ator of human feelings; all other
considerations must yield. Thousands upon thousands of workingmen and
working-women are, the moment profit demands it, thrown upon the
sidewalk, and, after their last savings have been spent, turned to
public charity or forced to emigrate. Workingmen travel, so to speak, in
herds from place to place, criss-cross across the country, and are
regarded by "decent" society with all the more fear and horror, seeing
that the continuity of their enforced idleness deteriorates their
external appearance, and, as a consequence, demoralizes them internally.
Decent society has no inkling of what it means to be forced, for months
at a stretch, to be denied the simplest exigencies of order and
cleanliness, to wander from place to place with a hungry stomach, and to
earn, generally, nothing but ill-concealed fear and contempt, especially
from those quarters that are the very props of this system. The families
of these wretches suffer all along utmost distress--a distress that not
infrequently drives the parents, out of desperation, to frightful crimes
upon their own children and themselves. The last years have furnished
numerous shocking instances of whole families falling a prey to murder
and suicide. Let one instance do for many. The private correspondent,
S----, in Berlin, 45 years of age, with a still handsome wife 39 years
old, and a daughter of 12, is without work and starving. The wife
decides, with the consent of her husband, to turn prostitute. The police
gets wind thereof. The wife is placed under moral control. The family,
overcome with shame and desperate, agree, all three, to poison
themselves, and carry out their resolve on March 1, 1883.[160] A few
days before, the leading circles of Berlin celebrated great court
festivities at which hundreds of thousands were squandered.

Such are the shocking contrasts of modern society--and yet we live in
"the best of all possible worlds." Berlin has since then often witnessed
the holocaust of whole families due to material want. In 1894 the
spectacle was frequent, to an extent that called forth general horror;
nor are the instances few, reported from large and small towns within
and without Germany. This murder and suicide of whole families is a
phenomenon peculiar to modern times, and an eloquent sign of the sorry
economic state that society is in.

This general want also drives women and girls in increasing numbers into
the arms of prostitution. D