ce.
Among those who suffer of the overpopulation fear, and who demand the
restriction of freedom to marry, especially for workingmen, belong
particularly Prof. Ad. Wagner. According to him, workingmen marry too
early, in comparison with the middle class. He, along with others of
this opinion, forget that the male members of the higher class, marry
later only in order to wed "according to their station in life," a thing
they can not do before they have obtained a certain position. For this
abstinence, the males of the higher classes indemnify themselves with
prostitution. Accordingly, it is to prostitution that the working class
are referred, the moment marriage is made difficult for, or, under
certain circumstances, is wholly forbidden to, them. But, then, let
none wonder at the results, and let him not raise an outcry at the
"decline of morality," if the women also, who have the same desires as
the men, seek to satisfy in illegitimate relations the promptings of the
strongest impulse of nature. Moreover, the views of Wagner are at
fisticuffs with the interests of the capitalist class, which, oddly
enough, shares his views: it needs many "hands," so as to own cheap
labor-power that may fit it out for competition in the world's market.
With such petty notions and measures, born of a near-sighted
philistinism, the gigantic growing ills of the day are not to be healed.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Tarnowsky. "Die krankhaften Erscheinungen des Geschlechtsinnes."
Berlin, August Hirschwald.

[23] Tacitus, "Histories," Book I.

[24] Montegazza "L'Amour dans l'Humanite."

[25] Matthew, ch. 19; 11 and 12.

[26] I. Corinthians, ch. 7; 1 and 38.

[27] Peter I., ch. 3; 1.

[28] Paul: Ephesians, ch. 5; 23.

[29] Paul: I. Corinthians, ch. 11; 7.

[30] I. Timothy, ch. 2; 11 and 12.

[31] I. Corinthians, ch. 14; 34 and 35.

[32] This was a move that the parish priests of the diocese of Mainz,
among others, complained against, expressing themselves this wise: "You
Bishops and Abbots possess great wealth, a kingly table, and rich
hunting equipages; we, poor, plain priests have for our comfort only a
wife. Abstinence may be a handsome virtue, but, in point of fact, it is
hard and difficult."--Yves-Guyot: "Les Theories Sociales du
Christianisme."

[33] Buckle, in his "History of Civilization in England," furnishes a
large number of illustrations on this head.

[34] Engels' "Der Ursprung der Familie."

[35] The same thing happened