Woman under socialism Part 32

People who, like Eugen Richter, indignate at the idea of a young mother being placed in a lying-in establishment, where she is surrounded by all that to-day is possible only to the very wealthiest, and which even these cannot furnish in the fullness attainable at inst.i.tutions especially equipped for the purpose--such people we wish to remind of the fact that, to-day, at least four-fifths of the population are born under the most primitive circ.u.mstances and conditions, that are a disgrace to our civilization. Of the remaining one-fifth of our mothers, only a minority is able to enjoy the nursing and comforts that should be bestowed upon a woman in that state. _The fact is that in cities with excellent provisions for child-birth--Berlin for instance, and all University cities--even to-day not a few women resort to such inst.i.tutions as soon as they feel their time approaching, and await their delivery. Unfortunately, however, the expenses at such inst.i.tutions are so high, that but few women can use them, while others are held back by prejudice._ Here again we have an instance of how everywhere bourgeois society carries in its own lap the germ of the future order.

For the rest, maternity among the rich has a unique taste; the maternal duties are transferred as soon as possible to a _proletarian nurse_. As is well known, the Wendt Lausitz (Spreewald) is the region that the women of the Berlin bourgeoisie, who are unwilling or unable to nurse their own babies, draw their wet-nurses from. The "cultivation of nurses" is there carried on as a peculiar trade. It consists in the girls of the district causing themselves to be impregnated, with the end in view of being able, after the birth of their own children, to hire themselves out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered praiseworthy and desirable.

So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence.

Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215]

The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work, connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both s.e.xes follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy, physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits--manufacturing, horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production, etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several branches of science.

The same process of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when "religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new social order. All the means of education and of study, clothing and support are furnished by society; no pupil is at a disadvantage with another.[216] That is another chapter at which our "men of law and order" bristle up indignantly.[217] "The school-house is to be turned into barracks; parents are to be deprived of all influence upon their children!" is the cry of our adversaries. All false! Seeing that in the future society parents will have infinitely more time at their disposal than is the case to-day with the large majority--we need but to call attention to the ten to fifteen hour day of many workingmen in the post office, the railroads, the prisons, the police department, and to the demands made upon the time of the industrial workers, the small farmers, merchants, soldiers, many physicians, etc.--it follows that they will be able to devote themselves to their children in a measure that is impossible to-day. _Moreover, the parents themselves have the regulation of education in their hands; it is they who determine the measures that shall be adopted and introduced. We are then living in a thoroughgoing democratic society. The Boards of Education, which will exist, of course, are made up of the parents themselves--men and women--and of those following the educational profession._ Does any one imagine they will act against their own interests? That happens only to-day when the State seeks but to enforce its own exclusive interests.

Our opponents furthermore demean themselves as though to-day one of the greatest pleasures of parents was to have their children about them all day long, and to educate them. It is just the reverse in reality. What hards.h.i.+ps and cares are to-day caused by the education of a child, even when a family has but one of them, those parents are best able to judge who are themselves so situated. Several children, in a manner, facilitate education, but then again they give rise to so much more trouble that their father and especially the mother, who is the one to bear the heaviest burden, is happy when the school hour arrives, and thus the house is rid of the children for a portion of the day. Most parents can afford but a very imperfect education to their children.

The large majority of fathers and mothers lack time; the former have their business, the latter their household to attend to, and their time is furthermore taken up with social duties. Even when they actually have time, in innumerable instances they lack the ability. How many parents are able to follow the course of their children's education at school, and to take them under the arm in their schoolwork at home? Only few.

The mother, who in most such cases has greater leisure at her disposal, lacks capacity; she has not herself received sufficient training.

Moreover, the method and the courses of education change so frequently that these are strange to the parents.

Again, the home facilities are generally so poor that the children enjoy neither the necessary comfort, nor order, nor quiet to do their schoolwork at home, or to find there the needed aid. Everything necessary is generally wanting. The home is narrow and overcrowded; small and grown-up brothers and sisters move about over that narrow s.p.a.ce; the furniture is not what it should be, and furnishes no facilities to the child for study. Not infrequently light, also air and heat are wanting; the materials for study and work, if there be any of them, are poor; frequently even hunger gnaws at the stomach of the child and robs it of mind and pleasure for its work. As a supplement to this picture, the fact must be added that hundreds of thousands of children are put to all manner of work, domestic and industrial, that embitters their youth and disables them from fulfilling their educational task.

