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.