I believe that in the whole labouring class of Chemnitz it would be hard to find a young man or a young woman, over seventeen, who is chaste. Sexual intercourse, largely the product of these dance-halls, has assumed enormous proportions among the youth of to-day. It is regarded quite simply as natural and customary; there is seldom a trace of consciousness that it can be looked upon as a sin. The seventh commandment does not exist for them, in this respect. True, it is very rarely that they have anything to do with paid prostitutes. That is considered a disgrace, and such women are despised. But almost every young fellow has his sweetheart, and almost every girl her lover, between whom, with very few exceptions, sexual relations are a matter of course. No young man, moreover, feels himself bound to one single girl, nor is it usual to be so. Likewise, the young girl is looked upon with slight disfavour who gives herself too promptly on acquaintance, and with such a girl no lasting connection is formed. When pregnancy occurs, the couple usually marry, whether the connection is of long standing or but of a week or two; whether they know each other well or not, whether they are congenial or not, whether, in other respects, they are exemplary or worthless. Chance and passion decide marriage for our young people, seldom either love or inner fitness or well-considered reasons.
This fact, above all others, explains the unhappiness of marriage in the labouring class, the complaints of all, even social democrats, who really seek the people’s good, the longing for the elevation and the emancipation of women, and the new social-democratic ideal of marriage. Let me refer to the close of my second chapter. The wife, in many a man’s eyes, is in fact only the means of satisfying sexual desire, a drag to his getting on, or, at best, if everything goes well, a capable manager of the household, who holds a tight rein even upon her husband’s expenditures. Marriage, according to the expressed opinion of more than one of my fellow-workmen, is “the last and greatest folly a man can commit.” There is a better state of things than this in many a family, and between many a married pair there is a gradual growth of mutual respect and affection. Nay, in spite of all that I have said I know several really beautiful marriage relations founded on sincere love, but the fact, broadly speaking, remains, that in the labouring class the wife is far less valued, far less respected, and far worse treated than in any other. She is roughly handled, and very often she is beaten. Her husband requires from her absolute faithfulness to the marriage vow, without feeling himself in the least bound by it. There is in every other respect as well, a great lack of recognition of the mutual moral obligations which marriage prescribes.
Source of English translation: Paul Göhre, Three Months in a Workshop. A Practical Study. New York: Arno Press, 1972, pp. 199-204.
Original German text printed in Paul Göhre, Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter und Handwerksbursche. Eine praktische Studie. Leipzig: Grunow, 1891, pp. 202-7.
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