Again, often do children have to overcome the resistance of narrow-minded parents when they try to take time for their schoolwork or for play. In short, the obstacles are so numerous that, if they are all taken into account, the wonder is the youth of the land is as well educated. It is an evidence of the health of human nature, and of its inherent ambition after progress and perfection.

Bourgeois society itself recognizes some of these evils by the introduction of public education and by facilitating the same still more through the free supply, here and there, of school material--two things that, as late as about the year 1885 the then Minister of Education of Saxony designated as a "Social Democratic demand," and as such flung the designation in the face of the Socialist Representative in the Landtag.

In France, where, after long neglect, popular education advanced so much more rapidly, progress has gone still further. At least in Paris, the school children are fed at public expense. The poor obtain food free, and the children of parents who are better circ.u.mstanced contribute thereto a slight tax toward the common treasury--a communistic arrangement that has proved satisfactory to parents and children alike.

An evidence of the inadequacy of the present school system--it is unable to fulfil even the moderate demands made upon it--is the fact that thousands upon thousands of children _are unable to fulfil their school duties by reason of insufficient food_. In the winter of 1893-94, it was ascertained in Berlin that _in one school district alone 3,600 children went to school without breakfast_. In such shocking conditions there are hundreds of thousands of children in Germany to-day at certain seasons of the year. With millions of others the nourishment is utterly insufficient. For all these children public alimentation and clothing also would be a G.o.dsend. A commonwealth that pursued such a policy and thus, by the systematic nouris.h.i.+ng and clothing of the children, would bring humanity home to them, is not likely to see the sight of "penitentiaries." Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of such misery, which itself has called forth. Hence we see compa.s.sionate souls foregathering in the establishment of breakfast and soup houses, to the end of partially filling by means of charity what it were the duty of society to fill in full. Our conditions are wretched--_but still more wretched is the mental make-up of those who shut their eyes to such facts_.

The system of reducing so-called home school work, and of having the same done at school under the supervision of a teacher is progressing; the inadequacy of home facilities is realized. Not only is the richer pupil at an advantage over the poorer by reason of his position, but also by reason of his having private teachers and such other a.s.sistance at his command. On the other hand, however, laziness and s.h.i.+ftlessness are promoted with the rich pupil by reason of the effects of wealth, luxury and superfluity; these make knowledge appear superfluous to him, and often they place before him such immoral sights that he easily slides into temptation. He who every day and every hour hears the praises sung of rank, position, money, property, and that they are all-essential, acquires abnormal conceptions regarding man and his duties, and regarding State and social inst.i.tutions.

Closely looked into, bourgeois society has no reason to feel indignant at the communistic education, which Socialists aim at. Bourgeois society has itself partly introduced such a system for the privileged cla.s.ses, but only as a caricature of the original. Look at the cadet and alumni establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children, partly from the so-called upper cla.s.ses, are educated in a one-sided and wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better situated cla.s.ses, who live in the country or in small places as physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords, large farmers, etc., send their children to boarding schools in the large cities and barely get a glimpse of them, except possibly during vacations.

There is, accordingly, an obvious contradiction between the indignation expressed by our adversaries at a communistic system of education and at "the estrangement of children from their parents," on the one hand, and their own conduct, on the other, in _introducing the identical system for their own children--only in a bungling, absolutely false and inadequate style_.

In equal tempo with the increased opportunities for education must the number of teachers increase. In the matter of the education of the rising generations the new social order must proceed in a way similar to that which prevails in the army, in the drilling of soldiers. There is one "under-officer" to each eight or ten men. With one teacher to every eight or ten pupils, the future may expect the results that should be aimed at.

The introduction of mechanical activities in the best equipped workshops, in garden and field work, will const.i.tute a good part of the education of the youth. It will all be done with the proper change and without excessive exertion, to the end of reaching the most perfectly developed beings.

