--more docile and submissive, and less exacting woman--in
comparison with man. Hence the number of trades and occupations, in
which women are finding employment increases yearly. The extension and
improvement of machinery, the simplification of the process of
production through the ever minuter subdivision of labor, the intenser
competition of capitalists among themselves, together with the
competitive battle in the world's market among rival industrial
countries,--all these continue to favor the ever further application of
female labor. It is a phenomenon noticeable in all industrial countries
alike. But in the same measure that the number of working-women
increases, competition among the workingmen is thereby intensified. One
branch of industry after another, one branch of work after the other, is
being taken by working-women, who are ever more displacing the men.
Numerous passages in the reports of factory inspectors, as well as in
the statistical figures on the occupation of working-women, go to
confirm the fact.

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