Note 54 — Chapter III

Let us go on now to marriage among the proletarians.54 Here there can be no question of a different education for the boy and the girl; both are put to work while still children, and their relations are quite free. Among the working classes marriage usually takes place at an early age, because the workman early reaches the maximum of his earning capacity, and as a consequence it is useless for him to wait long before marrying; besides which he reaches maturity sooner than the bourgeois. Often marriage is contracted after it has been consummated and the sexual intercourse has had results. This is easy to understand when one observes the life of the proletariat, their housing conditions, their work in common, etc.