Education must also be equal and in common for both s.e.xes. Their separation is justifiable only in the cases where the difference in s.e.x makes such separation absolutely necessary. In this manner of education the United States is far ahead of us. There education of the two s.e.xes is in common from the primary schools up to the universities. Not only is education free, but also school materials, inclusive of the instruments needed in manual training and in cooking, as also in chemistry, physics, and the articles needed for experimenting and at bench-work. To many schools are attached gymnastic halls, bath houses, swimming basins and playgrounds. In the higher schools, the female s.e.x is trained in gymnastics, swimming, rowing and marching.[218]

The Socialist system of education, properly regulated and ordered and placed under the direction of a sufficient force, continues up to the age when society shall determine that its youth shall enter upon their majority. Both s.e.xes are fully qualified to exercise all the rights and fill all the duties that society demands from its adult members. Society now enjoys the certainty of having brought up only thorough, fully developed members, human beings to whom nothing natural is strange, as familiar with their nature as with the nature and conditions of society which they join full-righted.

The daily increasing excesses of our modern youth--all of them the inevitable consequences of the present tainted and decomposing state of society--will have vanished. Impropriety of conduct, disobedience, immorality and rude pleasure-seeking, such as is especially noticeable among the youth of our higher educational inst.i.tutions--the gymnasia, polytechnics, universities, etc.--vices that are incited and promoted by the existing demoralization and unrest of domestic life, by the poisonous influence of social life such as the immoral literature that wealth procures--all these will likewise have vanished. In equal measure will disappear the evil effects of the modern factory system and of improper housing, that dissoluteness and self-a.s.surance of youths at an age when the human being is most in need of reining and education in self-control. All these evils future society will escape without the need of coercive measures. The nature of the social inst.i.tutions and of the mental atmosphere, that will spring from them and that will rule society itself, rendering impossible the breaking out of such evils; as in Nature disease and the destruction of organisms can appear only when there is a state of decay that invites disease; so likewise in society.

No one will deny that our present system of instruction and of education suffers of serious defects--the higher schools and educational establishments even more so than the lower. The village school is a paragon of moral health compared with the college; common schools for the manual training of poor girls are paragons of morality compared with many leading boarding schools for girls. The reason is not far to seek.

In the upper cla.s.ses of society, every aspiration after higher human aims is smothered; _those cla.s.ses no longer have any ideal_. As a consequence of the absence of ideals and of n.o.ble endeavor, an unbounded pa.s.sion for physical indulgence and hankering after excesses spread their physical and moral gangrene in all directions. How else can the youth be that is brought up in such an atmosphere? Purely material indulgence, without stint and without bounds, is the only aim that it sees or knows of. Why exert themselves, if the wealth of their parents makes all effort seem superfluous? The maximum of education with a large majority of the sons of our bourgeoisie consists in pa.s.sing the examinations for the one year's service in the army. Is this goal reached, then they imagine to have climbed Pelion and Ossa, and regard themselves at least as demi-G.o.ds. Have they a reserve officer's certificate in their pocket, then their pride and arrogance knows no limit. The influence exercised by this generation--a generation it has become by its numbers--weak in the character and knowledge of its members, but strong in their designs and the spirit of graft, characterizes the present period as the "Age of Reserve Officers." Its peculiarities are: Characterlessness and ignorance, but a strong will; servility upward, arrogance and brutality downward.

The daughters of our bourgeoisie are trained as show-dolls, fools of fas.h.i.+on and drawingroom-ladies, on the chase after one enjoyment after another, until, finally, surfeited with _ennui_, they fall a prey to all imaginable real and supposed diseases. Grown old, they become devotees and beads-women, who turn up their eyes at the corruption of the world and preach asceticism. As regards the lower cla.s.ses, the effort is on foot to lower still more the level of their education. The proletariat might become too knowing, it might get tired of its va.s.salage, and might rebel against its earthly G.o.ds. The more stupid the ma.s.s, all the easier is it to control and rule.

And thus modern society stands before the question of instruction and education as bewildered as it stands before all other social questions.

What does it? It calls for the rod; preaches "religion," that is, submission and contentment to those who are now but too submissive; teaches abstinence where, due to poverty, abstinence has become compulsory in the utmost necessaries of life. Those who in the rudeness of their nature rear up brutally are taken to "reformatories," that usually are controlled by pietistic influences;--and the pedagogic wisdom of modern society has about reached the end of its tether.

