business, to which the suffrage is attached, have the right to exercise the privilege _by attorney_. This holds both for local and Reichstag elections. If the woman is proprietor of a mercantile or industrial establishment, which gives the right to vote for the Chamber of Commerce, her franchise must be exercised by a business manager. In France, on the contrary, a woman who conducts a business, has a right to vote at the election of members for the tribunals of commerce, but she cannot herself be elected.
According to the law of 1891 of the old Prussian provinces, women have the suffrage, if the landed property that belongs to them conveys the right to vote, nevertheless they must exercise the privilege through a male representative, neither are they eligible themselves. Likewise according to the laws of Hanover, Brunswick, Schleswig-Holstein, Sachsen-Weimar, Hamburg and Luebeck. In Saxony, the law allows women the suffrage if they are landed proprietors and are _unmarried_. If married, the woman"s vote goes to her husband. In all these cases, accordingly, the right of suffrage does not attach to persons but to property--quite a light upon existing political and legal morality: Man, thou art zero if moneyless or propertyless; knowledge, intellect are secondary matters. Property decides.
We see that the principle of denying woman the suffrage on the theory of her not being "of age" is broken through in fact; and yet objection is raised to granting her the right in full. It is said that to grant woman the suffrage is dangerous because she yields easily to religious prejudices, and is conservative. She is both only because she is ignorant. Let her be educated and taught where her interests lie. For the rest, the influence of religion on elections is exaggerated.
Ultramontane agitation has. .h.i.therto been so successful in Germany only because it knew how to join _social with religious interests_. The ultramontane chaplains long vied with the Socialists in uncovering the social foulness. Hence their influence with the ma.s.ses. With the close of the Kulturkampf, the influence of the Catholic clergymen upon the ma.s.ses waned. The clergy is forced to discontinue its opposition to the Government; simultaneously therewith, the rising cla.s.s struggle compels it to consider the Catholic capitalist cla.s.s and Catholic n.o.bility; it will, accordingly, be compelled to observe greater caution on the social field. Thus the clergy will forfeit its influence with the workingmen, especially at such critical junctures when considerations for the Government and the ruling cla.s.ses drive it to approve of, or tolerate actions and laws directed against the interests of the working cla.s.s.
The same causes will, in the end, have their influence upon woman. When at public meetings, through newspapers and from personal observation she will have learned where her own interest lies, woman will emanc.i.p.ate herself from the clergy, the same as man has done. The fiercest opponent of female suffrage is the clergy, and it knows the reason why. Its rule and its domains are endangered.
That the movement for the political rights of woman has not been promptly crowned with greater success is no reason to withhold the ballot from her. What would the workingmen say if the Liberals proposed abolishing manhood suffrage--and the same is very inconvenient to them--on the ground that it benefits the Socialists in particular? A good law does not become bad by reason of him who wields it not yet having learned its right use.
Naturally, the right to be elected should go together with the right to elect. "A woman in the tribune of the Reichstag, that would be a spectacle!" we hear people exclaim. Our generation has grown accustomed to the sight of women in the speaker"s tribune at their conventions and meetings; in the United States, also in the pulpit and the jury box--why not, then, also in the tribune of the Reichstag? The first woman elected to the Reichstag, would surely know how to impose respect. When the first workingmen entered the Reichstag it was also believed they could be laughed down, and it was claimed that the working cla.s.s would soon realize the foolishness it had committed in electing such people. Its representatives, however, knew how to make themselves quickly respected; the fear to-day is lest there be too many of them. Frivolous witlings put in: "Just imagine a pregnant woman in the tribune of the Reichstag; how utterly unesthetic!" The identical gentlemen find it, however, quite in order that pregnant women work at the most unesthetic trades, at trades in which female dignity, health and decency are undermined. In the eyes of a Socialist, that man is a wretch who can crack jokes over a woman with child. The mere thought that his own mother once looked like that before she brought him into the world, should cause his cheeks to burn with shame; the thought that he, rude jester, expects from a similar condition on the part of his wife the fulfillment of his dearest wishes should cause him, furthermore, to hold his tongue in shame.
_A woman who gives birth to children renders, at least, the same service to the commonwealth as the man who defends his country and his hearth with his life against a foe in search of conquests._ Moreover, the life of a woman trembles in the scales at child-birth. All our mothers have looked death in the face at our births, and many succ.u.mbed. _The number of women who die as a result of child-birth, or who as a consequence pine away in sickness, is greater than that of the men who fall on the field of battle, or are wounded._ In Prussia, between 1816-1876, not less than 321,791 women fell a prey to child-birth fever--a yearly average of 5,363. This is by far a larger figure than that of the Prussians, who, during the same period, were killed in war or died of their wounds. Nor must, at the contemplation of this enormous number of women who died of child-birth fever, the still larger number of those be lost sight of, who, as a consequence of child-birth, are permanently crippled in health, and die prematurely.[157] These are additional reasons for woman"s equal rights with man--reasons to be held up especially to those, who play man"s duty to defend the Fatherland as a decisive circ.u.mstance, ent.i.tling them to superior consideration to women. For the rest, in virtue of our military inst.i.tutions, most men do not even fill this duty: to the majority of them it exists upon paper only.
All these superficial objections to the public activity of woman would be unimaginable were the relations of the two s.e.xes a natural one, and were there not an antagonism, artificially raised side by side with the relation of master and servant between the two. From early youth the two are separated in social intercourse and education. Above all, it is the antagonism, for which Christianity is responsible, that keeps the s.e.xes steadily apart and the one in ignorance about the other, and that hinders free social intercourse, mutual confidence, a mutual supplementing of traits of character.
