487 had been deflowered
under the age of twenty. In September, 1894, a scandal of first rank
took the stage in Buda-Pest. It appeared that about 400 girls of from
twelve to fifteen years fell prey to a band of rich rakes. The sons of
our "property and cultured classes" generally consider it an attribute
of their rank to seduce the daughters of the people, whom they then
leave in the lurch. Only too readily do the trustful daughters of the
people, untutored in life and experience, and generally joyless and
friendless, fall a prey to the seduction that approaches them in
brilliant and seductive guise. Disillusion, then sorrows, finally
crime,--such are the sequels. Of 1,846,171 live births in Germany in
1891, 172,456 were illegitimate. Only conjure up the volume of worry and
heartaches prepared for a great number of these mothers, by the birth of
their illegitimate children, even if allowance is made for the many
instances when the children are legitimatized by their fathers! _Suicide
by women and infanticide_ are to a large extent traceable to the
destitution and wretchedness in which the women are left when deserted.
The trials for child murder cast a dark and instructive picture upon the
canvas. To cite just one case, in the fall of 1894, a young girl, who,
eight days after her delivery, had been turned out of the lying-in
institute in Vienna and thrown upon the streets with her child and
without means, and who, in her distress and desperation, killed the
infant, _was sentenced to be hanged_ by a jury of Krems in Lower
Austria. About the scamp of a father nothing was said. And how often do
not similar instances occur! The seduced and outrageously deserted
woman, cast helpless into the abyss of despair and shame, resorts to
extreme measures: she kills the fruit of her womb, is dragged before the
tribunals, is sentenced to penitentiary or the gallows. The
unconscionable, and actual murderer,--he goes off scott-free; marries,
perchance, shortly after, the daughter of a "respectable and honest"
family, and becomes a much honored, upright man. There is many a
gentleman, floating about in honors and distinctions, who has soiled his
honor and his conscience in this manner. Had women a word to say in
legislation, much would be otherwise in this direction.

Most cruel of all, as already indicated, is the posture of French
legislation, which forbids inquiry after the child's paternity, and,
instead, sets up foundling asylums. Th