From the moment that the rising generation in future society shall have reached its majority, all further growth is left to the individual: society will feel sure that each will seize the opportunity to unfold the germs that have been so far developed in him. Each does according as inclination and faculties serve him. Some choose one branch of the ever more brilliant natural sciences: anthropology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, physics, chemistry, prehistoric sciences, etc.; others take to the science of history, philologic researches, art; others yet become musicians from special gifts, or painters, or sculptors, or actors. The future will have "guild artists" as little as "guild scientists" or "guild artisans." Thousands of brilliant talents, hitherto kept down, unfold and a.s.sert themselves and display their knowledge and ability wherever opportunity offers. No longer are there any musicians, actors, artists and scientists by profession; they will exist only by inspiration, talent and genius; and the achievements of these bid fair to excel modern achievements on these fields as vastly as the industrial, technical and agricultural achievements of future society are certain to excel those of to-day. An era of art and sciences will spring up such as the world never saw before; nor will its creations fail to correspond to such a _renaissance_.

What transformation and new-birth science will experience when conditions shall have become worthy of the human race, no less a man than the late Richard Wagner foresaw and expressed as early as 1850 in his work "Art and Revolution." This work is all the more significant seeing that it made its appearance immediately after a revolution that had just been beaten down, that Wagner took part in, and by reason of which he had to flee from Dresden. In this book Wagner foretells what the future will bring on. He turns directly to the working cla.s.s as the one called upon to emanc.i.p.ate true art. Among other things he says:

"When, with the free human race of the future, the earning of a living shall no longer be the object of life; when, on the contrary, thanks to the rise of a new faith, or of higher knowledge, the gaining of a livelihood by means of compatible work shall be raised above all uncertainty;--in short, when industry shall no longer be our master but our servant, then will we place the object of life in the pleasure of life, and seek to make our children fit and worthy through education. An education that starts from the exercise of strength, from the care of the beauty of the body will, due to the undisturbed love for the child and to the joy experienced at the thriving of its charms, become purely artistic; and thus in some sense or another every being will be an artist in truth. The diversity of natural inclinations will develop the most manifold apt.i.tudes into an unprecedented wealth of beauty!"--at all points a Socialist line of thought, and fully in keeping with the arguments herein made.

Social life in future will be ever more public. What the trend is may be gathered from the wholly changed position of woman, compared with former times. Domestic life will be confined to what is absolutely necessary, while the widest field will be opened to the gratification of the social instincts. Large gathering places for the holding of addresses and discussions, and for conferring upon all social questions, over which the collectivity has the sovereign word; play, meal and reading rooms; libraries, concert halls and theaters; museums and gymnastic inst.i.tutions; parks, promenades, public baths, educational inst.i.tutions of all sorts; laboratories, etc.;--all of these, erected in the best and equipped in the fittest manner possible, will afford richest opportunity for all manner of intercourse, of art and of science to achieve the highest. Likewise will the inst.i.tutions for the nursing of the sick, the weak, the infirm through old age, meet the highest demands.

How little will then our much boasted about age seem in comparison.

This fawning for favor and suns.h.i.+ne from above; this cringing and dog-like frame of mind; this mutual struggle of enviousness, with the aid of the most hateful and vilest means, for the privileged place. All along the suppression of convictions; the veiling of good qualities, that might otherwise give offence; the emasculation of character; the affectation of opinions and feelings;--in short, all those qualities that may be summed up in words "cowardice and characterlessness" are now every day more p.r.o.nounced. Whatever elevates and enn.o.bles man--self-esteem, independence and incorruptibility of opinion and convictions, freedom of utterance--modern conditions generally turn into defects and crimes. Often do these qualities work the ruin of their owners, unless he suppresses them. Many do not even realize their degradation; they have grown accustomed thereto. The dog regards it a matter of course that he has a master, who, when out of temper, visits him with the whip.