One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized society must be to end this unhallowed split, and to reinstate Nature in its rights. The violence done to Nature starts at school: First, the separation of the s.e.xes; next, mistaken, or no instruction whatever, in matters that concern the human being as a s.e.xual ent.i.ty. True enough, natural history is taught in every tolerably good school. The child learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them out: he also learns when the mating season begins: that males and females are needed: that both jointly a.s.sume the building of the nests, the hatching and the care of the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth live young: he learns about the rutting season and about the fights of the males for the females during the same: he learns the usual number of young, perhaps also the period of pregnancy. But on the subject of the origin and development of his own stock he remains in the dark; that is veiled in mystery. When, thereupon, the child seeks to satisfy his natural curiosity with questions addressed to his parents, to his mother in particular--he seldom ventures with them to his teacher--he is saddled with the silliest stories that cannot satisfy him, and that are all the more injurious when he some day does ascertain the truth. There are probably few children who have not made the discovery by the twelfth year of their age. In all small towns, in the country especially, children observe from earliest years the mating of birds, the copulation of domestic animals; they see this in closest proximity, in the yard, on the street, and when the cattle are turned loose. They see that the conditions under which the heat of the cattle is gratified, as well as the act of birth of the several domestic animals are made the subject of serious, thorough and undisguised discussion on the part of their parents, elder brothers and servants. All that awakens doubts in the child"s mind on the accounts given him of his own entry into life.
Finally the day of knowledge does come; but it comes in a way other than it would have come under a natural and rational education. The secret that the child discovers leads to estrangement between child and parents, particularly between child and mother. The reverse is obtained of that which was aimed at in folly and shortsightedness. He who recalls his own youth and that of his young companions knows what the results frequently are.
An American woman says, among other things in a work written by her, that wishing to answer the repeated questions of her eight-year-old son on his origin, and unwilling to saddle him with nursery tales, she disclosed the truth to him. The child listened to her with great attention, and, from the day that he learned what cares and pains he had caused his mother, he clung to her with a tenderness and reverence not noticed in him before, and showed the same reverence toward other women also.[158] The auth.o.r.ess proceeds from the correct premises that only by means of a natural education can any real improvement--more respect and self-control on the part of the male toward the female s.e.x--be expected.
He who reasons free from prejudice will arrive at no other conclusion.
Whatever be the point of departure in the _critique_ of our social conditions, the conclusion is ever the same--their _radical transformation_; thereby a radical transformation in the position of the s.e.xes is inevitable. Woman, in order to arrive all the quicker at the goal, must look for allies whom, in the very nature of things, the movement of the working cla.s.s steers in her direction. Since long has the cla.s.s-conscious proletariat begun the storming of the fortress, the Cla.s.s-State, which also upholds the present domination of one s.e.x by the other. That fortress must be surrounded on all sides with trenches, and a.s.sailed to the point of surrender with artillery of all calibre. The besieging army finds its officers and munitions on all sides. Social and natural science, jointly with historical research, pedagogy, hygiene and statistics are advancing from all directions, and furnish ammunition and weapons to the movement. Nor does philosophy lag behind. In Mainlaender"s "The Philosophy of Redemption,"[159] it announces the near-at-hand realization of the "Ideal State."
The ultimate conquest of the Cla.s.s-State and its transformation is rendered all the easier to us through the divisions in the ranks of its defenders, who, despite the oneness of their interests against the common enemy, are perpetually at war with one another in the strife for plunder. Further aid comes to us from the daily-growing mutiny in the ranks of the enemies, whose forces to a great extent are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh--elements that, out of misunderstanding and misled, have hitherto fought against us and thus against themselves, but are gradually becoming clearsighted, and pa.s.s over to us. Finally we are aided by the desertion of the honorable elements from the ranks of the hitherto hostile men of thought, who have perceived the truth, and whose higher knowledge spurs them to leap their low cla.s.s interests, and, following their ideal aspirations after justice, join the ma.s.ses that are thirsting for freedom.
Many do not yet realize the stage of dissolution that State and Society are in. Hence, and although the dark blotches have been frequently pointed out in the preceding chapters, a separate treatment of the subject is requisite.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Louis Bridel, "La Puissance Maritale," Lausanne, 1879.
[152] In the presentation of these civil rights we have merely followed Louis Bridel"s work: "Le Droit des Femmes et le Marriage," Paris, 1893.
[153] How correct this view is transpires also from the comedy of Aristophanes: "The Popular a.s.sembly of Women." In that comedy, Aristophanes depicts how the Athenian government had reached the point when everything was going at sixes and sevens. The Prytaneum put the question to the popular a.s.sembly of the Athenian citizens: "How is the State to be saved?" Thereupon a woman, disguised as a man, made the proposition to entrust the helm of State to the women, and the proposition was accepted without opposition "because it was the only thing that had never before happened in Athens." The women seized the helm, and forthwith inst.i.tuted _communism_. Of course, Aristophanes turns this condition into ridicule, but the significant point in the play is that, the moment the women had a decisive word in public affairs, they inst.i.tuted communism as the only rational political and social condition from the standpoint of their own s.e.x. Aristophanes little dreamed how he hit the truth while meaning to joke.
[154] The above two paragraphs are left as they appear in the text, although they seem to be subject to corrections.
A diligent search in the libraries of this city for the original of the above "Address to the Parliaments of the World," stated to have been issued by the Legislature of Wyoming in 1894, having proved vain, the Secretary of the State of Wyoming was written to. His answer was: