91 per cent. of all the
working-women came under the wage category of from 2 to 5 guilders a
week. Upon the enforcement in Austria of the law on sick insurance, the
authorities discovered that in 116 districts (21.6 per cent. of all) the
working-women earned at most 30 kreuzer a day, 90 guilders a year; and
in 428 districts (78.4 per cent. of the total) from 30 to 50 kreuzer, or
from 90 to 150 guilders a year. The young working-women, under 16 years
of age, earned in 173 districts (30.9 per cent.) 20 kreuzer a day at the
most, or at the most 60 guilders a year; and in 387 districts (69.1 per
cent.) from 20 to 30 kreuzer, or from 60 to 90 guilders a year.

Similar differences between the wages of male and female labor exist in
all countries on earth. According to the report on Russian industry at
the Chicago Exposition in 1893, a workingman made in cotton weaving 66
marks a month, a working-woman 18; a male cotton spinner 66 marks, a
female 14. In the lace industry men earned up to 130 marks, women 26; in
cloth manufacture, with the power loom, a working man made 90 marks, a
working-woman 26 a month.

These facts show that woman is increasingly torn from family life by
modern developments. Marriage and the family, in the bourgeois sense,
are undermined by this development, and dissolved. From the view point
afforded by this fact also, it is an absurdity to direct women to a
domestic life. That can be done only by such people, who thoughtlessly
walk the path of life; who fail to see the facts that shape themselves
all around, or do not wish to see them, because they have an interest in
plying the trade of optimism. Facts furnish a very different picture
from that presented by such gentlemen.

In a large number of industries women are employed exclusively; in a
larger number they constitute the majority; and in most of the others
women are more or less numerously found. Their number steadily
increases, and they crowd into ever newer occupations, that they had not
previously engaged in. Finally, the working-woman is not merely paid
worse than the working man; where she does as much as a man, her hours
are, on an average, longer.

The German factory ordinances of the year 1891 fixed a maximum of eleven
hours for adult working-women. The same is, however, broken through by a
mass of exceptions that the authorities are allowed to make. Nightwork
also is forbidden for working-women in factories, but here also the
Governmen