Such altered conditions in social life will impart a radically different aspect to literary productions. Theological literature, whose entries are at present most numerous in the yearly catalogues of literary works, drops out in company with its juridic cousin,--there is no more interest in the former, and no more use for the latter. All the literary productions that refer to the struggle over political inst.i.tutions will be seen no more,--their subject-matter has ceased to be. The study of all such matters will belong to the history of civilization. The vast ma.s.s of inane productions--the evidences of a spoiled taste, often possible only through sacrifices at the altar of the author's vanity--are gone. Even speaking from the view-point of present conditions, it may be said without exaggeration that four-fifths of all literary productions could disappear from the market without loss to a single interest of civilization. Such is the vastness of the ma.s.s of superficial or harmful books, palpable trash, extant to-day on the field of literature.

Belles-lettres and the press will be equally hit. There is nothing sorrier, more spiritless or superficial than the large majority of our newspaper literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are judged from a view-point that corresponds with centuries gone by, and that has been long since proved laughable and untenable by science. A considerable portion of our journalists are people who, as Bismarck once put it, "missed their calling," but whose education and standard of wages fit with bourgeois interests. Furthermore, these newspapers, as well as the majority of the belles-lettric magazines, have the mission of circulating impure advertis.e.m.e.nts; the interests of their purses are on this field the same as on the former: the material interests of their owners determine their contents.

On an average, belles-lettric literature is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate s.e.x excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superst.i.tions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in trifles, as the best of all possible worlds.

On this extensive and important field, future society will inst.i.tute some thorough-going housecleaning. Science, truth, beauty, the contest of the intellect after the best will rule supreme. Everyone who achieves what is worthy will enjoy the opportunity to exercise his faculties. He no longer depends upon the favor of a publisher, moneyed considerations or prejudice, but only upon the impartial judgment of experts whom he himself joins in electing, and from whose unfavorable decision he can always appeal to the general vote of the whole community,--all of which is to-day against him or impossible. The childish notion that all contest of intellect would be held down in a Socialist society they alone can maintain who hold the bourgeois world to be the most perfect social system, and who, out of enmity to Socialism seek to slander and to belittle it. A society, that rests upon full democratic equality, neither knows nor tolerates oppression. Only the fullest freedom of thought makes uninterrupted progress possible, and this is the principle of life with society. Moreover, it is an act of deception to represent bourgeois society as the paladin of true freedom of thought. Parties that represent cla.s.s interests will publish in the press only that which does not injure their cla.s.s' own interests, and woe to him who would attempt the contrary. His social ruin would be sealed, as every one knows. In what manner publishers handle literary work that does not suit them, every writer almost could tell a tale of woe on. Finally, the German press and criminal laws betray the spirit that animates our ruling and leading cla.s.ses. Actual freedom of thought is looked upon by them as the most dangerous of evils.

The individual is to develop himself fully. That must be the law of human a.s.sociation. Accordingly, the individual may not remain fettered to the soil on which the accident of birth first placed him. Men and the world should be known, not from books and papers only: personal observation, practical experience are also needed. Accordingly, future society must enable everyone to do what is now done by many, although in most instances it happens to-day under the whip that want cracks. The wish for change in all the relations of life is a craving strongly stamped in man. It springs from the instinct after perfection, inherent in all organic beings. The plant that stands in a dark room, stretches and strains, as though endowed with consciousness, towards the light that falls from some crevice. Just so with man. An instinct implanted in man, consequently a natural instinct, must be rationally gratified. The conditions of future society will not balk the instinct after change; on the contrary, they promote its gratification with all: it is facilitated by the highly developed system of intercommunication; it is demanded by international relations. In future days, infinitely more people will travel through the world, and for the most varied of purposes, than happens to-day.

In order to meet all demands, society furthermore requires an ample provision of all the necessaries of life. Society regulates its hours of work accordingly. It makes them longer or shorter, according as its needs or the season of the year may suggest. It may turn its strength at one season mainly to agriculture, at another mainly to industrial and similar production. It directs its labor forces as occasion may require.

Through the combination of numerous forces, equipped with the best technical provisions, it can carry through with swiftness, aye, playingly, undertakings that to-day seem impossible.

