Now, although modern development has undermined millions of marriages, it has on the other hand influenced the evolution of marriage favorably. Only a few decades ago it was a matter of fact in every citizen’s and peasant’s home, that women not only sewed, knitted, washed, cooked, etc., but that they also baked the bread, spun and weaved, and bleached, brewed beer and manufactured tallow candles and soap. Running water, lighting and heating by gas--not to speak of electricity--besides numerous other modern housefurnishings were unknown in those days. Antiquated conditions persist even to-day, but they are exceptions. The majority of women are relieved from many occupations that were inevitable formerly, because many things can be made better and cheaper industrially than by the individual housewife. Thus, within a few decades a great revolution has taken place in our domestic life to which we pay so little heed, only because we take it for granted. People do not notice transformations even when they take place under their very eyes as long as they are not sudden and disturb the accustomed order, but they resent new ideas that threaten to interfere with their treading of the beaten path. This revolution in our domestic life that is still going on, has considerably changed the position of woman in the family in still another respect. Our grandmother could not and would not think of visiting theatres, concerts and places of amusement even on week days. Nor would any woman in the good old days have dared to bother about public affairs as so many do to-day. At present women organize and join clubs pursuing the most varied, aims, they found newspapers, subscribe to them and edit them and hold conventions. As working women they organize industrially and attend the men’s meetings. In some localities of Germany they even possessed the right to elect members to courts of trade, but of this right the reactionary majority in the diet deprived them again in the year of the Lord, 1890. Although these altered conditions have their dark sides too, the bright sides predominate, and not even any reactionary would wish to abolish them again. The women themselves, regardless of the conservative character of most of them, have no inclination either to return to the old, patriarchal conditions.