t can make exceptions in favor of factories where work is
continuous, or for special seasons; in sugar refineries, for instance.
German legislation has not yet been able to rise to the height of
really effective measures for the protection of working-women;
consequently, these are exploited by inhumanly long hours, and
physically wrecked in the small factories, especially in the tenement
house industry. Their exploitation is made all the easier to the
employer through the circumstance that, until now, a small minority
excepted, the women have not realized that, the same as the men, they
must organize in their trades, and, there where also men are employed,
they must organize jointly with them, in order to conquer for themselves
better conditions of work. The ever stronger influx of women in
industrial pursuits affects, however, not those occupations only that
their correspondingly weaker physique especially fits them for, but it
affects also all occupations in which the modern system of exploitation
believes it can, with their aid, knock off larger profits. Under this
latter head belong both the physically exhausting and the most
disagreeable and dangerous occupations. Thus the fantastic pretence of
seeing in woman only a tender, finely-strung being, such as poets and
writers of fiction love to depict for the delectation of men, a being,
that, if it exists at all exists only as an exception, is again reduced
to its true value.

Facts are obstinate things, and it is only they that concern us. They
alone preserve us from false conclusions, and sentimental twaddle. These
facts teach us that to-day we find women engaged in the following
occupations, among others:--in cotton, linen and woolen weaving; in
cloth and flannel making; in mechanical spinning, calico printing and
dyeing; in steel pen and pin making; in the preparation of sugar,
chocolate and cocoa; in manufacturing paper and bronzes; in making glass
and porcelain and in glass painting; in the manufacture of faience,
majolica and earthen ware; in making ink and preparing paints; making
twine and paper bags; in preparing hops and manure and chemical
disinfectants; in spinning and weaving silk and ribbons; in making soap,
candles and rubber goods; in wadding and mat making; in carpet weaving;
portfolio and cardboard making; in making lace and trimmings, and
embroidering; making wall-paper, shoes and leather goods; in refining
oil and lard and preparing chemicals of al