It is generally known that many women remain unmarried because they are given no opportunity to become married. Custom forbids the woman to offer herself. She must allow herself to be chosen; she may not choose. If she is not chosen she must join that great army of unfortunate women who have missed their purpose in life and who are frequently subjected to a life of poverty and want, sometimes made more bitter still by ridicule. But what causes the numerical disproportion of the sexes? Many are quick to reply: too many girls are born. The persons who make this statement are misinformed, as we shall see. Others draw the conclusion that if women are in the majority in most civilized countries, polygamy ought to be permitted. But polygamy is not only averse to our customs, it also entails the degradation of woman; although that did not prevent Schopenhauer from asserting that “to the female sex in general polygamy is a boon.” Many men do not marry because they believe that they are unable to support ~one~ woman and the children who are likely to be born according to their station in life. Only few men are able to support two women, and among these, many do have two or several wives: one legitimate wife, and one or several illegitimate wives. Those privileged by wealth allow nothing to prevent them from doing as they choose.
Even in the orient where custom and law have suffered polygamy to exist for thousands of years, relatively few men have more than one wife. We speak of the degrading influence of life in Turkish harems. But we overlook the fact that only ~very few men~ belonging to the ~ruling class~ can afford to maintain a harem, while the great mass of men live in monogamic marriage. In the city of Algiers at the close of the sixties of the last century, there were among 18,282 marriages no less than 17,319 with only one wife; there were 888 marriages with two wives, and only 75 with more than two. In Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish empire, conditions are probably quite similar. Among the rural population in the orient the conditions favoring monogamic marriage are still more striking. In the orient, as with us, material conditions come into consideration that compel the majority of men to content themselves with one wife.[74] But if conditions were equally favorable to all men polygamy could still not be generally maintained because there are not enough women. ~Under normal conditions the numbers of persons of both sexes are almost equal, which everywhere points to monogamic marriage.~ The following table which has been published by Buecher in the “General Statistic Records,” proves this assertion.[75]