The condition of the women is worst in the industrial branches in which
they preponderate, for instance, the clothing and underwear industry,
those branches, in general, in which work can be done at home. The
inquiry into the condition of the working-women in the underwear and
confectionery industries, ordered in 1886 by the Bundesrath, has
revealed the fact that the wages of these working-women are often so
miserable that they are compelled to prostitute their bodies for a
side-source of income. A large number of the prostitutes are recruited
from the strata of ill-paid working-women.
Our "Christian" Government, whose Christianity, as a rule, is looked for
in vain there where it should be applied, and is found where the same is
superfluous and harmful,--this Christian Government acts exactly like
the Christian capitalists, a fact that does not astonish him who knows
that the Christian Government is but the agent of our Christian
capitalists. The Government only with difficulty decides in favor of
laws to limit woman-labor to a normal measure, or to wholly forbid
child-labor;--on the same principle that that Government denies many of
its own employes both the requisite Sunday rest and normal hours of
work, and in that way materially disturbs their family life. Post
Office, railroad, penitentiary and other Government employes often must
perform their functions far beyond the time limit, and their salaries
stand in inverse ratio to their work. That, however, is, to-day, the
normal condition of things, still considered quite in order by the
majority.
Seeing, furthermore, that rent, in comparison to the wages and earnings
of the workingmen, the lower Government employes and the small men
included, is much too high, these must exert themselves to the utmost.
Lodgers are taken into these homes, only males in some, females in
others, often both. The young and the old live together in narrow
quarters, without separating the sexes, and are crowded together even
during the most private acts. How the sense of shame, or morality fares
thereby, horrifying facts proclaim. The increasing brutalization of the
youth, so extensively discussed, is due mainly to the conditions
prevalent in our industrial system, with which the wretchedness of the
home is closely connected. And, as to the children, what must be upon
them the effect of industrial labor! The very worst imaginable, both
physically and morally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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