Socialism; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women and socialism
The position of women is especially unfavorable in those trades in
which they predominate as, for instance, the clothing trades, and
particularly in those branches in which the workers perform the work
in their own home. Investigations concerning the condition of women
workers in the manufacture of underwear and the clothing trades,
were made in Germany in 1886. This investigation showed among other
things that the miserable pay these workers received frequently
drove them to prostitution.
Our Christian government, whose Christianity is sought in vain where
it is really needful, but is met with where it is superfluous--our
Christian government is like our Christian bourgeoisie, whose
interests it serves. This government finds it exceedingly difficult
to decide upon the enactment of laws which would limit the work of
women to a bearable degree and prohibit child-labor entirely. This
same government also fails to grant a normal work-day and sufficient
rest on Sundays to its own employees, thereby harming their family
relations. Frequently men employed in the mail and railroad service
and in prisons must work many hours overtime without receiving
adequate remuneration.
As the rents are also far too high in comparison with the incomes of
the workers, they must content themselves with the poorest quarters.
Lodgers of one sex or the other, sometimes of both, are taken into
the workingman’s home.[59] Old and young of both sexes live together
in a small space and frequently witness the most intimate relations.
How modesty and decency fare under such conditions, has been shown
by horrible facts. The increasing demoralization and brutalization
of the young that is being discussed so much, is partly due to these
conditions. Child-labor, too, has the worst possible influence on
children, both physically and morally.
The increasing industrial activity of married women has the most
detrimental effect during pregnancy and at child-birth and during the
early babyhood of the children, when they depend upon the mother for
nourishment. During pregnancy it may lead to a number of diseases
that are destructive to the unborn child and harmful to the organism
of the woman, and bring about premature births and still-births. When
the child has been born, the mother is compelled to return to the
factory as soon as possible, lest some one else take her place. The
inevitable result for the poor, little babes is neglect and improper
or insufficient nourishment. They are given opiates to be kept quiet;
and as a further result of all this, they perish in masses or grow
up sickly and deformed. It means race degeneration. Frequently the
children grow up without ever having experienced real parental love.
Thus proletarians are born, live and die; and society and the state
marvel at it that brutality, immorality and crime are increasing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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