August Bebel, in his able book on _Woman and Socialism_, draws a powerful indictment of matrimonial relations under the existing order. To this source, in his view, may be traced the prevalence of sexual crimes and the most dangerous tendencies now threatening the integrity of society. Infanticide, abortion, and prostitution; the decline in the birth and marriage rates; the increase in the number of divorces; the subjection of woman--all these, he says, are due mainly to the influence of the present "coercive marriage." This is so because that "marriage is an institution bound up in the closest way with the existing social order and with it must stand or fall." Coercive marriage is the creature of economic conditions, the "normal marriage" of the present bourgeois society; and with that society it is already in process of disruption. "Since all these unnatural conditions, being especially harmful to woman, are grounded in the nature of the bourgeois society and are growing with its duration, that society is proving itself incapable of remedying the evil and of emancipating woman. Another social order is therefore needful for this purpose." In the new state, economically and socially, woman will be entirely independent. She will no longer be the subject of authority and of exploitation; but, free and equal by man's side she will become "mistress of her own destiny."[799] [799] BEBEL, _Die Frau und der Sozialismus_, 93 ff., 175, 176, 427 ff., 431; or the same in WALTHER'S translation, 43 ff., 229 ff. Compare KARL PEARSON'S discussion of "Socialism and Sex" in his _Ethic of Free Thought_, 427-46; and CAIRD, _Morality of Marriage_, 123-27. Whatever may be thought of the remedy suggested by socialistic writers, whether or not our only hope lies in the co-operative commonwealth, it is certain that they have rendered an important public service. They have earnestly studied and set forth the actual facts. With unsparing hand they have laid bare the flaws in our domestic institutions as they really exist. They have clearly proved that the problems of marriage and the family can be solved only by grasping their relations to the economic system. They have shown that progress lies along the line of the complete emancipation of woman and the absolute equality of the sexes in marriage. In accomplishing all this they have in effect done much to arouse in the popular mind a loftier ideal of wedded life.