ment in the condition of woman will have been achieved. Standing
on the ground of bourgeois, that is, of the capitalist social order, the
full social equality of man and woman is considered the solution of the
question. These folks are not aware, or they slide over the fact that,
in so far as the unrestricted admission of woman to the industrial
occupations is concerned, the object has already been actually attained,
and it meets with the strongest support on the part of the ruling class,
who as will be shown further on, find therein their own interest. Under
existing conditions, the admission of women to all industrial
occupations can have for its only effect that the competitive struggle
of the working people become ever sharper, and rage ever mere fiercely.
Hence the inevitable result,--the lowering of incomes for female and
male labor, whether this income be in the form of wage or salary.

That this solution cannot be the right one is clear. The full civic
equality of woman is, however, not merely the ultimate object of the
men, who, planted upon the existing social order, favor the efforts in
behalf of woman. It is also recognized by the female bourgeois, active
in the Woman Movement. These, together with the males of their mental
stamp, stand, accordingly, with their demands in contrast to the larger
portion of the men, who oppose them, partly out of old-fogy narrowness,
partly also--in so far as the admission of woman to the higher studies
and the better-paid public positions is concerned--out of mean
selfishness, out of fear of competition. A difference in principle,
however, a class difference, such as there is between the working and
the capitalist class, does not exist between these two sets of male and
female citizens.

Let the by no means impossible case be imagined that the representatives
of the movement for the civic rights of woman carry through all their
demands for placing woman upon an equal footing with man. What then?
Neither the slavery, which modern marriage amounts to for numberless
women, nor prostitution, nor the material dependence of the large
majority of married women upon their marital lords, would thereby be
removed. For the large majority of women it is, indeed, immaterial
whether a thousand, or ten thousand, members of their own sex, belonging
to the more favored strata of society, land in the higher branches of
learning, the practice of medicine, a scientific career, or some
governmen