The number of men who are prevented from marrying for numerous reasons is constantly increasing. This applies especially to the men of the upper classes and the higher professions; firstly because they are more pretentious, and secondly because these men are best enabled to find companionship and pleasure outside of marriage. Conditions are especially unfavorable to women in places where there are many pensioners with their families, and few young men. There we find from twenty to thirty women among hundred who are unable to marry. The lack of men seeking marriage is most severely felt by those women, who have been accustomed by their social position to require a certain standard of life but who have no dowery. This is especially true of the young girls of those numerous families that depend upon a fixed salary which leaves them socially respectable but poor. These girls often become dangerous competitors to the working girls who earn their living by embroidery, making underwear, making artificial flowers, hats, gloves, etc.; that is, in all those trades in which the employers prefer to have the work done in the homes of the workers. These ladies often work for the lowest wages because they are not obliged to earn their living entirely but only wish to add to the family income or to earn enough to pay for their clothes. Employers favor the competition of these ladies, because it enables them to reduce the wages of the poor proletarian workers and to drive them to the utmost exertion of their strength. Many wives of government officials, whose husbands are poorly paid and cannot maintain them according to their standard of living, also employ their spare time in such sordid competition, which means increased exploitation among large strata of female proletarians.