As society a.s.sumes the care of its youth, so it does of its aged, sick or invalid members. It guards whoever, by whatever circ.u.mstance, has become unable to work. There is in this no question of _charity_, but of _duty_; not of an alms morsel, but of an a.s.sistance born of every possible consideration due him, who, during the time of his strength and ability to work, fulfilled his duties to the commonwealth. The setting sun of old age is beautiful with all that society can offer: everyone being buoyed up with the confidence that he will some day himself enjoy what now he affords to others. No longer are the aged now disturbed with the thought that others are awaiting their death in order to "inherit;"

likewise has the fear vanished from the mind of man that, grown old and helpless, he will be cast off like a squeezed lemon. Man now feels himself left neither to the benevolence of his children, nor to the alms of the community. What the condition is in which most parents find themselves, who depend in old age upon the support of their children, is notorious. How demoralizing is not the effect of the hope of inheriting upon the children, and, in a still greater degree, upon relatives! What vile qualities are not awakened; and how many are not the crimes that such hopes have led to!--murder, forgery, perjury, extortion, etc.

Capitalist society has no reason to be proud of its laws of inheritance; to them are ascribable part of the crimes that are committed every year; and yet the large majority of people have nothing to bequeath or to inherit.[219]

The moral and physical condition of future society; the nature of its work, homes, food, clothing, its social life--everything will greatly contribute to avoid accidents, sickness, debility. Natural death by the decline of the vigor of life will become the rule. The conviction that "heaven" is on earth, and that to be dead means to be ended, will cause people to lead rational lives.[220] He enjoys most who enjoys longest.

None know how to appreciate a long life better than the very clergy who prepare people for the "after world;" a life free from care makes it possible for these gentlemen to reach the highest age average.[221]

Life requires, first of all, food and drink. Friends of the so-called "natural way of living" often ask why is Socialism indifferent to vegetarianism. The question causes us to take up the subject in a few lines. Vegetarianism, that is, the doctrine that prescribes an exclusive vegetal diet, found its first supporters in such circles as are in the agreeable position of being able to choose between a vegetal and an animal diet. To the large majority of people there is no such choice: they are forced to live according to their means, the meagerness of which in many instances keeps them almost exclusively to a vegetal diet, and to the least nutritive, at that. With our working cla.s.s population in Silesia, Saxony, Thuringen, etc., the potato is the princ.i.p.al nourishment; even bread comes in only secondarily; meat, and then only of poor quality, is hardly ever seen on the table. Even the largest part of the rural population, although they are the raisers of cattle, rarely partake of meat: they must sell the cattle in order to satisfy other pressing wants with the money obtained therefor.

For the innumerable people, who are compelled to live as vegetarians, an occasional solid beefsteak, or good leg of mutton, would be a decided improvement in the diet. When vegetarianism directs itself against the overrating of the nutrition contained in meat, it is right; it is wrong, however, when it combats the partaking of meat as harmful and fatal, mainly on sentimental grounds--such as "the nature of man forbids the killing of animals and to partake of a corpse." In order to live comfortably and undisturbed, we are compelled to declare war upon and destroy a large number of living beings in the shape of all manner of vermin; in order not to be ourselves eaten up, we must undertake the killing and extirpating of wild animals. The quiet toleration of those "good friends of man," the domestic animals, would increase the number of these "good friends" in a few decades so immensely that they would "devour" us by robbing us of food. Neither is the claim true that a vegetarian diet produces mildness of temperament. The "beast" was awakened even in the mild, vegetarian Hindoo when the severity of the Englishmen drove him to mutiny.

In our opinion Sonderegger hits the nail on the head when he says: "There is no order of rank in the matter of the different kinds of food; but there is an unalterable law in the matter of combining their several nutritious qualities." It is true that no one can nourish himself on an exclusively meat diet, but that he can on an exclusively vegetal diet, provided always he can select to suit; but neither would any one be satisfied with one vegetable, let it be the most nutritive. Beans, for instance, peas, lentils, in short, the leguminosae, are the most nutritive of all food. Nevertheless, to be forced to feed exclusively on them--which is said to be possible--were a torture. Karl Marx mentions in "Capital" that the Chilian mine-owners compel their workingmen to eat beans year in and year out, because the food imparts to them great strength and enables them to carry burdens that they could not carry with any other diet. Despite its nutrition, the workingmen turn against such food, but get none other, and are thus obliged to rest content therewith. Under no circ.u.mstances do the happiness and well-being of people depend upon a certain diet, as is claimed by the fanatics among the vegetarians. Climate, custom, individual tastes are the determining factors.

In the measure that civilization advances, a vegetal diet progressively takes the place of the exclusive meat diet, such as is indulged in by hunting and pastoral peoples. A many-sided agriculture is a sign of higher culture. On a given field, vegetal nutritive matter can be raised in larger quant.i.ties than could meat be obtained through cattle raising.

This development imparts to vegetal nutrition an ever greater preponderance. The transportation of meat, that the modern vandalic economic system furnishes us with from foreign lands, especially from South America and Australia, has been very nearly exhausted within few decades. On the other hand, animals are raised, not merely for the sake of meat, but also for that of wool, hair, bristles, skin and hides, milk, eggs, etc., upon which many industries and human wants are dependent. Again offal of several kinds can be turned in no way to better advantage than through cattle raising. The seas will also in future be made to yield to man their wealth of animal food to a much larger extent than now. It will be in future a rare occurrence to see, as we do to-day, whole loads of fish turned to manure, because the facilities and costs of transportation, or the facilities of preservation prevent their being otherwise used. It follows that a purely vegetal diet is neither probable nor necessary in the future.

In the matter of food, _quality_ rather than _quant.i.ty_ is to be considered. Quant.i.ty is of little use if not good. Quality is greatly improved by the manner of preparation. The preparation of food must be conducted as scientifically as any other function, if it is to reach the highest point of utility possible. Knowledge and equipment are thereto requisite. That our women, upon whom to-day mainly devolves the preparation of food, do not and can not possess this knowledge, needs no proof. They lack all the necessary equipments therefor. As every well equipped hotel kitchen, the steam kitchen of barracks or of hospitals and especially the cooking expositions teach us, the cooking apparatuses, together with many technical arrangements for all manner of food preparation, have reached a high degree of perfection and have been contrived upon scientific principles. That will in the future be the rule. The object aimed at must be to obtain the best results with the smallest expenditure of power, time and material. _The small private kitchen is, just like the workshop of the small master mechanic, a transition stage, an arrangement by which time, power and material are senselessly squandered and wasted._ The preparation of food also will in future society be a social establishment, conducted on the most improved plane, in proper and advantageous manner. The private kitchen disappears, as it has now disappeared in the instance of those families who, although they generally provide themselves through their own kitchen, always resort to hotel kitchens or to those of caterers, the moment the question is to provide for banquets or to procure dishes a knowledge of which both they and their domestics lack.[222]

The Chicago Exposition of 1893 brought out a ma.s.s of interesting facts on the revolution that has taken place in the kitchen also, and in the preparation of food;--among other things a kitchen in which the heating and cooking was done wholly through electricity. Electricity not only furnished the light, but was also active in the was.h.i.+ng of dishes, which thereupon required the aid of the human hand only in finis.h.i.+ng up. In this kitchen of the future there was no hot air, no smoke, no vapors.

Numberless apparatuses and subsidiary machinery performed a number of operations that until then had to be performed by human hands. This kitchen of the future resembled more a parlor than a kitchen that everyone who has nothing to do in, likes to stay away from. Work therein at the Chicago Exposition was pleasurable and free from all the unpleasantness that are features of the modern kitchen. Can a private kitchen be imagined even approximately equipped like that? And then, what a saving in all directions through such a central kitchen! Our women would seize the opportunity with both hands to exchange the present for the kitchen of the future.

The nutritive value of food is heightened by its facility of a.s.similation. This is a determining factor.[223] A natural system of nourishment for all can be reached only by future society. Cato praises the Rome of before his days for having had experts in the art of healing, but, down to the sixth century of the city, no occupation for exclusive physicians. People lived so frugally and simply, that disease was rare, and death from old age was the usual form of decease. Not until gourmandizing and idleness--in short, license with some, want and excessive work with others--had permeated society, did matters change, and radically so. In future, gluttony and license will be impossible, and likewise want, misery and privation. There is enough, and an abundance, for all. More than fifty years ago Henrich Heine sang: