The soon as possible general expropriation of all the means of production furnishes society with a new foundation. The conditions of life and labor—in manufacture, agriculture, transportation and communication, education, marriage, science, art and intercourse—are radically changed for both sexes. Human existence acquires a new sense. The present political organization gradually loses ground: the State vanishes: in a measure it abolishes itself.

It was shown in the first part of this book why the State arose. It arises, as the product of a social growth, from a primitive form of society, that rested on communism and that dissolved in the measure that private property developed. With the rise of private property, antagonistic interests take shape within society; in the course of its development these antagonisms lead to rank and class contrasts, and these, in turn, grow into enmities between the several groups of interests, and finally into rank and class struggles, that threaten the existence of the new social order. In order to keep down these rank and class struggles, and to protect the property-holders, an organization is requisite that parries the assaults on property, and that pronounces "legal and sacred" the property obtained under certain forms. This organization and power, that guards and upholds property, is the State. Through the enactment of laws it secures the owner in his ownership, and it steps as judge and avenger before him who assails the established order. By reason of its innermost being, the interest of a ruling property class, and of the Government therewith connected, is ever conservative. The organization of the State changes only when the interest of property so demands. The State is, accordingly, the inevitably necessary organization of a social order that rests upon class rule. The moment class antagonisms fall through the abolition of private property, the State loses both the necessity and the possibility for its existence. With the removal of the conditions for rulership, the State gradually ceases to be, the same as creeds wane when the belief ceases in supernatural beings, or in transcendental powers gifted with reason. Words must have sense; if they lose that they cease to convey ideas.

"Yes," interjects at this point a capitalist-minded reader, "that is all very well, but by what 'legal principle' can society justify such a change?" The legal principle is the same that ever prevailed, whenever it was the question of changes and reforms,—public policy. Not the State, but society is the source of right; the State is but the committee of Society, authorized to administer and dispense right. Hitherto, "Society" has been a small minority; yet it acted in the name of the whole community (the people) by pronouncing itself "Society," much as Louis XIV. pronounced himself the "State,"—"L'État c'est moi" (I am the State). When our newspapers announce: "The season begins; society is returning to the city," or "The season has closed; society is rushing to the country," they never mean the people, but only the upper ten thousand, who constitute "Society" as they constitute the "State." The masses are "plebs," "vile multitude," "canaille," "people." In keeping therewith, all that the State has done in the name of Society for the "public weal" has always been to the advantage and profit of the ruling class. It is in its interests that laws are framed. "Salus reipublicae suprema lex esto" (Let the public weal be the supreme law) is a well known legal principle of Old Rome. But who constituted the Roman Commonwealth? Did it consist of the subjugated peoples, the millions of slaves? No. A disproportionately small number of Roman citizens, foremost among these the Roman nobility, all of whom were supported by the subject class.

When, in the Middle Ages, noblemen and Princes stole the common property, they did so "according to law," in the "interest of the public weal," and how drastically the common property and that of the helpless peasants was treated on the occasion we have sufficiently explained. The agrarian history of the last fifteen centuries is a narration of uninterrupted robbery perpetrated upon common and peasant property by the nobility and the Church in all the leading countries of Europe. When the French Revolution expropriated the estates of the nobility and the Church, it did so "in the name of the public weal"; and a large part of the seven million of landed estates, that are to-day the prop of modern bourgeois France, owe their existence to this expropriation. "In the name of the public weal," Spain more than once embargoed Church property, and Italy wholly confiscated the same,—both with the plaudits of the zealous defenders of "sacred property." The English nobility has for centuries been robbing the Irish and English people of their property, and, during the period of 1804-1832 made itself a present of not less than 3,511,710 acres of commons "in the interest of the public welfare." When during the great North American war for the emancipation of the negro, millions of slaves, the regular property of their masters, were declared free without indemnity to the latter, the thing was done "in the name of the public weal." Our whole capitalist development is an uninterrupted process of expropriation and confiscation, at which the manufacturer expropriates the workingman, the large landlord expropriates the peasant, the large merchant expropriates the small dealer, and finally one capitalist expropriates another, i. e., the larger expropriates and absorbs the smaller. To hear our bourgeoisie, all this happens in the interest of the "public weal," for the "good of society." The Napoleonites "saved Society" on the 18th Brumaire and 2d of December, and "Society" congratulated them. If hereafter Society shall save itself by resuming possession of the property that itself has produced, it will enact the most notable historic event—it is not seeking to oppress some in the interest of others, but to afford to all the prerequisite for equality of existence, to make possible to each an existence worthy of human beings. It will be morally the cleanest and most stupendous measure that human society has ever executed.

In what manner this gigantic process of social expropriation will be achieved, and under what modality, eludes all surmise. Who can tell how general conditions will then be, and what the demands of public interest will be?

In his fourth social letter to v. Kirchmann, entitled "Capital," Rodbertus says: "The dissolution of all capitalist property in land is no chimera; on the contrary, it is easily conceivable in national economy. It would, moreover, be the most radical aid to society, that, as might be put in a few words, is suffering of rent-rising—rent of land and capital. Hence the measure would be the only manner of abolishing property in land and capital, a measure that would not even for a moment interrupt the commerce and progress of the nation." What say our agrarians to this opinion of their former political co-religionist?

In the contemplation of how matters will probably shape themselves along the principal lines of human activity, upon such a measure of general expropriation, there can be no question of establishing hard and fast lines, or rigid institutions. No one is able to forecast the detailed molds in which future generations may cast their social organizations, and how they will satisfy their wants. In Society as in Nature, everything is in constant flux and reflux; one thing rises, another wanes; what is old and sered is replaced with new and living forms. Inventions, discoveries and improvements, numerous and various, the bearing and significance of which often none can tell, are made from day to day, come into operation, and, each in its own way, they revolutionize and transform human life and all society.

We can, accordingly, be concerned only with general principles, that flow inevitably from the preceding expose, and whose enforcement may be supervised, up to a certain point. If even hitherto society has been no automatic entity, leadable and guidable by an individual, much as appearances often pointed the other way; if even hitherto those who imagined they pushed were themselves pushed; if even hitherto society was an organism, that developed according to certain inherent laws;—if that was hitherto the case, in the future all guiding and leading after individual caprice is all the more out of question. Society will have discovered the secret of its own being, it will have discovered the laws of its own progress, and it will apply these consciously towards its own further development.

So soon as society is in possession of all the means of production, the duty to work, on the part of all able to work, without distinction of sex, becomes the organic law of socialized society. Without work society can not exist. Hence, society has the right to demand that all, who wish to satisfy their wants, shall exert themselves, according to their physical and mental faculties, in the production of the requisite wealth. The silly claim that the Socialist does not wish to work, that he seeks to abolish work, is a matchless absurdity, which fits our adversaries alone. Non-workers, idlers, exist in capitalist society only. Socialism agrees with the Bible that "He who will not work, neither shall he eat." But work shall not be mere activity; it shall be useful, productive activity. The new social system will demand that each and all pursue some industrial, agricultural or other useful occupation, whereby to furnish a certain amount of work towards the satisfaction of existing wants. Without work no pleasure, no pleasure without work.

All being obliged to work, all have an equal interest in seeing the following three conditions of work in force:—

First, that work shall be moderate, and shall overtax none;

Second, that work shall be as agreeable and varied as possible;

Third, that work shall be as productive as possible, seeing that both the hours of work and fruition hinge upon that.

These three conditions hinge, in turn, upon the nature and the number of the productive powers that are available, and also upon the aspirations of society. But Socialist society does not come into existence for the purpose of living in proletarian style; it comes into existence in order to abolish the proletarian style of life of the large majority of humanity. It seeks to afford to each and all the fullest possible measure of the amenities of life. The question that does rise is, How high will the aspirations of society mount?

In order to determine this, an administration is requisite that shall embrace all the fields of social activity. Our municipalities constitute an effective basis thereto: if they are too large to allow a ready supervision, they can be divided into wards. As in primitive society, all members of the community who are of age participate in the elections, without distinction of sex, and have a voice in the choice of the persons who are to be entrusted with the administration. At the head of all the local administrations stands the central administration—as will be noted, not a Government, with power to rule, but an executive college of administrative functions. Whether the central administration shall be chosen directly by popular vote or appointed by the local administration is immaterial. These questions will not then have the importance they have to-day: the question is then no longer one of filling posts that bestow special honor, or that vest the incumbent with greater power and influence, or that yield larger incomes: it is then a question of filling positions of trust, for which the fittest, whether male or female, are taken; and these may be recalled or re-elected as circumstances may demand, or the electors may deem preferable. All posts are for given terms. The incumbents are, accordingly, clothed with no special "official qualities"; the feature of continuity of office is absent, likewise a hierarchical order of promotion. Hence it is also immaterial to us whether there shall be middle stages, say provincial administrations, between the central and the local administrations. If they are deemed necessary, they are set up; if they are not deemed necessary, they are left alone. All such matters are decided by actual exigencies, as ascertained in practice. If the progress of society has rendered any old organization superfluous, it is abolished without further ado and dispute, there being no longer any personal interest in conflict; and new ones are similarly established. Obviously, such an administration, resting upon the broadest democratic foundation, differs radically from what we have to-day. What a battle of newspapers, what a war of tongues in our parliaments, what mountains of public documents in our bureaus, if but a trivial change is made in the administration or the Government!

The principal thing to ascertain is the number and the nature of the forces that are available, the quantity and nature of the means of production,—the factories, workshops, means of transportation and communication, land—and also their productivity. The next thing to ascertain is the quantity of the supplies that are on hand and the extent to which these can satisfy the wants of society. As to-day the State and the several municipalities yearly cast up their budgets, the thing will then be done with an eye to all the wants of society, without thereby excluding changes that increased or new wants may demand. Statistics here play the chief role: they become the most important subsidiary science of the new order: they furnish the measure for all social activities.

Statistics are extensively used to-day for similar purposes. The Imperial, State and municipal budgets are based upon a large amount of statistical reports, made yearly by the several administrative branches. Long experience and a certain degree of stability in the running wants facilitate their gathering. Every operator of a large factory, every merchant is, under normal conditions, able to determine accurately what he will need during the next three months, and how he should regulate his production and purchases. Unless excessive changes set in, his calculations will be found safe.

The experience that crises are caused by blind, anarchic production, i. e., that production is carried on without a knowledge of the volume of supply, of sales and of demand of and for the several goods in the world's market, has, as indicated in previous passages, caused large manufacturers in several branches of industry to join in Trusts and rings, partly with the view of steadying prices, partly also for the purpose of regulating production by the light of previous experience and of the orders received. According to the capability of each establishment and to the probable demand, the output of each is determined for the next few months. Infractions are punished with heavy conventional mulcts, and even expulsion. The capitalists do not conclude these agreements for the benefit of the public, but to its injury and to their own profit. Their purpose is to utilize the power of combination in order to secure the greatest advantages to themselves. This regulation of production has for its object to enable the capitalist to demand from the public prices that could not be got if the competitive struggle was on between the several capitalists. These enrich themselves at the expense of the consumers who are forced to pay whatever price is demanded for the goods they need. As the consumer, so is the workingman injured by the Trusts. The artificial regulation of production throws a part of the working class out of work, and, in order that these may live, they underbid their fellows at work. Thus the employer derives a double advantage: he receives higher prices, and he pays lower wages. Such a regulation of production by combinations of capitalists is exactly the reverse of that which will be practiced in Socialist society. While to-day the interests of the capitalists is the determining factor, the interests of all will then be the guide. Production will then be carried on for the satisfaction of human wants, and not in order to obtain, through high prices, large profits for private individuals. Nevertheless, the best planned combination in capitalist society can not take in and control all the factors needed in the calculation: competition and speculation run wild despite all combinations: finally the discovery is made that the calculation had a leak, and the scheme breaks down.

The same as production on a large scale, commerce also has extensive statistics. Every week the larger centers of commerce and the ports publish reports on the supply of petroleum, coffee, cotton, sugar, grain, etc. These statistics are frequently inaccurate, seeing that the owners of the goods frequently have a personal interest in concealing the truth. On the whole, however, the statistics are pretty safe and furnish to those interested, information on the condition of the market. But here also speculation steps in, upsets all calculations, and often renders all legitimate business impossible. Seeing how impossible is a general regulation of production in capitalist society, due to the existence of many thousands of private producers with conflicting interests, it will be obvious why the speculative nature of commerce, the number of merchants and their conflicting interests render equally impossible the regulation of distribution. Nevertheless, what is done in these directions indicates what could be done so soon as private interest were to drop out and the interests of all were alone dominant. A proof of this is furnished by the statistics of crops, that are yearly issued by the leading countries of civilization, and that enable certain general conclusions to be drawn upon the size of the crops, the extent that they will supply the demand, and the probable price.

In a socialized society matters are fully regulated; society is held in fraternal bonds. Everything is done in order; there, it is an easy matter to gauge demand. With a little experience, the thing is easy as play. If, for instance, the demand is statistically established for bread, meat, shoes, linen, etc., and, on the other hand, the productivity of the respective plants is equally known, the average daily amount of socially necessary labor is thereby ascertained. The figures would, furthermore, point out where more plants for the production of a certain article may be needed, or where such may be discontinued as superfluous, or turned to other purposes.

Everyone decides the pursuit he chooses: the large number of different fields of activity caters to the tastes of all. If on one field there is a surplus and on another a dearth of labor-power, the administration attends to the equalization of forces. To organize production, and to furnish the several powers with the opportunity to apply themselves at the right places will be the principal task of these functionaries. In the measure that the several forces are broken in, the wheels will move with greater smoothness. The several branches and divisions of labor choose their foremen, who superintend the work. These are no slave-drivers, like most foremen of to-day; they are fellow workers, who, instead of a productive, exercise an administrative function entrusted to them. The idea is by no means excluded that, with the attainment of higher perfection, both in point of organization and of individuals, these functions should alternate so that, within a certain time, and in certain order, they are filled by all regardless of sex.

A system of labor, organized upon a plan of such absolute liberty and democratic equality, where each stands for all, and all stand for each, and where the sense of solidarity reigns supreme,—such a system would generate a spirit of industry and of emulation nowhere to be found in the modern economic system. Nor could such a spirit of industry fail to react both upon the productivity of labor and the quality of labor's product.

Furthermore—seeing that all are mutually active—the interest becomes general in the best and most complete, as well as in the quickest possible production of goods, with the object of saving labor, and of gaining time for the production of further wealth, looking to the gratification of higher wants. Such a common interest spurs all to bend their thoughts towards simplifying and quickening the process of labor. The ambition to invent and discover is stimulated to the highest pitch: each will seek to outdo the other in propositions and ideas.[176]

Just the reverse will, accordingly, happen of which the adversaries of Socialism claim. How many are not the inventors and discoverers who go to pieces in the capitalist world! How many has it not exploited and then cast aside! If talent and intellect, instead of property, stood at the head of bourgeois society, the larger part of the employers would have to make room for their workingmen, master mechanics, technical overseers, engineers, chemists, etc. These are the men, who, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, make the inventions, discoveries and improvements, which the man with the money-bag exploits. How many thousands of discoverers and inventors have gone to pieces unable to find the man of means ready to provide the wherewithal for the execution of their thoughts; how many germs of inventions and discoveries have been and continue to be nipped by the social stress for bare existence, is a matter that eludes all calculation. Not the men of head and brain, but those of large wealth are to-day the masters of the world,—which, however, does not exclude the occasional and exceptional phenomenon of brains and wealth being united in one person. The exception only proves the rule.

Everyone in practical life knows with what suspicion the workingman to-day regards every improvement, every invention introduced in the shop. And he is right. He rarely derives any advantage therefrom; it all accrues to the employer. The workingman is assailed with the fear lest the new machine, the new improvement cast him off to-morrow as superfluous. Instead of gladsome applause for an invention that does honor to man and is fraught with benefit for the race, he only has a malediction on his lips. We also know, from personal experience, how many an improvement perceived by the workingman, is not introduced: the workingman keeps silent, fearing to derive no benefit but only harm from it. Such are the natural consequences of an antagonism of interests.[177]

This antagonism of interests is removed in Socialist society. Each unfolds his faculties in his own interest, and, by so doing, simultaneously benefits the commonweal. To-day personal gratification is generally antagonistic to the common weal; the two exclude each other. In the new Order, the antagonisms are removed: The gratification of the ego and the promotion of the common weal harmonize, they supplement each other.[178]

The marvelous effect of such a mental and moral condition is obvious. The productivity of labor will rise mightily, and such increased productivity makes possible the satisfaction of higher wants. Especially will the productivity of labor rise through the discontinuance of the present and enormous disintegration of labor, in hundreds of thousands, even millions of petty establishments, conducted with imperfect tools. According to the industrial census of the German Empire for the year 1882, there were 3,005,457 leading establishments, exclusive of commerce, transportation, hotels and inns, in which 6,396,465 persons were occupied. Of these leading establishments, 61.1 per cent. employed less than 5 persons, and 16.8 per cent. employed from 6 to 50 persons. The former are small concerns, the latter middle class ones. Through the concentration of the small and middle class establishments into large ones, equipped with all the advantages of modern technique, an enormous waste in power, time, material (light, heat, etc.) space, now incurred, would be avoided, and the productivity of labor would gain proportionally. What difference there is in the productivity of small, middle class and large establishments, even where modern technique is applied, may be illustrated by the census of manufactories of the State of Massachusetts for 1890. The establishments in ten leading industries were divided into three classes. Those that produced less than $40,000 worth of goods were placed in the lowest class; those that produced from $40,000 to $150,000 were placed in the middle class; and those that produced over $150,000 worth of goods were placed in the upper class.

The result was this:—

The more than twice as large number of small establishments turned out only 9.4 per cent. of the total product. But even the large establishments could, with hardly any exception, be conducted far more rationally than now, so that, under a system of collective production, aided by the most highly perfected technical process, an infinitely larger demand could be supplied.

Upon the subject of the saving of time, possible under a system of production planted on a rational basis, Th. Hertzka of Vienna has made some interesting calculations.[179] He investigated the amount of labor-power and time requisite for the satisfaction of the wants of the 22 million inhabitants of Austria by means of production on a large scale. To this end Hertzka gathered information upon the capacity of large establishments in several fields, and he based his calculations upon the data thus ascertained. In Hertzka's calculation are included 10,500,000 hectares of agricultural and 3,000,000 hectares of pasture lands, that should suffice for the production of agricultural products and of meat for the said population. Hertzka also included in his computation the building of houses on the basis of a house of 150 square meters, 5 rooms and strong enough to last 50 years, to each family. The result was that, for agricultural, building, the production of flour, sugar, coal, iron, machinery, clothing and chemicals, only 615,000 workingmen were needed, at work the whole year and at the present average hours of daily labor. These 615,000 workingmen are, however, only 12.3 per cent. of the population of Austria, capable to work, exclusive of all the women as well as the males under 16 and over 50 years of age. If all the 5,000,000 men, and not merely the above figure of 615,000, were engaged, then, each of them would need to work only 36.9 days—six weeks in round figures—in order to produce the necessaries of life for 22 million people. Assuming 300 work days in the year, instead of 37, and 11 as the present daily hours of work, it follows that, under this new organization of labor, only 1-3/8 hours a day would be needed to cover the most pressing needs of all.

Hertzka further computes the articles of luxury that the better situated demand, and he finds that the production of the same for 22 million people would require an additional 315,000 workingmen. Altogether, according to Hertzka, and making allowance for some industries that are not properly represented in Austria, one million in round figures, equal to 20 per cent. of the male population able to work, exclusive of those under 16 and above 50 years of age, would suffice to cover all the needs of the population in 60 days. If, again, the whole male population able to work is made the basis of the computation, these would need to furnish but two and a half hours work a day.[180]

This computation will surprise none who take a comprehensive view of things. Considering, then, that, at such moderate hours, even the men 50 years old—all the sick and invalid excepted—are able to work; furthermore, that also youths under 16 years of age could be partially active, as well as a large number of women, in so far as these are not otherwise engaged in the education of children, the preparation of food, etc.;—considering all that, it follows that even these hours could be considerably lowered, or the demand for wealth could be considerably increased. None will venture to claim that no more and unforeseen progress, and considerable progress, at that, is possible in the process of production, thus furnishing still greater advantages. But the issue now is to satisfy a mass of wants felt by all that to-day are satisfied only by a minority. With higher culture ever newer wants arise, and these too should be met. We repeat it: the new Social order is not to live in proletarian style; it lives as a highly developed people demand to live, and it makes the demand in all its members from the first to the last. But such a people can not rest content with satisfying merely its material wants. All its members are to be allowed fullest leisure for their development in the arts and sciences, as well as for their recreation.

Also in other important respects will Socialist society differ from the bourgeois individualist system. The motto: "Cheap and bad"—which is and must be standard for a large portion of bourgeois production, seeing that the larger part of the customers can buy only cheap goods, that quickly wear out—likewise drops out. Only the best will be produced; it will last longer and will need replacing at only wider intervals. The follies and insanities of fashion, promoted by wastefulness and tastelessness, also cease. People will probably clothe themselves more properly and sightfully than to-day, when, be it said in passing, the fashions of the last hundred years, especially as to men, distinguish themselves by their utter tastelessness. No longer will a new fashion be introduced every three months, an act of folly that stands in intimate relation with the competitive struggle of women among themselves, with the ostentatiousness and vanity of society, and with the necessity for the display of wealth. To-day a mass of establishments and people live upon this folly of fashion, and are compelled by their own interests to stimulate and force it. Together with the folly of fashion in dress, falls the folly of fashion in the style of architecture. Eccentricity reaches here its worst expression. Styles of architecture that required centuries for their development and that sprang up among different peoples—we are no longer satisfied with European styles, we go to the Japanese, Indians and Chinese—are used up in a few decades and laid aside. Our poor professional artists no longer know whither and whereto they should turn with and for their samples and models. Hardly have they assorted themselves with one style, and expect to recover with ease the outlays they have made, when a new style breaks in upon them, and demands new sacrifices of time and money, of mental and physical powers. The nervousness of the age is best reflected in the rush from one fashion to the other, from one style to the other. No one will dare to claim any sense for such hurrying and scurrying, or the merit of its being a symptom of social health.

Socialism alone will re-introduce a greater stability in the habits of life. It will make repose and enjoyment possible; it will be a liberator from hurry and excessive exertion. Nervousness, that scourge of our age, will disappear.

But labor is also to be made pleasant. To that end practical and tastefully contrived workshops are required; the utmost precautions against danger; the removal of disagreeable odors, gases and smoke,—in short, of all sources of injury or discomfort to health. At the start, the new social system will carry on production with the old means, inherited from the old. But these are utterly inadequate. Numerous and unsuitable workshops, disintegrated in all directions; imperfect tools and machinery, running through all the stages of usefulness;—this heap is insufficient both for the number of the workers and for their demands of comfort and of pleasure. The establishment of a large number of spacious, light, airy, fully equipped and ornamented workshops is a pressing need. Art, technique, skill of head and hand immediately find a wide field of activity. All departments in the building of machinery, in the fashioning of tools, in architecture and in the branches of work connected with the internal equipment of houses have the amplest opportunity. Whatever human genius can invent with regard to comfortable and pleasant homes, proper ventilation, lighting and heating, mechanical and technical provisions and cleanliness is brought into application. The saving of motor power, heating, lighting, time, as well as the promotion of all that tends to render work and life agreeable, demand a suitable concentration of the fields of labor on certain spots. Habitations are separated from places of work and are freed from the disagreeable features of industrial and other manual work. These disagreeable features are, in their turn, reduced to the lowest measure possible by means of suitable arrangements and provisions of all sorts, until wholly removed. The present state of technique has now means enough at command to wholly free from danger the most dangerous occupations, such as mining and the preparation of chemicals, etc. But these means can not be applied in capitalist society because they are expensive, and there is no obligation to do more than what is absolutely necessary for the workingman. The discomforts attached to mining can be removed by means of a different sort of draining, of extensive ventilation, of electric lighting, of a material reduction of hours of work, and of frequent shifts. Nor does it require any particular cleverness to find such protective means as would render building accidents almost impossible, and transform work in that line into the most exhilarating of all. Ample protections against sun and rain are possible in the construction of the largest edifices. Furthermore, in a society with ample labor-power at its disposal, such as Socialist society would be, frequent shifts and the concentration of certain work upon certain seasons of the year and certain hours of day would be an easy matter.

The problem of removing dust, smoke, soot and odors could likewise be completely solved by modern chemistry and technique; it is solved only partially or not at all, simply because the private employers care not to make the necessary sacrifice of funds. The work-places of the future, wherever located, whether above or under ground, will, accordingly, distinguish themselves most favorably from those of to-day. Many contrivances are, under the existing system of private enterprise, first of all, a question of money: can the business bear the expenditure? Will it pay? If the answer is in the negative, then let the workingmen go to pieces. Capital does not operate where there is no profit. Humanity is not an "issue" on the Exchange.[181]

The question of "profit" has exhausted its role in Socialist society: in Socialist society the only consideration is the welfare of its members. Whatever is beneficent to these and protects them must be introduced; whatever injures them must stop. None is forced to join in a dangerous game. If matters are undertaken that have dangers in prospect, volunteers will be numerous, all the more so seeing that the object can never be to the injury, but only to the promotion of civilization.

The amplest application of motor powers and of the best machinery and implements, the utmost subdivision of labor, and the most efficient combinations of labor-power will, accordingly, carry production to such pitch that the hours of work can be materially reduced in the production of the necessaries of life. The capitalist lengthens the hours of labor, whenever he can, especially during crises, when the worker's power of resistance is broken, and by squeezing more surplus values out of him, prices may be lowered. In Socialist society, an increase of production accrues to the benefit of all: The share of each rises with the productivity of labor and increased productivity again makes possible the reduction of the hours of work, socially determined as necessary.

Among the motor powers that are coming into application, electricity will, according to all appearances, take a decisive place.[182] Capitalist society is now everywhere engaged in harnessing it to its service. The more extensively this is done the better. The revolutionizing effect of this mightiest of all the powers of Nature will but all the sooner snap the bonds of bourgeois society, and open the doors to Socialism. But only in Socialist society will electricity attain its fullest and most widespread application. If the prospects now opened for its application are even but partially realized—and on that head there can be no doubt—electricity, as a motor power as well as a source of light and heat, will contribute immeasurably towards the improvement of the conditions of life. Electricity distinguishes itself from all other motor power in that, above all, its supply in Nature is abundant. Our water courses, the ebb and tide of the sea, the winds, the sun-light—all furnish innumerable horse-powers, the moment we know how to utilize them in full. Through the invention of accumulators it has been proved that large volumes of power, which can be appropriated only periodically, from the ebbs and tides, the winds and mountain streams, can be stored up and kept for use at any given place and any given time. All these inventions and discoveries are still in embryo: their full development may be surmised, but can not be forecast in detail.

The progress expected from the application of electricity sounds like a fairy tale. Mr. Meems of Baltimore has planned an electric wagon able to travel 300 kilometers an hour—actually race with the wind. Nor does Mr. Meems stand alone. Prof. Elihu Thomson of Lynn, Mass., also believes it possible to construct electromotors of a velocity of 160 kilometers, and, with suitable strengthening of the rolling stock and improvement of the signal system, of a velocity of 260 kilometers; and he has given a plausible explanation of his system. The same scientist holds, and in this Werner Siemens, who expressed similar views at the Berlin Convention of Naturalists in 1887, agrees with him, that it is possible by means of electricity to transform the chemical elements directly into food—a revolution that would hoist capitalist society off its hinges. While in 1887 Werner Siemens was of the opinion that it was possible, though only in the remote future, to produce artificially a hydrate of carbon such as grape sugar and later the therewith closely related starch, whereby "bread could be made out of stone," the chemist Dr. B. Meyer claims that ligneous fibre could eventually be turned into a source of human food. Obviously, we are moving towards ever newer chemical and technical revolutions. In the meantime, the physiologist E. Eiseler has actually produced grape sugar artificially, and thus made a discovery that, in 1887, Werner Siemens considered possible only in the "remote future." In the spring of 1894, the French ex-Minister of Public Worship, Prof. Berthelot, delivered an address in Paris at the banquet of the Association of Chemical Manufacturers upon the significance of chemistry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot went on to say:—

"The manufacture of sulphuric acids and of soda, bleaching and coloring, beet sugar, therapeutic alkaloids, gas, gilding and silvering, etc.; then came electro-chemistry, whereby metallurgy was radically revolutionized; thermo-chemistry and the chemistry of explosives, whereby fresh energy was imparted to mining and to war; the wonders of organic chemistry in the production of colors, of flavors, of therapeutic and antiseptic means, etc. But all that is only a start: soon much more important problems are to be solved. About the year 2000 there will be no more agriculture and no more farmers: chemistry will have done away with the former cultivation of the soil. There will be no more coal-shafts, consequently, neither will there be any more miners' strikes. Fuel is produced by chemical and physical processes. Tariffs and wars are abolished: aerial navigation, that helped itself to chemicals as motor power, pronounced the sentence of death upon those obsolete habits. The whole problem of industry then consists in discovering sources of power, that are inexhaustible and resortable to with little labor. Until now we have produced steam through the chemical energy of burning mineral coal. But mineral coal is hard to get and its supply decreases daily. Attention must be turned towards utilizing the heat of the sun and of the earth's crust. The hope is justified that both sources will be drawn upon without limit. The boring of a shaft 3,000 to 4,000 meters deep does not exceed the power of modern, less yet it will exceed that of future engineers. The source of all heat and of all industry would be thus thrown open. Add water to that, and all imaginable machinery may be put in perpetual operation on earth: the source of this power would experience hardly any diminution in hundreds of years.

"With the aid of the earth's heat, numerous chemical problems will become solvable, among these the greatest of all—the chemical production of food. In principle, the problem is solved now. The synthesis of fats and oils has been long known; likewise are sugar and hydrates of carbon known; nor will it be long before the secret of compounding azote is out. The food problem is a purely chemical one. The day when the corresponding cheap power shall have been obtained, food of all sort will be producable with carbon out of carbon oxides, and with hydrogen and acids out of water, and with nitrogen out of the atmosphere. What until now vegetation has done, industry will thenceforth perform, and more perfectly than Nature itself. The time will come when everyone will carry about him a little box of chemicals wherewith to provide his food supply of albumen, fat and hydrates of carbon, regardless of the hour of the day or the season of the year, regardless of rain or drought, of frost or hail, or insects. A revolution will then set in of which no conception is so far possible. Fields bearing fruit, wine-bearing mountain slopes and pastures for cattle will have vanished. Man will have gained in gentleness and morality seeing he no longer lives on the murder and destruction of living beings. Then also will the difference drop away between fertile and barren districts; perchance deserts may then become the favorite homes of man being healthier than the damp valleys and the swamp-infected plains. Then also will Art, together with all the beauties of human life reach full development. No longer will the face of earth be marred, so to speak, with geometrical figures, now entailed by agriculture: it will become a garden in which, at will, grass or flowers, bush or woods, can be allowed to grow, and in which the human race will live in plenty, in a Golden Age. Nor will man thereby sink into indolence and corruption. Work is requisite to happiness, and man will work as much as ever, because he will be working for himself aiming at the highest development of his mental, moral and esthetical powers."

Every reader may accept what he please of this address of Prof. Berthelot; certain, however, is the prospect that in the future and in virtue of the progress of science, wealth—the volume and variety of products—will increase enormously, and that the pleasures of life of the coming generations will take undreamed of increment.

An aspiration, deeply implanted in the nature of man, is that of freedom in the choice and change of occupation. As uninterrupted repetition renders the daintiest of dishes repulsive, so with a daily treadmill-like recurring occupation: it dulls and relaxes the senses. Man then does only mechanically what he must do; he does it without swing or enjoyment. There are latent in all men faculties and desires that need but to be awakened and developed to produce the most beautiful results. Only then does man become fully and truly man. Towards the satisfaction of this need of change, Socialist society offers, as will be shown, the fullest opportunity. The mighty increase of productive powers, coupled with an ever progressing simplification of the process of labor, not only enables a considerable lowering of hours of work, it also facilitates the acquisition of skill in many directions.

The old apprentice system has survived its usefulness: it exists to-day only and is possible only in backward, old-fashioned forms of production, as represented by the small handicrafts. Seeing, however, that this vanishes from the new social Order, all the institutions and forms peculiar thereto vanish along with it. New ones step in. Every factory shows us to-day how few are its workingmen, still engaged at a work that they have been apprenticed in. The employes are of the most varied, heterogeneous trades; a short time suffices to train them in any sub-department of work, at which, in accord with the ruling system of exploitation, they are then kept at work longer hours, without change or regard to their inclinations, and, lashed to the machine, become themselves a machine.[183] Such a state of things has no place in a changed organization of society. There is ample time for the acquisition of dexterity of hand and the exercise of artistic skill. Spacious training schools, equipped with all necessary comforts and technical perfections will facilitate to young and old the acquisition of any trade. Chemical and physical laboratories, up to all the demands of these sciences, and furnished with ample staffs of instructors will be in existence. Only then will be appreciated to its full magnitude what a world of ambitions and faculties the capitalist system of production suppresses, or forces awry into mistaken paths.[184]

It is not merely possible to have a regard for the need of change; it is the purpose of society to realize its satisfaction: the harmonious growth of man depends upon that. The professional physiognomies that modern society brings to the surface—whether the profession be in certain occupations of some sort or other, or in gluttony and idleness, or in compulsory tramping—will gradually vanish. There are to-day precious few people with any opportunity of change in their occupations, or who exercise the same. Occasionally, individuals are found who, favored by circumstances, withdraw from the routine of their daily pursuits and, after having paid their tribute to physical, recreate themselves with intellectual work; and conversely, brain workers are met off and on, who seek and find change in physical labors of some sort or other, handwork, gardening, etc. Every hygienist will confirm the invigorating effect of a pursuit that rests upon alternating physical and mental work; only such a pursuit is natural. The only qualification is that it be moderately indulged, and in proportion to the strength of the individual.

Leo Tolstoi lashes the hypertrophic and unnatural character that art and science have assumed under the unnatural conditions of modern society.[185] He severely condemns the contempt for physical labor, entertained in modern society, and he recommends a return to natural conditions. Every being, who means to live according to the laws of nature and enjoy life, should divide the day between, first, physical field labor; secondly, hand work; thirdly, mental work; fourthly, cultured and companionable intercourse. More than eight hours' physical work should not be done. Tolstoi, who practices this system of life, and who, as he says, has felt himself human only since he put it into practice, perceives only what is possible to him, a rich, independent man, but wholly impossible to the large mass of mankind, under existing conditions. The person who must do hard physical work every day ten, twelve and more hours, to gain a meager existence, and who was brought up in ignorance, can not furnish himself with the Tolstoian system of life. Neither can they, who are on the firing line of business life and are compelled to submit to its exactions. The small minority who could imitate Tolstoi have, as a rule, no need to do so. It is one of the illusions that Tolstoi yields to, the belief that social systems can be changed by preaching and example. The experiences made by Tolstoi with his system of life prove how rational the same is; in order, however, to introduce such a system of life as a social custom, a social foundation is requisite other than the present. It requires a new society.

Future society will have such a foundation; it will have scientists and artists of all sorts in abundance; but all of them will work physically a part of the day, and devote the rest, according to their liking, to study, the arts or companionable intercourse.[186]

The existing contrast between mental and manual labor—a contrast that the ruling classes seek to render as pronounced as possible with the view of securing for themselves also the intellectual means of sovereignty—will likewise be removed.

It follows from the preceding arguments that crises and compulsory idleness are impossible phenomena in the new social Order. Crises arise from the circumstance that individualist, capitalist production—incited by profit and devoid of all reliable gauge with which to ascertain the actual demand—brings an overstocking of the world's market, and thus overproduction. The merchandise feature of the products under capitalism, of the products that their owners endeavor to exchange, makes the use of the product dependent upon the consumer's capacity to buy. The capacity to buy is, however, limited, in so far as the overwhelming majority are concerned, they being under-paid for their labor, or even wholly unable to sell the same if the capitalist does not happen to be able to squeeze a surplus value out of it. The capacity to buy and the capacity to consume are two wholly distinct things in capitalist society. Many millions of people are in want of clothes, shoes, furniture, linen, eatables and drinkables, but they have no money, and their wants, i. e., their capacity to consume, remains unsatisfied. The market is glutted with goods, but the masses suffer hunger; they are willing to work, but they find none to buy their labor-power because the holder of money sees nothing to "make" in the purchase. "Die, canaille; become vagabonds, criminals! I, the capitalist, can not help it. I have no use for goods that I have no purchaser to buy from me with corresponding profit." And, in a way, the man is right.

In the new social Order this contradiction is wiped out. Socialist society produces not "merchandise," in order to "buy" and to "sell;" it produces necessaries of life, that are used, consumed, and otherwise have no object. In Socialist society, accordingly, the capacity to consume is not bounded, as in bourgeois society, by the individual's capacity to buy; it is bounded by the collective capacity to produce. If labor and instruments of labor are in existence, all wants can be satisfied; the social capacity to consume is bounded only by the satisfaction of the consumers.

There being no "merchandise" in Socialist society, neither can there be any "money." Money is the visible contrast of merchandise; yet itself is merchandise! Money, though itself merchandise, is at the same time the social equivalent for all other articles of merchandise. But Socialist society produces no articles of merchandise, only articles of use and necessity, whose production requires a certain measure of social labor. The time, on an average requisite for the production of an article is the only standard by which it is measured for social use. Ten minutes social labor in one article are equal to ten minutes social labor in another—neither more nor less. Society is not "on the make"; it only seeks to effect among its members the exchange of articles of equal quality, equal utility. It need not even set up a standard of use value. It merely produces what it needs. If society finds that a three-hour work day is requisite for the production of all that is needed, it establishes such a term of work.[187] If the methods of production improve in such wise that the supply can be raised in two hours, the two-hour work day is established. If, on the contrary, society demands the gratification of higher wants than, despite the increase of forces and the improved productivity of the process of labor, can be satisfied with two or three hours work, then the four-hour day is introduced. Its will is law.

How much social labor will be requisite for the production of any article is easily computed.[188] The relation of the part to the whole of the working time is measured accordingly. Any voucher—a printed piece of paper, gold or tin—certifies to the time spent in work, and enables its possessor to exchange it for articles of various kinds.[189] If he finds that his wants are smaller than what he receives for his labor, he then works proportionally shorter hours. If he wishes to give away what he does not consume, nothing hinders him. If he is disposed to work for another out of his own free will, so that the latter may revel in the dolce far niente,—if he chooses to be such a blockhead, nothing hinders him. But none can compel him to work for another; none can withhold from him a part of what is due him for labor performed. Everyone can satisfy all his legitimate desires—only not at the expense of others. He receives the equivalent of what he has rendered to society—neither more nor less, and he remains free from all exploitation by third parties.

"But what becomes of the difference between the lazy and the industrious? between the intelligent and the stupid?" That is one of the principal questions from our opponents, and the answer gives them no slight headache. That this distinction between the "lazy" and the "industrious," the "intelligent" and the "stupid" is not made in our civil service hierarchy, but that the term of service decides in the matter of salary and generally of promotion also—these are facts that occur to none of these would-be puzzlers and wiseacres. The teachers, the professors—and as a rule the latter are the silliest questioners—move into their posts, not according to their own qualities, but according to the salaries that these posts bring. That promotions in the army and in the hierarchies of the civil service and the learned professions are often made, not according to worth, but according to birth, friendship and female influence, is a matter of public notoriety. That, however, wealth also is not measured by diligence and intelligence may be judged by the Berlin inn-keepers, bakers and butchers, to whom grammar often is a mystery, and who figure in the first of the three classes of the Prussian electorate, while the intellectuals of Berlin, the men of science, the highest magistrates of the Empire and the State, vote with the second class. There is not now any difference between the "lazy" and the "diligent," the "intelligent" and the "stupid" for the simple reason that what is understood by these terms exists no longer. A "lazy" fellow society only calls him who has been thrown out of work, is compelled to lead a vagabond's life and finally does become a vagabond, or who, grown up under improper training, sinks into vice. But to style "lazy fellow" the man who rolls in money and kills the day with idleness or debauchery, would be an insult: he is a "worthy and good man."

How do matters stand in Socialist society? All develop under equal conditions, and each is active in that to which inclination and skill point him, whence differences in work will be but insignificant.[190] The intellectual and moral atmosphere of society, which stimulates all to excel one another, likewise aids in equalizing such differences. If any person finds that he cannot do as much as others on a certain field, he chooses another that corresponds with his strength and faculties. Whoever has worked with a large number of people in one establishment knows that men who prove themselves unfit and useless in a certain line, do excellent work in another. There is no normally constructed being who fails to meet the highest demands in one line or another, the moment he finds himself in the right place. By what right does any claim precedence over another? If any one has been treated so step-motherly by Nature that with the best will he can not do what others can, Society has no right to punish him for the shortcomings of Nature. If, on the contrary, a person has received from Nature gifts that raise him above others, Society is not obliged to reward what is not his personal desert. In Socialist society all enjoy equal conditions of life and opportunities for education; all are furnished the same opportunities to develop their knowledge and powers according to their respective capacities and inclinations. In this lies a further guarantee that not only will the standard of culture and powers be higher in Socialist than in bourgeois society, but also that both will be more equally distributed and yet be much more manifold.

When, on a journey up the Rhine, Goethe studied the Cathedral of Cologne, he discovered in the archives that the old master-builders paid their workmen equal wages for equal time. They did so because they wished to get good and conscientious work. This looks like an anomaly to modern bourgeois society. It introduced the system of piece-work, that drives the workingmen to out-work one another, and thus aids the employer in underpaying and in reducing wages.

As with manual, so with mental work. Man is the product of the time and circumstances that he lives in. A Goethe, born under equally favorable conditions in the fourth, instead of the eighteenth, century might have become, instead of a distinguished poet and naturalist, a great Father of the Church, who might have thrown St. Augustine into the shade. If, on the other hand, instead of being the son of a rich Frankfort patrician, Goethe had been born the son of a poor shoemaker of the same town, he never would have become the Minister of the Grand Duke of Weimar, but would probably have remained a shoemaker, and died an honorable member of the craft. Goethe himself recognized the advantage he had in being born in a materially and socially favorable station in order to reach his stage of development. It so appears in his "Wilhelm Meister." Were Napoleon I. born ten years later, he never would have been Emperor of France. Without the war of 1870-1871, Gambetta had never become what he did become. Place the naturally gifted child of intelligent parents among savages, and he becomes a savage. Whatever a man is, society has made him. Ideas are not creations that spring from the head of the individual out of nothing, or through inspiration from above; they are products of social life, of the Spirit of the Age, raised in the head of the individual. An Aristotle could not possibly have the ideas of a Darwin, and a Darwin could not choose but think otherwise than an Aristotle. Man thinks according as the Spirit of the Age, i. e., his surroundings and the phenomena that they present to him drive him to think. Hence the experience of different people often thinking simultaneously the same thing, of the same inventions and discoveries being made simultaneously in places far apart from each other. Hence also the fact that an idea, uttered fifty years too early, leaves the world cold; fifty years later, sets it ablaze. Emperor Sigismund could risk breaking his word to Huss in 1415 and order him burned in Constance; Charles V., although a more violent fanatic, was compelled to allow Luther to depart in peace from the Reichstag at Worms in 1521. Ideas are, accordingly, the product of combined social causes and social life. What is true of society in general, is true in particular of the several classes that, at given historic epochs, constitute society. As each class has its special interests, it also has its special ideas and views, that lead to those class struggles of which recorded history is full, and that reach their climax in the class antagonisms and class struggles of modern days. Hence, it depends not merely upon the age in which a man lives, but also upon the social stratum of a certain age in which he lived or lives, and whereby his feelings, thoughts and actions are determined.

Without modern society, no modern ideas. That is obvious. With regard to the future social Order, it must be furthermore added that the means whereby the individual develops are the property of society. Society can, accordingly, not be bound to render special homage to what itself made possible and is its own product.

So much on the qualification of manual and brain work. It follows that there can be no real distinction between "higher" and "lower" manual work, such as not infrequently a mechanic to-day affects towards the day-laborer, who performs work on the street, or the like. Society demands only socially necessary work; hence all work is of equal value to society. If work that is disagreeable and repulsive can not be performed mechanically or chemically and by some process converted into work that is agreeable—a prospect that may not be put in doubt, seeing the progress made on the fields of technique and chemistry—and if the necessary volunteer forces can not be raised, then the obligation lies upon each, as soon as is his turn, to do his part. False ideas of shame, absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its social usefulness. To-day work is badly paid in proportion as it is disagreeable. The reason is that, due to the constant revolutionizing of the process of production, a permanent mass of superfluous labor lies on the street, and, in order to live, sells itself for such vile work, and at such prices that the introduction of machinery in these departments of labor does not "pay." Stone-breaking, for instance, is proverbially one of the worst paid and most disagreeable kinds of work. It were a trifling matter to have the stone-breaking done by machinery, as in the United States; but we have such a mass of cheap labor-power that the machine would not "pay."[191] Street and sewer cleaning, the carting away of refuse, underground work of all sorts, etc., could, with the aid of machinery and technical contrivances, even at our present state of development, be all done in such manner that no longer would any trace of disagreeableness attach to the work. Carefully considered, the workingman who cleans out a sewer and thereby protects people from miasmas, is a very useful member of society; whereas a professor who teaches falsified history in the interest of the ruling classes, or a theologian who seeks to befog the mind with supernatural and transcendental doctrines are highly injurious beings.

The learned fraternity of to-day, clad in offices and dignities, to a large extent represents a guild intended and paid to defend and justify the rule of the leading classes with the authority of science; to make them appear good and necessary; and to prop up existing superstitions. In point of fact this guild is largely engaged in the trade of quackery and brain-poisoning—a work injurious to civilization, intellectual wage-labor in the interest of the capitalist class and its clients.[192] A social condition, that should make impossible the existence of such elements, would perform an act towards the liberation of humanity.

Genuine science, on the other hand, is often connected with highly disagreeable and repulsive work, such, for instance, as when a physician examines a corpse in a state of decomposition, or operates on supurating wounds, or when a chemist makes experiments. These often are labors more repulsive than the most repulsive ones ever performed by day-laborers and untutored workingmen. Few recognize the fact. The difference lies in that the one requires extensive studies in order to perform it, whereas the other can be performed by anyone without preparatory studies. Hence the radical difference in the estimation of the two. But in a society where, in virtue of the amplest opportunities of education afforded to all, the present distinction between "cultured" and "uncultured" ceases to exist, the contrast is likewise bound to vanish between learned and unlearned work, all the more seeing that technical development knows no limits and manual labor may be likewise performed by machinery or technical contrivances. We need but look at the development of our art handicrafts—xylography and copper-etching, for instance. As it turns out that the most disagreeable kinds of work often are the most useful, so also is our conception regarding agreeable and disagreeable work, like so many other modern conceptions, utterly superficial; it is a conception that has an eye to externals only.

* * * * *

The moment production is carried on in Socialist society upon the lines traced above, it no longer produces "merchandise," but only articles of use for the direct demand of society. Commerce, accordingly, ceases, having its sense and reason for being only in a social system that rests upon the production of goods for sale. A large army of persons of both sexes is thus set free for productive work.[193] This large army, set free for production, not only increases the volume of wealth produced, but makes possible a reduction of the hours of work. These people are to-day more or less parasites: they are supported by the work of others: in many instances they must toil diligently in return for a meagre existence. In Socialist society they are superfluous as merchants, hosts, brokers and agents. In lieu of the dozens, hundreds and thousands of stores and commercial establishments of all sorts, that to-day every community holds in proportion to its size, large municipal stores step in, elegant bazaars, actual exhibitions, requiring a relatively small administrative personnel. This change in itself represents a revolution in all previous institutions. The tangled mass of modern commerce is transformed into a centralized and purely administrative department, with only the simplest of functions, that can not choose but grow still simpler through the progressive centralization of all social institutions. Likewise does the whole system of transportation and communication undergo a complete change.

The telegraph, railroads, Post Office, river and ocean vessels, street railways—whatever the names of the vehicles and institutions may be that attend to the transportation and communication of capitalist society—now become social property. Many of these institutions—Post Offices, telegraph and railroads generally—are now State institutions in Germany. Their transformation into social property presents no difficulties: there no private interests are left to hurt: if the State continues to develop in that direction, all the better. But these institutions, administered by the State, are no Socialist institutions, as they are mistakenly taken for. They are business plants, that are exploited as capitalistically as if they were in private hands. Neither the officers nor the workingmen have any special benefit from them. The State treats them just as any private capitalist. When, for instance, orders were issued not to engage any workingman over 40 years of age in the railway or marine service of the Empire, the measure carries on its brows the class stamp of the State of the exploiters, and is bound to raise the indignation of the working class. Such and similar measures that proceed from the State as an employer of labor are even worse than if they proceed from private employers. As against the State, the latter is but a small employer, and the occupation that this one denies another might grant. The State, on the contrary, being a monopolistic employer, can, at one stroke, cast thousands of people into misery with its regulations. That is not Socialist, it is capitalist conduct; and the Socialist guards against allowing the present State ownership being regarded as Socialism, or the realization of Socialist aspirations. In a Socialist institution there are no employers. The leader, chosen for the purpose, can only carry out the orders and superintend the execution of the disciplinary and other measures prescribed by the collectivity itself.

As in the instance of the millions of private producers, dealers and middlemen of all sorts, large centralized establishments take their place, so does the whole system of transportation and communication assume new shape. The myriads of small shipments to as many consignees that consume a mass of powers and of time, now grow into large shipments to the municipal depots and the central places of production. Here also labor is simplified. The transportation of raw material to an establishment of a thousand workers is an infinitely simpler matter than to a thousand small and scattered establishments. Thus centralized localities of production and of transportation for whole communities, or divisions of the same, will introduce a great saving of time, of labor, of material, and of means both of production and distribution. The benefit accrues to the whole community, and to each individual therein. The physiognomy of our productive establishments, of our system of transportation and communication, especially also of our habitations, will be completely altered for the better. The nerve-racking noise, crowding and rushing of our large cities with their thousands of vehicles of all sorts ceases substantially: society assumes an aspect of greater repose. The opening of streets and their cleaning, the whole system of life and of intercourse acquires new character. Hygienic measures—possible to-day only at great cost and then only partially, not infrequently only in the quarters of the rich—can be introduced with ease everywhere. To-day "the common people" do not need them; they can wait till the funds are ready; and these never are.

Such a system of communication and transportation can not then choose but reach a high grade of perfection. Who knows but aerial navigation may then become a chief means of travel. The lines of transportation and communication are the arteries that carry the exchange of products—circulation of the blood—throughout the whole body social, that effect personal and mental intercourse between man and man. They are, consequently, highly calculated to establish an equal level of well-being and culture throughout society. The extension and ramification of the most perfect means of transportation and communication into the remotest corners of the land is, accordingly, a necessity and a matter of general social interest. On this field there arise before the new social system tasks that go far beyond any that modern society can put to itself. Finally, such a perfected system of transportation and communication, will promote the decentralization of the mass of humanity that is to-day heaped up in the large cities. It will distribute the same over the country, and thus—in point of sanitation as well as of mental and material progress—it will assume a significance of inestimable value.

* * * * *

Among the means of production in industry and transportation, land holds a leading place, being the source of all human effort and the foundation of all human existence, hence, of Society itself. Society resumes at its advanced stage of civilization, what it originally possessed. Among all races on earth that reached a certain minimum degree of culture, we find community in land, and the system continues in force with such people wherever they are still in existence. Community in land constituted the foundation of all primitive association: the latter was impossible without the former. Not until the rise and development of private property and of the forms of rulership therewith connected, and then only under a running struggle, that extends deep into our own times, was the system of common ownership in land ended, and the land usurped as private property. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property furnished, as we have seen, the first source of that bondage that, extending from chattel slavery to the "freedom" of the wage-earner of our own century, has run through all imaginable stages, until finally the enslaved, after a development of thousands of years re-convert the land into common property.

The importance of land to human existence is such that in all social struggles the world has ever known—whether in India, China, Egypt, Greece (Cleomenes), Rome (the Gracchi), Christian Middle Ages (religious sects, Munzer, the Peasants War), in the empires of the Aztecs and of the Incas, or in the several upheavals of latter days—the possession of land is the principal aim of the combatants. And even to-day, the public ownership of land finds its justifiers in such men as Adolf Samter, Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, who on other domains of the Social Question are ready to rest content with half-measures.[194]

The well-being of the population depends first of all upon the proper cultivation of the land. To raise the same to the highest degree of perfection is eminently a matter of public concern. That the cultivation of the land can reach the necessary high degree of perfection neither under the large, nor the middle, least of all under the small landlord system, has been previously shown. The most profitable cultivation of land depends not merely upon the special care bestowed upon it. Elements come here into consideration that neither the largest private holder, nor the mightiest association of these is equal to cope with. These are elements that lap over, even beyond the reach of the State and require international treatment.

Society must first of all consider the land as a whole—its topographical qualities, its mountains, plains, woods, lakes, rivers, ponds, heaths, swamps, moors, etc. The topography, together with the geographical location of land, both of which are unchangeable, exercises certain influences upon climate and the qualities of the soil. Here is an immense field on which a mass of experience is to be gathered and a mass of experiments to be made. What the State has done until now in this line is meager. What with the small means that it applies to these purposes, and what with the limitations imposed upon it by the large landlords, who even if the State were willing, would check it, little or nothing has been done. The State could do nothing on this field without greatly encroaching upon private property. Seeing, however, that its very existence is conditioned upon the safe-keeping and "sacredness" of private property, the large landlords are vital to it, and it is stripped of the power, even if it otherwise had the will, to move in that direction. Socialist society will have the task of undertaking vast improvements of the soil,—raising woods here, and dismantling others yonder, draining and irrigating, mixing and changing of soil, planting, etc., in order to raise the land to the highest point of productivity that it is capable of.

An important question, connected with the improvement of the land, is the contrivance of an ample and systematically planned network of rivers and canals, conducted upon scientific principles. The question of "cheaper" transportation on the waterways—a question of such gravity to modern society—loses all importance in Socialist society, seeing that the conceptions "cheap" and "dear" are unknown to it. On the other hand, however, waterways, as comfortable means of transportation, that can, moreover, be utilized with but slight expenditure of strength and matter, deserve attention. Moreover river and canal systems play important roles in the matter of climate, draining and irrigation, and the supply of fertilizers and other materials needed in the improvement of agricultural land.

Experience teaches that poorly-watered regions suffer more severely from cold winters and hot summers than well-watered lands, whence coast regions are exempt from the extremes of temperature, or rarely undergo them. Extremes of temperature are favorable neither to plants nor man. An extensive system of canalization, in connection with the proper forestry regulations, would unquestionably exercise beneficent influences. Such a system of canalization, along with the building of large reservoirs, that will collect the water in cases of freshets through thaws or heavy rainfalls, would be of great usefulness. Freshets and their devastating results would be impossible. Wide expanses of water, together with their proportional evaporations, would also, in all probability, bring about a more regular rain-fall. Finally such institutions would facilitate the erection of works for an extensive system of irrigation whenever needed.

Large tracts of land, until now wholly barren or almost so, could be transformed into fertile regions by means of artificial irrigation. Where now sheep can barely graze, and at best consumptive-looking pine trees raise their thin arms heavenward, rich crops could grow and a dense population find ample nutriment. It is merely a question of labor whether the vast sand tracts of the Mark, the "holy dust-box of the German Empire," shall be turned into an Eden. The fact was pointed out in an address delivered in the spring of 1894 on the occasion of the agricultural exposition in Berlin.[195] The requisite improvements, canals, provisions for irrigation, mixing of soil, etc., are matters, however, that can be undertaken neither by the small nor the large landlords of the Mark. Hence those vast tracts, lying at the very gates of the capital of the Empire, remain in a state of such backward cultivation that it will seem incredible to future generations. Again, a proper canalization would, by draining, reclaim for cultivation vast swamps and marshes in North as well as South Germany. These waterways could be furthermore utilized in raising fish; they could thus be vast sources of food; in neighborhoods where there are no rivers, they would furnish opportunity for commodious bath-houses.

Let a few examples illustrate the effectiveness of irrigation. In the neighborhood of Weissensfels, 7½ hectares of well-watered meadows produced 480 cwt. of after-grass; 5 contiguous hectares of meadow land of the same quality, but not watered, yielded only 32 cwt. The former had, accordingly, a crop ten times as large as the latter. Near Reisa in Saxony, the irrigation of 65 acres of meadow lands raised their revenue from 5,850 marks to 11,100 marks. The expensive outlays paid. Besides the Mark there are in Germany other vast tracts, whose soil, consisting mainly of sand, yields but poor returns, even when the summer is wet. Crossed and irrigated by canals, and their soil improved, these lands would within a short time yield five and ten times as much. There are examples in Spain of the yield of well-irrigated lands exceeding thirty-seven fold that of others that are not irrigated. Let there but be water, and increased volumes of food are conjured into existence.

Where are the private individuals, where the States, able to operate upon the requisite scale? When, after long decades of bitter experience, the State finally yields to the stormy demands of a population that has suffered from all manner of calamities, and only after millions of values have been destroyed, how slow, with what circumspection, how cautious does it proceed! It is so easy to do too much, and the State might by its precipitancy lose the means with which to build some new barracks for the accommodation of a few regiments. Then also, if one is helped "too much," others come along, and also want help. "Man, help yourself and God will help you," thus runs the bourgeois creed. Each for himself, none for all. And thus, hardly a year goes by without once, twice and oftener more or less serious freshets from brooks, rivers or streams occurring in several provinces and States: vast tracts of fertile lands are then devastated by the violence of the floods, and others are covered with sand, stone and all manner of debris; whole orchard plantations, that demanded tens of years for their growth, are uprooted; houses, bridges, dams are washed away; railroad tracks torn up; cattle, not infrequently human beings also, are drowned; soil improvements are carried off; crops ruined. Vast tracts, exposed to frequent inundations, are cultivated but slightly, lest the loss be double.

On the other hand, unskilful corrections of the channels of large rivers and streams,—undertaken in one-sided interests, to which the State ever yields readily in the service of "trade and transportation"—increase the dangers of freshets. Extensive cutting down of forests, especially on highlands and for private profit, adds more grist to the flood mill. The marked deterioration of the climate and decreased productivity of the soil, noticeable in the provinces of Prussia, Pomerania, the Steuermark, Italy, France, Spain, etc., is imputed to this vandalic devastation of the woods, done in the interest of private parties.

Frequent freshets are the consequence of the dismantling of mountain woodlands. The inundations of the Rhine, the Oder and the Vistula are ascribed mainly to the devastation of the woods in Switzerland, Galicia and Poland; and likewise in Italy with regard to the Po. Due to the baring of the Carnian Alps, the climate of Triest and Venice has materially deteriorated. Madeira, a large part of Spain, vast and once luxurious fields of Asia Minor have in a great measure forfeited their fertility through the same causes.

It goes without saying that Socialist society will not be able to accomplish all these great tasks out-of-hand. But it can and will undertake them, with all possible promptness and with all the powers at its command, seeing that its sole mission is to solve problems of civilization and to tolerate no hindrance. Thus it will in the course of time solve problems and accomplish feats that modern society can give no thought to, and the very thought of which gives it the vertigo.

The cultivation of the soil will, accordingly, be mightily improved in Socialist society, through these and similar measures. But other considerations, looking to the proper exploitation of the soil, are added to these. To-day, many square miles are planted with potatoes, which are to be applied mainly to the distilling of brandy, an article consumed almost exclusively by the poor classes of the population. Liquor is the only stimulant and "care-dispeller" that they are able to procure. The population of Socialist society needs none of that, hence the raising of potatoes and corn for that purpose, together with the labor therein expended, are set free for the production of healthy food.[196] The speculative purposes that our most fertile fields are put to in the matter of the sugar beet for the exportation of sugar, have been pointed out in a previous chapter. About 400,000 hectares of the best wheat fields are yearly devoted to the cultivation of sugar beet, in order to supply England, the United States and Northern Europe with sugar. The countries whose climate favors the growth of sugar cane succumb to this competition. Furthermore, our system of a standing army, the disintegration of production, the disintegration of the means of transportation and communication, the disintegration of agriculture, etc.,—all these demand hundreds of thousands of horses, with the corresponding fields to feed them and to raise colts. The completely transformed social and political conditions free the bulk of the lands that are now given up to these various purposes; and again large areas and rich labor-power are reclaimed for purposes of civilization. Latterly, extensive fields, covering many square kilometers, have been withdrawn from cultivation, being needed for the manoeuvering and exercising of army corps in the new methods of warfare and long distance firearms. All this falls away.

The vast field of agriculture, forestry and irrigation has become the subject of an extensive scientific literature. No special branch has been left untouched: irrigation and drainage, forestry, the cultivation of cereals, of leguminous and tuberous plants, of vegetables, of fruit trees, of berries, of flowers and ornamental plants; fodder for cattle raising; meadows; rational methods of breeding cattle, fish and poultry and bees, and the utilization of their excrements; utilization of manure and refuse in agriculture and manufacture; chemical examinations of seeds and of the soil, to ascertain its fitness for this or that crop; investigations in the rotations of crops and in agricultural machinery and implements; the profitable construction of agricultural buildings of all nature; the weather;—all have been drawn within the circle of scientific treatment. Hardly a day goes by without some new discovery, some new experience being made towards improving and ennobling one or other of these several branches. With the work of J. v. Liebig, the cultivation of the soil has become a science, indeed, one of the foremost and most important of all, a science that since then has attained a vastness and significance unique in the domain of activity in material production. And yet, if we compare the fullness of the progress made in this direction with the actual conditions prevailing in agriculture to-day, it must be admitted that, until now, only a small fraction of the private owners have been able to turn the progress to advantage, and among these there naturally is none who did not proceed from the view point of his own private interests, acted accordingly, kept only that in mind, and gave no thought to the public weal. The large majority of our farmers and gardeners, we may say 98 per cent. of them, are in no wise in condition to utilize all the advances made and advantages that are possible: they lack either the means or the knowledge thereto, if not both: as to the others, they simply do as they please. Socialist society finds herein a theoretically and practically well prepared field of activity. It need but to fall to and organize in order to attain wonderful results.

The highest possible concentration of productions affords, of itself, mighty advantages. Hedges, making boundary lines, wagon roads and footpaths between the broken-up holdings are removed, and yield some more available soil. The application of machinery is possible only on large fields: agricultural machinery of fullest development, backed by chemistry and physics could to-day transform unprofitable lands, of which there are not a few, into fertile ones. The application of accumulated electric power to agricultural machinery—plows, harrows, rollers, sowers, mowers, threshers, seed-assorters, chaff-cutters, etc.—is only a question of time. Likewise will the day come when electricity will move from the fields the wagons laden with the crops: draught cattle can be spared. A scientific system of fertilizing the fields, hand in hand with thorough management, irrigation and draining will materially increase the productivity of the land. A careful selection of seeds, proper protection against weeds—in itself a head much sinned against to-day—sends up the yield still higher.

According to Ruhland, a successful war upon cereal diseases would of itself suffice to render superfluous the present importation of grain into Germany.[197] Seeding, planting and rotation of crops, being conducted with the sole end in view of raising the largest possible volume of food, the object is then obtainable.

What may be possible even under present conditions is shown by the management of the Schnistenberg farm in the Rhenish Palatinate. In 1884 the same fell into the hand of a new tenant, who, in the course of eight years, raised three or four times as much as his predecessor.[198] The said property is situated 320 meters above the level of the sea, 286 acres in size, of which 18 are meadows, and has generally unfavorable soil, 30 acres being sandy, 60 stony, 55 sand loam and 123 hard loam. The new method of cultivation had astonishing results. The crops rose from year to year. The increase during the period of 1884-1892 was as follows per acre:

The neighboring community of Kiegsfeld, the witness of this marvelous development, followed the example and reached similar results on its own ground. The yield per acre was on an average this:

Such results are eloquent enough.

The cultivation of fruits, berries and garden vegetables will reach a development hardly thought possible. How unpardonably is being sinned at present in these respects, a look at our orchards will show. They are generally marked by a total absence of proper care. This is true of the cultivation of fruit trees even in countries that have a reputation for the excellence of these; Wurtemberg, for instance. The concentration of stables, depots for implements and manure and methods of feeding—towards which wonderful progress has been made, but which can to-day be applied only slightly—will, when generally introduced, materially increase the returns in raising cattle, and thereby facilitate the procurement of manure. Machinery and implements of all sorts will be there in abundance, very differently from the experience of ninety-nine one hundredths of our modern farmers. Animal products, such as milk, eggs, meat, honey, hair, wool, will be obtained and utilized scientifically. The improvements and advantages in the dairy industry reached by the large dairy associations is known to all experts, and ever new inventions and improvements are daily made. Many are the branches of agriculture in which the same and even better can be done. The preparation of the fields and the gathering of the crops are then attended to by large bodies of men, under skilful use of the weather, such as is to-day impossible. Large drying houses and sheds allow crops being gathered even in unfavorable weather, and save losses that are to-day unavoidable, and which, according to v. d. Goltz, often are so severe that, during a particularly rainy year, from eight to nine million marks worth of crops were ruined in Mecklenburg, and from twelve to fifteen in the district of Koenigsberg.

Through the skilful application of artificial heat and moisture on a large scale in structures protected from bad weather, the raising of vegetables and all manner of fruit is possible at all seasons in large quantities. The flower stores of our large cities have in mid-winter floral exhibitions that vie with those of the summer. One of the most remarkable advances made in the artificial raising of fruit is exemplified by the artificial vineyard of Garden-Director Haupt in Brieg, Silesia, which has found a number of imitators, and was itself preceded long before by a number of others in other countries, England among them. The arrangements and the results obtained in this vineyard were so enticingly described in the "Vossische Zeitung" of September 27, 1890, that we have reproduced the account in extracts:

"The glass-house is situated upon an approximately square field of 500 square meters, i. e., one-fifth of an acre. It is 4.5 to 5 meters high, and its walls face north, south, east and west. Twelve rows of double fruit walls run inside due north and south. They are 1.8 meters apart from each other and serve at the same time as supports to the flat roof. In a bed 1.25 meters deep, resting on a bank of earth 25 centimeters strong and which contains a net of drain and ventilation pipes,—a bed 'whose hard ground is rendered loose, permeable and fruitful through chalk, rubbish, sand, manure in a state of decomposition, bonedust and potash'—Herr Haupt planted against the walls three hundred and sixty grape vines of the kind which yields the noblest grape juice in the Rhinegau:—white and red Reissling and Tramine, white and blue Moscatelle and Burgundy.

"The ventilation of the place is effected by means of large fans, twenty meters long, attached to the roof, besides several openings on the side-walls. The fans can be opened and shut by means of a lever, fastened on the roof provided with a spindle and winch, and they can be made safe against all weather. For the watering of the vines 26 sprinklers are used, which are fastened to rubber pipes 1.25 meters long, and that hang down from a water tank. Herr Haupt introduced, however, another ingenious contrivance for quickly and thoroughly watering his 'wine-hall' and his 'vineyard', to wit, an artificial rain producer. On high, under the roof, lie four long copper tubes, perforated at distances of one-half meter. The streams of water that spout upward through these openings strike small round sieves made of window gauze and, filtered through these, are scattered in fine spray. To thoroughly water the vines by means of the rubber pipes requires several hours. But only one faucet needs to be turned by this second contrivance and a gentle refreshing rain trickles down over the whole place upon the grape vines, the beds and the granite flags of the walks. The temperature can be raised from 8 to 10 degrees R. above the outside air without any artificial contrivance, and simply through the natural qualities of the glass-house. In order to protect the vines from that dangerous and destructive foe, the vine louse, should it show itself, it is enough to close the drain and open all the water pipes. The inundation of the vines, thus achieved, the enemy can not withstand. The glass roof and walls protect the vineyard from storms, cold, frost and superfluous rain; in cases of hail, a fine wire-netting is spread over the same; against drought the artificial rain system affords all the protection needed. The vine-dresser of such a vineyard is his own weather-maker, and he can laugh at all the dangers from the incalculable whims and caprices of indifferent and cruel Nature,—dangers that ever threaten with ruin the fruit of the vine cultivator.

"What Herr Haupt expected happened. The vines thrived remarkably under the uniformly warm climate. The grapes ripened to their fullest, and as early as the fall of 1885 they yielded a juice not inferior to that generally obtained in the Rhinegau in point of richness of sugar and slightness of sourness. The grapes thrived equally the next year and even during the unfavorable year of 1887. On this space, when the vines have reached their full height of 5 meters, and are loaded with their burden of swollen grapes, 20 hectoliters of wine can be produced yearly, and the cost of a bottle of noble wine will not exceed 40 pennies.

"There is no reason imaginable why this process should not be conducted upon a large scale like any other industry. Glass-houses of the nature of this one on one-fifth of an acre can be undoubtedly raised upon a whole acre with equal facilities of ventilation, watering, draining and rain-making. Vegetation will start there several weeks sooner than in the open, and the vine-shoots remain safe from May frosts, rain and cold while they blossom; from drought during the growth of the grapes; from pilfering birds and grape thieves and from dampness while they ripen; finally from the vine-louse during the whole year and can hang safely deep into November and December. In his address, held in 1888 to the Society for the Promotion of Horticulture, and from which I have taken many a technical expression in this description of the 'Vineyard', the inventor and founder of the same closed his words with this alluring perspective of the future: 'Seeing that this vine culture can be carried on all over Germany, especially on otherwise barren, sandy or stony ground, such as, for instance, the worst of the Mark, that can be made arable and watered, it follows that the great interests in the cultivation of the soil receive fresh vigor from "vineyards under glass." I would like to call this industry "the vineyard of the future".'

"Just as Herr Haupt has furnished the practical proof that on this path an abundance of fine and healthy grapes can be drawn from the vine, he has also proved by his own pressing of the same what excellent wine they can yield. More thorough, more experienced, better experts and tried wine-drinkers and connoisseurs than myself have, after a severe test, bestowed enthusiastic praise upon the Reissling of the vintage of '88, upon the Tramine and Moscatelle of the vintage of '89, and upon the Burgundy of the vintage of '88, pressed from the grapes of this 'vineyard'. It should also be mentioned that this 'vineyard' also affords sufficient space for the cultivation of other side and twin plants. Herr Haupt raises between every two vines one rose bush, that blossoms richly in April and May; against the east and west walls he raises peaches, whose beauty of blossom must impart in April an appearance of truly fairy charm to this wine palace."

The enthusiasm with which the reporter describes this artificial "vineyard" in a serious paper testifies to the deep impression made upon him by this extraordinary artificial cultivation. There is nothing to prevent similar establishments, on a much more stupendous scale and for other branches of vegetation. The luxury of a double crop is obtainable in many agricultural products. To-day all such undertakings are a question of money, and their products are accessible only to the privileged classes. A Socialist society knows no other question than that of sufficient labor-power. If that is in existence, the work is done in the interest of all.

Another new invention on the field of food is that of Dr. Johann Hundhausen of Hamm in Westphalia, who succeeded in extracting the albumen of wheat—the secret of whose utilization in the legume was not yet known—in the shape of a thoroughly nutritive flour. This is a far-reaching invention. It is now possible to render the albumen of plants useful in substantial form for human food.

The inventor erected a large factory which produces vegetal albumen or aleurone meal from 80 to 83 per cent. of albumen, and a second quality of about 50 per cent. That the so-called aleurone meal represents a very concentrated albuminous food appears from the following comparison with our best elements of nourishment:

Aleurone meal is not only eaten directly, it is also used as a condiment in all sorts of bakery products, as well as soups and vegetables. Aleurone meal substitutes in a high degree meat preserves in point of nutrition; moreover, it is by far the cheapest albumen obtainable to-day. One kilogram of albumen costs:

Beef, accordingly, is about eight times dearer, as albuminous food, than aleurone meal; eggs five times as dear; white bread or common white flour about three times as dear. Aleurone meal also has the advantage that, with the addition of about one-eighth of the weight of a potato, it not only furnishes a considerable quantity of albumen to the body, but produces a complete digestion of the starch contained in the potato. Dogs, that have a nose for albumen, eat aleurone meal with the same avidity as meat, even if they otherwise refuse bread, and they are then better able to stand hardships.

Aleurone meal, as a dry vegetal albumen, is of great use as food on ships, in fortresses and in military hospitals during war. It renders large supplies of meat unnecessary. At present aleurone meal is a side product in starch factories. Within short, starch will become a side product of aleurone meal. A further result will be that the cultivation of cereals will crowd out that of potatoes and other less productive food plants; the volume of nutrition of a given field of wheat or rye is tripled or quadrupled at one stroke.

Dr. Rudolf Meyer of Vienna, whose attention was called by us to the aleurone meal says[199] that he furnished himself with a quantity of it and had it examined on June 19, 1893, by the bureau of experiments of the Board of Soil Cultivation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The examination fully confirmed our statements. For further details Meyer's work should be read. Meyer also calls attention to a discovery made by Otto Redemann of Bockenheim near Frankfort-on-the-Main. After granulating the peanut and removing its oil, he analyzed its component elements of nutrition. The analysis showed 47 per cent. of albumen, 19 of fat and 19 of starch—altogether 2,135 units of nutritious matter in one kilo. According to this analysis the peanut is one of the most nutritious vegetal products. The pharmacist Rud. Simpson of Mohrungen discovered a process by which to remove the bitterness from the lupine, which, as may be known, thrives best on sandy soil, and is used both as fodder and as a fertilizer; and he then produced from it a meal, which, according to expert authority, baked as bread tastes very good, is solid, is said to be more nutritious than rye-bread, and, besides all that, much cheaper.

Even under present conditions a regular revolution is plowing its way in the matter of human food. The utilization of all these discoveries is, however, slow, for the reason that mighty classes—the farmer element together with its social and political props—have the liveliest interest in suppressing them. To our agrarians, a good crop is to-day a horror—although the same is prayed for in all the churches—because it lowers prices. Consequently, they are no wise anxious for a double and threefold nutritive power of their cereals; it would likewise tend to lower prices. Present society is everywhere at fisticuffs with its own development.

The preservation of the soil in a state of fertility depends primarily upon fertilization. The obtaining of fertilizers is, accordingly, for future society also one of the principal tasks.[200] Manure is to the soil what food is to man, and just as every kind of food is not equally nourishing to man, neither is every kind of manure of equal benefit to the soil. The soil must receive back exactly the same chemical substances that it gave up through a crop; and the chemical substances especially needed by a certain vegetable must be given to the soil in larger quantities. Hence the study of chemistry and its practical application will experience a development unknown to-day.

Animal and human excrements are particularly rich in the chemical elements that are fittest for the reproduction of human food. Hence the endeavor must be to secure the same in the fullest quantity and cause its proper distribution. On this head too modern society sins grievously. Cities and industrial centers, that receive large masses of foodstuffs, return to the soil but a slight part of their valuable offal.[201] The consequence is that the fields, situated at great distances from the cities and industrial centers, and which yearly send their products to the same, suffer greatly from a dearth of manure; the offal that these farms themselves yield is often not enough, because the men and beasts who live on them consume but a small part of the product. Thus frequently a soil-vandalism is practiced, that cripples the land and decreases the crops. All countries that export agricultural products mainly, but receive no manure back, inevitably go to ruin through the gradual impoverishment of the soil. This is the case with Hungary, Russia, the Danubian Principalities, North America, etc. Artificial fertilizers, guano in particular, indeed substitute the offal of men and beasts; but many farmers can not obtain the same in sufficient quantity; it is too dear; at any rate, it is an inversion of nature to import manure from great distances, while it is allowed to go to waste nearby.

Several years since has the Thomas-slag been recognized as an eminently fit manure for certain soils. The manufacturers, however, who grind the Thomas-slag into flour and carry it to market, have built a ring, and, to the injury of the farming interests who make bitter complaints on that score, they keep the prices high. Thus every progress is crippled by greed in bourgeois society. Another and at present inexhaustable source of fertilizers is offered by the deposits of potash in the province of Saxony and contiguous regions. The Prussian State owns a number of potash works and it also made the attempt to monopolize the industry, to the end of raising the largest possible revenues for the Treasury.

If the opinion of Julius Hensel on the subject of fertilizers proves correct, it will mean a revolution in the theory of fertilization, and a complete saving of the expenses now made for the importation of fertilizers, amounting for guano and Chile saltpeter to from 80 to 100 million marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human refuse.[203] These minerals, he claims, contain all the elements for the cultivation of plants: potash, chalk, magnesia, phosphoric, sulphuric and silicic acids, and also hydrochlorides. According to Hensel, the Sudeton, Riesen, Erz, Tichtel, Hartz, Rhone, Vogel, Taunus, Eisel and Weser mountains, the woods of Thuringen, Spessart and Oden had an inexhaustible supply of fertilizers. It will be literally possible to "make bread out of stones." The dust and dirt of our highways also are, according to Hensel, inexhaustible sources of the same blessing. In this matter we are laymen and can not test the correctness of Hensel's theories; a part of them, however, sound most plausible. Hensel charges the manufacturers of and dealers in artificial fertilizers with hostility to his discovery and with systematic opposition, because they would suffer great loss.

According to Heider, a healthy adult secretes on an average 48.8 kilograms of solid and 438 of liquid matter a year. Estimated by the present standard of the prices of manure, and if utilized without loss by evaporation, etc., this offal represents a money value of 11.8 marks. Calculating the population of Germany to be 50,000,000 in round figures, and estimating the average value of the human offal at 8 marks, the sum of 400,000,000 marks is obtained, which now is almost totally lost to agriculture, owing to the present imperfect methods for utilizing it. The great difficulty in the way of a full utilization of these stuffs lies in the establishment of proper and extensive provisions for their collection, and in the cost of transportation. Relatively, this cost is now higher than the importation of guano from far-away transmarine deposits, which, however, decline in mass in the measure that the demand increases. Every living being, however, casts off regularly an annual supply of manure about enough for a field that yields food for one person. The enormous loss is obvious. A large portion of the city excrement runs out into our rivers and streams, and pollutes them. Likewise is the refuse from kitchens and factories, also serviceable as manure, recklessly squandered.

Future society will find means and ways to stop this waste. What is done to-day in this direction is mere patchwork, and utterly inadequate. As an illustration of what could be done to-day, may be cited the canalization and the laying out of vast fields in the capital of the Empire, on whose value, however, experts are of divided opinion. Socialist society will solve the question more easily, due, in a great measure, to the fact that large cities will gradually cease to exist, and population will decentralize.

No one will regard our modern rise of metropoles as a healthy phenomenon. The modern system of manufacture and production in general, steadily draws large masses of the population to the large cities.[204] There is the seat of manufacture and commerce; there the avenues of communication converge; there the owners of large wealth have their headquarters, the central authorities, the military staffs, the higher tribunals. There large institutions rear their heads—the academies of art, large pleasure resorts, exhibitions, museums, theaters, concert halls, etc. Hundreds are drawn thither by their professions, thousands by pleasure, and many more thousands by the hope of easier work and an agreeable life.

But, speaking figuratively, the rise of metropolitan cities makes the impression of a person whose girth gains steadily in size, while his legs as steadily become thinner, and finally will be unable to carry the burden. All around, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the villages also assume a city aspect, in which the proletariat is heaped up in large masses. The municipalities, generally out of funds, are forced to lay on taxes to the utmost, and still remain unable to meet the demand made upon them. When finally they have grown up to the large city and it up to them, they rush into and are absorbed by it, as happens with planets that have swung too close to the sun. But the fact does not improve the conditions of life. On the contrary, they grow worse through the crowding of people in already overcrowded spaces. These gatherings of masses—inevitable under modern development, and, to a certain extent, the raisers of revolutionary centers,—will have fulfilled their mission in Socialist society. Their gradual dissolution then becomes necessary: the current will then run the other way: population will migrate from the cities to the country: it will there raise new municipalities corresponding with the altered conditions, and they will join their industrial with their agricultural activities.

So soon as—due to the complete remodeling and equipment of the means of communication and transportation, and of the productive establishments, etc., etc.—the city populations will be enabled to transfer to the country all their acquired habits of culture, to find there their museums, theaters, concert halls, reading rooms, libraries, etc.—just so soon will the migration thither set in. Life will then enjoy all the comforts of large cities, without their disadvantages. The population will be housed more comfortably and sanitarily. The rural population will join in manufacturing, the manufacturing population in agricultural pursuits,—a change of occupation enjoyed to-day by but few, and then often under conditions of excessive exertion.

As on all other fields, bourgeois society is promoting this development also: every year new industrial undertakings are transferred to the country. The unfavorable conditions of large cities—high rents and high wages—drive many employers to this migration. At the same time, the large landlords are steadily becoming industrialists—manufacturers of sugar, distillers of liquor, beer brewers, manufacturers of cement, earthen wares, tiles, woodwork, paper goods, etc. In the new social order offal of all sorts will then be easily furnished to agriculture, especially through the concentration of production and the public kitchens. Each community will, in a way, constitute a zone of culture; it will, to a large extent, itself raise its necessaries of life. Horticulture, perhaps the most agreeable of all practical occupations, will then reach fullest bloom. The cultivation of vegetables, fruit trees and bushes of all nature, ornamental flowers and shrubs—all offer an inexhaustible field for human activity, a field, moreover, whose nature excludes machinery almost wholly.

Thanks to the decentralization of the population, the existing contrast and antagonism between the country and the city will also vanish.

The peasant, this Helot of modern times, hitherto cut off from all cultural development through his isolation in the country, now becomes a free being because he has fully become a limb of civilization.[205] The wish, once expressed by Prince Bismarck, that he might see the large cities destroyed, will be verified, but in a sense wholly different from that which he had in mind.[206]

If the preceding arguments are rapidly passed in review, it will be seen that, with the abolition of private property in the means of production and their conversion into social property, the mass evils, that modern society reveals at every turn and which grow ever greater and more intolerable under its sway, will gradually disappear. The over-lordship of one class and its representatives ceases. Society applies its forces planfully and controls itself. As, with the abolition of the wage system the ground will be taken from under the exploitation of man by man, likewise will it be taken from under swindle and cheating—the adulteration of food, the stock exchange, etc.,—with the abolition of private capitalism. The halls in the Temples of Mammon will stand vacant; national bonds of indebtedness, stocks, pawn-tickets, mortgages, deeds, etc., will have become so much waste paper. The words of Schiller: "Let our book of indebtedness be annihilated, and the whole world reconciled" will have become reality, and the Biblical maxim: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread" will now come into force for the heroes of the stock exchange and the drones of capitalism as well. Yet the labor that, as equal members of society they will have to perform, will not oppress them: their bodily health will be materially improved. The worry of property—said to be, judging from the pathetic assurances of our employers and capitalists in general, harder to bear than the uncertain and needy lot of the workingman—will be forever removed from those gentlemen. The excitements of speculation, that breed so many diseases of the heart and bring on so many strokes of apoplexy among our exchange jobbers, and that render them nervous wrecks, will all be saved to them. A life free from mental worry will be their lot and that of our descendants; and in the end they will gladly accommodate themselves thereto.

With the abolition of private property and of class antagonism, the State also gradually vanishes away;—it vanishes without being missed.

"By converting the large majority of the population more and more into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the power, that, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. By urging more and more the conversion of the large, already socialized means of production into State property, it points the path for the accomplishment of this revolution.... The State was the official representative of the whole society; it was the constitution of the latter into a visible body; but it was so only in so far as it was the State of that class which itself, at its time, represented the whole society; in antiquity, the State of slave-holding citizens; in the middle ages, the State of the feudal nobility; in our own days, the State of the capitalist class. By at last becoming actually the representative of the whole social body, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be kept down; as soon as, together with class rule and the individual struggle for life, founded in the previous anarchy of production, the conflicts and excesses that issued therefrom have been removed, there is nothing more to be repressed, and the State or Government, as a special power of repression, is no longer necessary. The first act, wherein the State appears as the real representative of the whole body social—the seizure of the means of production in the name of society—is also its last independent act as State. The interference of the State in social relations becomes superfluous in one domain after another, and falls of itself into desuetude. The place of a government over persons is taken by the administration of things and the conduct of the processes of production. The State is not 'abolished'—it dies out!"[207]

Along with the State, die out its representatives—cabinet ministers, parliaments, standing armies, police and constables, courts, district attorneys, prison officials, tariff and tax collectors, in short, the whole political apparatus. Barracks, and such other military structures, palaces of law and of administration, prisons—all will now await better use. Ten thousand laws, decrees and regulations become so much rubbish; they have only historic value. The great and yet so petty parliamentary struggles, with which the men of tongue imagine they rule and guide the world, are no more, they will have made room for administrative colleges and delegations whose attention will be engaged in the best means of production and distribution, in ascertaining the volume of supplies needed, in introducing and applying effective improvements in art, in architecture, in intercourse, in the process of production, etc. These are all practical matters, visible and tangible, towards which everyone stands objectively, there being no personal interests hostile to society to affect their judgment. None has any interest other than the collectivity, and that interest consists in instituting and providing everything in the best, most effective and most profitable manner.

The hundreds of thousands of former representatives of the State pass over into the various trades, and help with their intelligence and strength to increase the wealth and comforts of society. Henceforth there are known neither political crimes nor common ones. There are no more thieves, seeing that private property has ceased to be in the means of production, and everyone can now satisfy his wants with ease and comfort by work. Tramps and vagabonds likewise cease to be; they are the product of a social system based on private property; the former cease to be with the latter. And murder? Why? None can grow rich at the expense of another. Even murder out of hatred and revenge flows directly or indirectly from the modern social system. Perjury, false testimony, cheating, thefts of inheritance, fraudulent failures? There is no private property on and against which to commit these crimes. Arson? Who is to derive pleasure or satisfaction therefrom, seeing that society removes from him all sources of hatred? Counterfeiting? Why, money has become a chimera, love's labor would be lost. Contempt for religion? Nonsense. It is left to the "omnipotent and good God" to punish him who should offend Him—provided there be still controversies on the existence of God.

Thus all the cornerstones of the present "order" become myths. Parents will tell their children stories on those heads, like legends from olden days. The narrations of the persecutions, that men with new ideas are to-day overwhelmed with, will sound to them just as the stories of the burning of heretics and witches sound to us to-day. The names of all the great men, who to-day distinguish themselves by their persecutions of the new ideas, and who are applauded by their narrow-minded contemporaries, are forgotten and blown over, and they are run across only by the historian who may happen to dive into the past. What remarks may escape him, we care not to tell, seeing that, unhappily, we do not yet live in an age where man is free to breathe.

As with the State, so with "Religion."[208] It is not "abolished." God will not be "dethroned"; religion will not be "torn out of the hearts of people"; nor will any of the silly charges against the Socialists materialize. Such mistaken policies the Socialists leave to the Bourgeois ideologists, who resorted to such means in the French Revolution and, of course, suffered miserable shipwreck. Without any violence whatever, and without any manner of oppression of thought, religion will gradually vanish.

Religion is the transcendental reflection of the social conditions of given epochs. In the measure that human development advances and society is transformed, religion is transformed along with it. It is, as Marx puts it, a popular striving after the illusory happiness that corresponds with a social condition which needs such an illusion.[209] The illusion wanes so soon as real happiness is descried, and the possibility of its realization penetrates the masses. The ruling classes endeavor, in their own interest, to prevent this popular conception. Hence they seek to turn religion into a means to preserve their domination. The purpose appears fully in their maxim: "The people must be held to religion." This particular business becomes an official function in a society that rests upon class rule. A caste is formed that assumes this function and that turns the whole acumen of their minds towards preserving, and enlarging such a social structure, seeing that thereby their own power and importance are increased.

Starting in fetishism at low stages of civilization and primitive social conditions, religion becomes polytheism at a higher, and monotheism at a still higher stage. It is not the gods that create men, it is man who turns the gods into God. "In the image of himself (man) he created Him" (God), not the opposite way. Monotheism has also suffered changes. It has dissolved into a pantheism that embraces and permeates the universe—and it volatilizes day by day. Natural science reduced to myth the dogma of the creation of the earth in six days; astronomy, mathematics, physics have converted heaven into a structure of air, and the stars, once fastened to the roof of heaven in which angels had their abodes, into fixed stars and planets whose very composition excludes all angelic life.

The ruling class, finding itself threatened in its existence, clings to religion as a prop of all authority, just as every ruling class has done heretofore.[210] The bourgeoisie or capitalist class itself believes in nothing. Itself, at every stage of its development and through the modern science that sprang from none but its own lap, has destroyed all faith in religion and authority. Its faith is only a pretence; and the Church accepts the help of this false friend because itself is in need of help. "Religion is necessary for the people."

No such considerations animate Socialistic Society. Human progress and unadulterated science are its device. If any there be who has religious needs, he is free to please himself in the company of those who feel like him. It is a matter that does not concern society. Seeing that the clergyman's own mind will be improved by work, the day will dawn to him also when he will realize that the highest aim is to be man.

Ethics and morality exist without organized religion. The contrary is asserted only by weak-minded people or hypocrites. Ethics and morality are the expression of conceptions that regulate the relations of man to man, and their mutual conduct. Religion embraces the relations of man with supernal beings. And, just as with religion, moral conceptions also are born of existing social conditions at given times. Cannibals regard the eating of human beings as highly moral; Greeks and Romans regarded slavery as moral; the feudal lord of the Middle Ages regarded serfdom as moral; and to-day the modern capitalist considers highly moral the institution of wage-slavery, the flaying of women with night work and the demoralization of children by factory labor.[211] Here we have four different social stages, and as many different conceptions of morality, and yet in none does the highest moral sense prevail. Undoubtedly the highest moral stage is that in which men stand to one another free and equal; that in which the principle: "What you do not wish to be done unto you, do not unto others" is observed inviolate throughout the relations of man to man. In the Middle Ages, the genealogical tree was the standard; to-day it is property; in future society, the standard of man is man. And the future is Socialism in practice.

* * * * *

The late Reichstag delegate, Dr. Lasker, delivered, in the seventies, an address in Berlin, in which he arrived at the conclusion that an equal level of education for all members of society was possible. Dr. Lasker was an anti-Socialist a rigid upholder of private property and of the capitalist system of production. The question of education is to-day, however, a question of money. Under such conditions, an equal level of education for all is an impossibility. Exceptional persons, situated in relatively favorable conditions, may, by dint of overcoming all difficulties and by the exertion of great energy, not given to everybody, succeed in acquiring a higher education. The masses never, so long as they live in a state of social oppression.[212]

In the new social order, the conditions of existence are equal for all. Wants and inclinations differ, and, differences being grounded in the very nature of man, will continue so to be. Each member, however, can live and develop under the same favorable conditions that obtain for all. The uniformity, generally imputed to Socialism, is, as so many other things, false and nonsensical. Even if Socialism did so wish it, the wish were absurd; it would come in conflict with the nature of man; Socialism would have to give up the idea of seeing society develop according to its principles.[213] Aye, even if Socialism were to succeed in overpowering society and to force upon it unnatural conditions, it would not be long before such conditions, felt to be shackles, would be snapped, and Socialism would be done for. Society develops out of itself, according to laws latent in it, and it acts accordingly.[214]

One of the principal tasks of the new social system will be the education of the rising generation in keeping with its improved opportunities. Every child that is born, be it male or female, is a welcome addition to society. Society sees therein the prospect of its own perpetuity, of its own further development. It, therefore, also realizes the duty of providing for the new being according to its best powers. The first object of its attention must, consequently, be the one that gives birth to the new being—the mother. A comfortable home; agreeable surroundings and provisions of all sorts, requisite to this stage of maternity; a careful nursing—such are the first requirements. The mother's breast must be preserved for the child as long as possible and necessary. This is obvious. Moleschott, Sonderegger, all hygienists and physicians are agreed that nothing can fully substitute the mother's nourishment.

People who, like Eugen Richter, indignate at the idea of a young mother being placed in a lying-in establishment, where she is surrounded by all that to-day is possible only to the very wealthiest, and which even these cannot furnish in the fullness attainable at institutions especially equipped for the purpose—such people we wish to remind of the fact that, to-day, at least four-fifths of the population are born under the most primitive circumstances and conditions, that are a disgrace to our civilization. Of the remaining one-fifth of our mothers, only a minority is able to enjoy the nursing and comforts that should be bestowed upon a woman in that state. The fact is that in cities with excellent provisions for child-birth—Berlin for instance, and all University cities—even to-day not a few women resort to such institutions as soon as they feel their time approaching, and await their delivery. Unfortunately, however, the expenses at such institutions are so high, that but few women can use them, while others are held back by prejudice. Here again we have an instance of how everywhere bourgeois society carries in its own lap the germ of the future order.

For the rest, maternity among the rich has a unique taste; the maternal duties are transferred as soon as possible to a proletarian nurse. As is well known, the Wendt Lausitz (Spreewald) is the region that the women of the Berlin bourgeoisie, who are unwilling or unable to nurse their own babies, draw their wet-nurses from. The "cultivation of nurses" is there carried on as a peculiar trade. It consists in the girls of the district causing themselves to be impregnated, with the end in view of being able, after the birth of their own children, to hire themselves out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered praiseworthy and desirable.

So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence. Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215] The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work, connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both sexes follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy, physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits—manufacturing, horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production, etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several branches of science.

The same process of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when "religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new social order. All the means of education and of study, clothing and support are furnished by society; no pupil is at a disadvantage with another.[216] That is another chapter at which our "men of law and order" bristle up indignantly.[217] "The school-house is to be turned into barracks; parents are to be deprived of all influence upon their children!" is the cry of our adversaries. All false! Seeing that in the future society parents will have infinitely more time at their disposal than is the case to-day with the large majority—we need but to call attention to the ten to fifteen hour day of many workingmen in the post office, the railroads, the prisons, the police department, and to the demands made upon the time of the industrial workers, the small farmers, merchants, soldiers, many physicians, etc.—it follows that they will be able to devote themselves to their children in a measure that is impossible to-day. Moreover, the parents themselves have the regulation of education in their hands; it is they who determine the measures that shall be adopted and introduced. We are then living in a thoroughgoing democratic society. The Boards of Education, which will exist, of course, are made up of the parents themselves—men and women—and of those following the educational profession. Does any one imagine they will act against their own interests? That happens only to-day when the State seeks but to enforce its own exclusive interests.

Our opponents furthermore demean themselves as though to-day one of the greatest pleasures of parents was to have their children about them all day long, and to educate them. It is just the reverse in reality. What hardships and cares are to-day caused by the education of a child, even when a family has but one of them, those parents are best able to judge who are themselves so situated. Several children, in a manner, facilitate education, but then again they give rise to so much more trouble that their father and especially the mother, who is the one to bear the heaviest burden, is happy when the school hour arrives, and thus the house is rid of the children for a portion of the day. Most parents can afford but a very imperfect education to their children. The large majority of fathers and mothers lack time; the former have their business, the latter their household to attend to, and their time is furthermore taken up with social duties. Even when they actually have time, in innumerable instances they lack the ability. How many parents are able to follow the course of their children's education at school, and to take them under the arm in their schoolwork at home? Only few. The mother, who in most such cases has greater leisure at her disposal, lacks capacity; she has not herself received sufficient training. Moreover, the method and the courses of education change so frequently that these are strange to the parents.

Again, the home facilities are generally so poor that the children enjoy neither the necessary comfort, nor order, nor quiet to do their schoolwork at home, or to find there the needed aid. Everything necessary is generally wanting. The home is narrow and overcrowded; small and grown-up brothers and sisters move about over that narrow space; the furniture is not what it should be, and furnishes no facilities to the child for study. Not infrequently light, also air and heat are wanting; the materials for study and work, if there be any of them, are poor; frequently even hunger gnaws at the stomach of the child and robs it of mind and pleasure for its work. As a supplement to this picture, the fact must be added that hundreds of thousands of children are put to all manner of work, domestic and industrial, that embitters their youth and disables them from fulfilling their educational task. Again, often do children have to overcome the resistance of narrow-minded parents when they try to take time for their schoolwork or for play. In short, the obstacles are so numerous that, if they are all taken into account, the wonder is the youth of the land is as well educated. It is an evidence of the health of human nature, and of its inherent ambition after progress and perfection.

Bourgeois society itself recognizes some of these evils by the introduction of public education and by facilitating the same still more through the free supply, here and there, of school material—two things that, as late as about the year 1885 the then Minister of Education of Saxony designated as a "Social Democratic demand," and as such flung the designation in the face of the Socialist Representative in the Landtag. In France, where, after long neglect, popular education advanced so much more rapidly, progress has gone still further. At least in Paris, the school children are fed at public expense. The poor obtain food free, and the children of parents who are better circumstanced contribute thereto a slight tax toward the common treasury—a communistic arrangement that has proved satisfactory to parents and children alike.

An evidence of the inadequacy of the present school system—it is unable to fulfil even the moderate demands made upon it—is the fact that thousands upon thousands of children are unable to fulfil their school duties by reason of insufficient food. In the winter of 1893-94, it was ascertained in Berlin that in one school district alone 3,600 children went to school without breakfast. In such shocking conditions there are hundreds of thousands of children in Germany to-day at certain seasons of the year. With millions of others the nourishment is utterly insufficient. For all these children public alimentation and clothing also would be a godsend. A commonwealth that pursued such a policy and thus, by the systematic nourishing and clothing of the children, would bring humanity home to them, is not likely to see the sight of "penitentiaries." Bourgeois society cannot deny the existence of such misery, which itself has called forth. Hence we see compassionate souls foregathering in the establishment of breakfast and soup houses, to the end of partially filling by means of charity what it were the duty of society to fill in full. Our conditions are wretched—but still more wretched is the mental make-up of those who shut their eyes to such facts.

The system of reducing so-called home school work, and of having the same done at school under the supervision of a teacher is progressing; the inadequacy of home facilities is realized. Not only is the richer pupil at an advantage over the poorer by reason of his position, but also by reason of his having private teachers and such other assistance at his command. On the other hand, however, laziness and shiftlessness are promoted with the rich pupil by reason of the effects of wealth, luxury and superfluity; these make knowledge appear superfluous to him, and often they place before him such immoral sights that he easily slides into temptation. He who every day and every hour hears the praises sung of rank, position, money, property, and that they are all-essential, acquires abnormal conceptions regarding man and his duties, and regarding State and social institutions.

Closely looked into, bourgeois society has no reason to feel indignant at the communistic education, which Socialists aim at. Bourgeois society has itself partly introduced such a system for the privileged classes, but only as a caricature of the original. Look at the cadet and alumni establishments, at the seminaries, at the schools for clergymen, and at the homes for military orphans. In them many thousands of children, partly from the so-called upper classes, are educated in a one-sided and wrongful manner, and in strict cloister seclusion; they are trained for certain specific occupations. And again, many members of the better situated classes, who live in the country or in small places as physicians, clergymen, government employes, factory owners, landlords, large farmers, etc., send their children to boarding schools in the large cities and barely get a glimpse of them, except possibly during vacations.

There is, accordingly, an obvious contradiction between the indignation expressed by our adversaries at a communistic system of education and at "the estrangement of children from their parents," on the one hand, and their own conduct, on the other, in introducing the identical system for their own children—only in a bungling, absolutely false and inadequate style.

In equal tempo with the increased opportunities for education must the number of teachers increase. In the matter of the education of the rising generations the new social order must proceed in a way similar to that which prevails in the army, in the drilling of soldiers. There is one "under-officer" to each eight or ten men. With one teacher to every eight or ten pupils, the future may expect the results that should be aimed at.

The introduction of mechanical activities in the best equipped workshops, in garden and field work, will constitute a good part of the education of the youth. It will all be done with the proper change and without excessive exertion, to the end of reaching the most perfectly developed beings.

Education must also be equal and in common for both sexes. Their separation is justifiable only in the cases where the difference in sex makes such separation absolutely necessary. In this manner of education the United States is far ahead of us. There education of the two sexes is in common from the primary schools up to the universities. Not only is education free, but also school materials, inclusive of the instruments needed in manual training and in cooking, as also in chemistry, physics, and the articles needed for experimenting and at bench-work. To many schools are attached gymnastic halls, bath houses, swimming basins and playgrounds. In the higher schools, the female sex is trained in gymnastics, swimming, rowing and marching.[218]

The Socialist system of education, properly regulated and ordered and placed under the direction of a sufficient force, continues up to the age when society shall determine that its youth shall enter upon their majority. Both sexes are fully qualified to exercise all the rights and fill all the duties that society demands from its adult members. Society now enjoys the certainty of having brought up only thorough, fully developed members, human beings to whom nothing natural is strange, as familiar with their nature as with the nature and conditions of society which they join full-righted.

The daily increasing excesses of our modern youth—all of them the inevitable consequences of the present tainted and decomposing state of society—will have vanished. Impropriety of conduct, disobedience, immorality and rude pleasure-seeking, such as is especially noticeable among the youth of our higher educational institutions—the gymnasia, polytechnics, universities, etc.—vices that are incited and promoted by the existing demoralization and unrest of domestic life, by the poisonous influence of social life such as the immoral literature that wealth procures—all these will likewise have vanished. In equal measure will disappear the evil effects of the modern factory system and of improper housing, that dissoluteness and self-assurance of youths at an age when the human being is most in need of reining and education in self-control. All these evils future society will escape without the need of coercive measures. The nature of the social institutions and of the mental atmosphere, that will spring from them and that will rule society itself, rendering impossible the breaking out of such evils; as in Nature disease and the destruction of organisms can appear only when there is a state of decay that invites disease; so likewise in society.

No one will deny that our present system of instruction and of education suffers of serious defects—the higher schools and educational establishments even more so than the lower. The village school is a paragon of moral health compared with the college; common schools for the manual training of poor girls are paragons of morality compared with many leading boarding schools for girls. The reason is not far to seek. In the upper classes of society, every aspiration after higher human aims is smothered; those classes no longer have any ideal. As a consequence of the absence of ideals and of noble endeavor, an unbounded passion for physical indulgence and hankering after excesses spread their physical and moral gangrene in all directions. How else can the youth be that is brought up in such an atmosphere? Purely material indulgence, without stint and without bounds, is the only aim that it sees or knows of. Why exert themselves, if the wealth of their parents makes all effort seem superfluous? The maximum of education with a large majority of the sons of our bourgeoisie consists in passing the examinations for the one year's service in the army. Is this goal reached, then they imagine to have climbed Pelion and Ossa, and regard themselves at least as demi-gods. Have they a reserve officer's certificate in their pocket, then their pride and arrogance knows no limit. The influence exercised by this generation—a generation it has become by its numbers—weak in the character and knowledge of its members, but strong in their designs and the spirit of graft, characterizes the present period as the "Age of Reserve Officers." Its peculiarities are: Characterlessness and ignorance, but a strong will; servility upward, arrogance and brutality downward.

The daughters of our bourgeoisie are trained as show-dolls, fools of fashion and drawingroom-ladies, on the chase after one enjoyment after another, until, finally, surfeited with ennui, they fall a prey to all imaginable real and supposed diseases. Grown old, they become devotees and beads-women, who turn up their eyes at the corruption of the world and preach asceticism. As regards the lower classes, the effort is on foot to lower still more the level of their education. The proletariat might become too knowing, it might get tired of its vassalage, and might rebel against its earthly gods. The more stupid the mass, all the easier is it to control and rule.

And thus modern society stands before the question of instruction and education as bewildered as it stands before all other social questions. What does it? It calls for the rod; preaches "religion," that is, submission and contentment to those who are now but too submissive; teaches abstinence where, due to poverty, abstinence has become compulsory in the utmost necessaries of life. Those who in the rudeness of their nature rear up brutally are taken to "reformatories," that usually are controlled by pietistic influences;—and the pedagogic wisdom of modern society has about reached the end of its tether.

From the moment that the rising generation in future society shall have reached its majority, all further growth is left to the individual: society will feel sure that each will seize the opportunity to unfold the germs that have been so far developed in him. Each does according as inclination and faculties serve him. Some choose one branch of the ever more brilliant natural sciences: anthropology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, physics, chemistry, prehistoric sciences, etc.; others take to the science of history, philologic researches, art; others yet become musicians from special gifts, or painters, or sculptors, or actors. The future will have "guild artists" as little as "guild scientists" or "guild artisans." Thousands of brilliant talents, hitherto kept down, unfold and assert themselves and display their knowledge and ability wherever opportunity offers. No longer are there any musicians, actors, artists and scientists by profession; they will exist only by inspiration, talent and genius; and the achievements of these bid fair to excel modern achievements on these fields as vastly as the industrial, technical and agricultural achievements of future society are certain to excel those of to-day. An era of art and sciences will spring up such as the world never saw before; nor will its creations fail to correspond to such a renaissance.

What transformation and new-birth science will experience when conditions shall have become worthy of the human race, no less a man than the late Richard Wagner foresaw and expressed as early as 1850 in his work "Art and Revolution." This work is all the more significant seeing that it made its appearance immediately after a revolution that had just been beaten down, that Wagner took part in, and by reason of which he had to flee from Dresden. In this book Wagner foretells what the future will bring on. He turns directly to the working class as the one called upon to emancipate true art. Among other things he says:

"When, with the free human race of the future, the earning of a living shall no longer be the object of life; when, on the contrary, thanks to the rise of a new faith, or of higher knowledge, the gaining of a livelihood by means of compatible work shall be raised above all uncertainty;—in short, when industry shall no longer be our master but our servant, then will we place the object of life in the pleasure of life, and seek to make our children fit and worthy through education. An education that starts from the exercise of strength, from the care of the beauty of the body will, due to the undisturbed love for the child and to the joy experienced at the thriving of its charms, become purely artistic; and thus in some sense or another every being will be an artist in truth. The diversity of natural inclinations will develop the most manifold aptitudes into an unprecedented wealth of beauty!"—at all points a Socialist line of thought, and fully in keeping with the arguments herein made.

* * * * *

Social life in future will be ever more public. What the trend is may be gathered from the wholly changed position of woman, compared with former times. Domestic life will be confined to what is absolutely necessary, while the widest field will be opened to the gratification of the social instincts. Large gathering places for the holding of addresses and discussions, and for conferring upon all social questions, over which the collectivity has the sovereign word; play, meal and reading rooms; libraries, concert halls and theaters; museums and gymnastic institutions; parks, promenades, public baths, educational institutions of all sorts; laboratories, etc.;—all of these, erected in the best and equipped in the fittest manner possible, will afford richest opportunity for all manner of intercourse, of art and of science to achieve the highest. Likewise will the institutions for the nursing of the sick, the weak, the infirm through old age, meet the highest demands.

How little will then our much boasted about age seem in comparison. This fawning for favor and sunshine from above; this cringing and dog-like frame of mind; this mutual struggle of enviousness, with the aid of the most hateful and vilest means, for the privileged place. All along the suppression of convictions; the veiling of good qualities, that might otherwise give offence; the emasculation of character; the affectation of opinions and feelings;—in short, all those qualities that may be summed up in words "cowardice and characterlessness" are now every day more pronounced. Whatever elevates and ennobles man—self-esteem, independence and incorruptibility of opinion and convictions, freedom of utterance—modern conditions generally turn into defects and crimes. Often do these qualities work the ruin of their owners, unless he suppresses them. Many do not even realize their degradation; they have grown accustomed thereto. The dog regards it a matter of course that he has a master, who, when out of temper, visits him with the whip.

Such altered conditions in social life will impart a radically different aspect to literary productions. Theological literature, whose entries are at present most numerous in the yearly catalogues of literary works, drops out in company with its juridic cousin,—there is no more interest in the former, and no more use for the latter. All the literary productions that refer to the struggle over political institutions will be seen no more,—their subject-matter has ceased to be. The study of all such matters will belong to the history of civilization. The vast mass of inane productions—the evidences of a spoiled taste, often possible only through sacrifices at the altar of the author's vanity—are gone. Even speaking from the view-point of present conditions, it may be said without exaggeration that four-fifths of all literary productions could disappear from the market without loss to a single interest of civilization. Such is the vastness of the mass of superficial or harmful books, palpable trash, extant to-day on the field of literature.

Belles-lettres and the press will be equally hit. There is nothing sorrier, more spiritless or superficial than the large majority of our newspaper literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are judged from a view-point that corresponds with centuries gone by, and that has been long since proved laughable and untenable by science. A considerable portion of our journalists are people who, as Bismarck once put it, "missed their calling," but whose education and standard of wages fit with bourgeois interests. Furthermore, these newspapers, as well as the majority of the belles-lettric magazines, have the mission of circulating impure advertisements; the interests of their purses are on this field the same as on the former: the material interests of their owners determine their contents.

On an average, belles-lettric literature is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in trifles, as the best of all possible worlds.

On this extensive and important field, future society will institute some thorough-going housecleaning. Science, truth, beauty, the contest of the intellect after the best will rule supreme. Everyone who achieves what is worthy will enjoy the opportunity to exercise his faculties. He no longer depends upon the favor of a publisher, moneyed considerations or prejudice, but only upon the impartial judgment of experts whom he himself joins in electing, and from whose unfavorable decision he can always appeal to the general vote of the whole community,—all of which is to-day against him or impossible. The childish notion that all contest of intellect would be held down in a Socialist society they alone can maintain who hold the bourgeois world to be the most perfect social system, and who, out of enmity to Socialism seek to slander and to belittle it. A society, that rests upon full democratic equality, neither knows nor tolerates oppression. Only the fullest freedom of thought makes uninterrupted progress possible, and this is the principle of life with society. Moreover, it is an act of deception to represent bourgeois society as the paladin of true freedom of thought. Parties that represent class interests will publish in the press only that which does not injure their class' own interests, and woe to him who would attempt the contrary. His social ruin would be sealed, as every one knows. In what manner publishers handle literary work that does not suit them, every writer almost could tell a tale of woe on. Finally, the German press and criminal laws betray the spirit that animates our ruling and leading classes. Actual freedom of thought is looked upon by them as the most dangerous of evils.

* * * * *

The individual is to develop himself fully. That must be the law of human association. Accordingly, the individual may not remain fettered to the soil on which the accident of birth first placed him. Men and the world should be known, not from books and papers only: personal observation, practical experience are also needed. Accordingly, future society must enable everyone to do what is now done by many, although in most instances it happens to-day under the whip that want cracks. The wish for change in all the relations of life is a craving strongly stamped in man. It springs from the instinct after perfection, inherent in all organic beings. The plant that stands in a dark room, stretches and strains, as though endowed with consciousness, towards the light that falls from some crevice. Just so with man. An instinct implanted in man, consequently a natural instinct, must be rationally gratified. The conditions of future society will not balk the instinct after change; on the contrary, they promote its gratification with all: it is facilitated by the highly developed system of intercommunication; it is demanded by international relations. In future days, infinitely more people will travel through the world, and for the most varied of purposes, than happens to-day.

In order to meet all demands, society furthermore requires an ample provision of all the necessaries of life. Society regulates its hours of work accordingly. It makes them longer or shorter, according as its needs or the season of the year may suggest. It may turn its strength at one season mainly to agriculture, at another mainly to industrial and similar production. It directs its labor forces as occasion may require. Through the combination of numerous forces, equipped with the best technical provisions, it can carry through with swiftness, aye, playingly, undertakings that to-day seem impossible.

As society assumes the care of its youth, so it does of its aged, sick or invalid members. It guards whoever, by whatever circumstance, has become unable to work. There is in this no question of charity, but of duty; not of an alms morsel, but of an assistance born of every possible consideration due him, who, during the time of his strength and ability to work, fulfilled his duties to the commonwealth. The setting sun of old age is beautiful with all that society can offer: everyone being buoyed up with the confidence that he will some day himself enjoy what now he affords to others. No longer are the aged now disturbed with the thought that others are awaiting their death in order to "inherit;" likewise has the fear vanished from the mind of man that, grown old and helpless, he will be cast off like a squeezed lemon. Man now feels himself left neither to the benevolence of his children, nor to the alms of the community. What the condition is in which most parents find themselves, who depend in old age upon the support of their children, is notorious. How demoralizing is not the effect of the hope of inheriting upon the children, and, in a still greater degree, upon relatives! What vile qualities are not awakened; and how many are not the crimes that such hopes have led to!—murder, forgery, perjury, extortion, etc. Capitalist society has no reason to be proud of its laws of inheritance; to them are ascribable part of the crimes that are committed every year; and yet the large majority of people have nothing to bequeath or to inherit.[219]

The moral and physical condition of future society; the nature of its work, homes, food, clothing, its social life—everything will greatly contribute to avoid accidents, sickness, debility. Natural death by the decline of the vigor of life will become the rule. The conviction that "heaven" is on earth, and that to be dead means to be ended, will cause people to lead rational lives.[220] He enjoys most who enjoys longest. None know how to appreciate a long life better than the very clergy who prepare people for the "after world;" a life free from care makes it possible for these gentlemen to reach the highest age average.[221]

Life requires, first of all, food and drink. Friends of the so-called "natural way of living" often ask why is Socialism indifferent to vegetarianism. The question causes us to take up the subject in a few lines. Vegetarianism, that is, the doctrine that prescribes an exclusive vegetal diet, found its first supporters in such circles as are in the agreeable position of being able to choose between a vegetal and an animal diet. To the large majority of people there is no such choice: they are forced to live according to their means, the meagerness of which in many instances keeps them almost exclusively to a vegetal diet, and to the least nutritive, at that. With our working class population in Silesia, Saxony, Thuringen, etc., the potato is the principal nourishment; even bread comes in only secondarily; meat, and then only of poor quality, is hardly ever seen on the table. Even the largest part of the rural population, although they are the raisers of cattle, rarely partake of meat: they must sell the cattle in order to satisfy other pressing wants with the money obtained therefor.

For the innumerable people, who are compelled to live as vegetarians, an occasional solid beefsteak, or good leg of mutton, would be a decided improvement in the diet. When vegetarianism directs itself against the overrating of the nutrition contained in meat, it is right; it is wrong, however, when it combats the partaking of meat as harmful and fatal, mainly on sentimental grounds—such as "the nature of man forbids the killing of animals and to partake of a corpse." In order to live comfortably and undisturbed, we are compelled to declare war upon and destroy a large number of living beings in the shape of all manner of vermin; in order not to be ourselves eaten up, we must undertake the killing and extirpating of wild animals. The quiet toleration of those "good friends of man," the domestic animals, would increase the number of these "good friends" in a few decades so immensely that they would "devour" us by robbing us of food. Neither is the claim true that a vegetarian diet produces mildness of temperament. The "beast" was awakened even in the mild, vegetarian Hindoo when the severity of the Englishmen drove him to mutiny.

In our opinion Sonderegger hits the nail on the head when he says: "There is no order of rank in the matter of the different kinds of food; but there is an unalterable law in the matter of combining their several nutritious qualities." It is true that no one can nourish himself on an exclusively meat diet, but that he can on an exclusively vegetal diet, provided always he can select to suit; but neither would any one be satisfied with one vegetable, let it be the most nutritive. Beans, for instance, peas, lentils, in short, the leguminosae, are the most nutritive of all food. Nevertheless, to be forced to feed exclusively on them—which is said to be possible—were a torture. Karl Marx mentions in "Capital" that the Chilian mine-owners compel their workingmen to eat beans year in and year out, because the food imparts to them great strength and enables them to carry burdens that they could not carry with any other diet. Despite its nutrition, the workingmen turn against such food, but get none other, and are thus obliged to rest content therewith. Under no circumstances do the happiness and well-being of people depend upon a certain diet, as is claimed by the fanatics among the vegetarians. Climate, custom, individual tastes are the determining factors.

In the measure that civilization advances, a vegetal diet progressively takes the place of the exclusive meat diet, such as is indulged in by hunting and pastoral peoples. A many-sided agriculture is a sign of higher culture. On a given field, vegetal nutritive matter can be raised in larger quantities than could meat be obtained through cattle raising. This development imparts to vegetal nutrition an ever greater preponderance. The transportation of meat, that the modern vandalic economic system furnishes us with from foreign lands, especially from South America and Australia, has been very nearly exhausted within few decades. On the other hand, animals are raised, not merely for the sake of meat, but also for that of wool, hair, bristles, skin and hides, milk, eggs, etc., upon which many industries and human wants are dependent. Again offal of several kinds can be turned in no way to better advantage than through cattle raising. The seas will also in future be made to yield to man their wealth of animal food to a much larger extent than now. It will be in future a rare occurrence to see, as we do to-day, whole loads of fish turned to manure, because the facilities and costs of transportation, or the facilities of preservation prevent their being otherwise used. It follows that a purely vegetal diet is neither probable nor necessary in the future.

In the matter of food, quality rather than quantity is to be considered. Quantity is of little use if not good. Quality is greatly improved by the manner of preparation. The preparation of food must be conducted as scientifically as any other function, if it is to reach the highest point of utility possible. Knowledge and equipment are thereto requisite. That our women, upon whom to-day mainly devolves the preparation of food, do not and can not possess this knowledge, needs no proof. They lack all the necessary equipments therefor. As every well equipped hotel kitchen, the steam kitchen of barracks or of hospitals and especially the cooking expositions teach us, the cooking apparatuses, together with many technical arrangements for all manner of food preparation, have reached a high degree of perfection and have been contrived upon scientific principles. That will in the future be the rule. The object aimed at must be to obtain the best results with the smallest expenditure of power, time and material. The small private kitchen is, just like the workshop of the small master mechanic, a transition stage, an arrangement by which time, power and material are senselessly squandered and wasted. The preparation of food also will in future society be a social establishment, conducted on the most improved plane, in proper and advantageous manner. The private kitchen disappears, as it has now disappeared in the instance of those families who, although they generally provide themselves through their own kitchen, always resort to hotel kitchens or to those of caterers, the moment the question is to provide for banquets or to procure dishes a knowledge of which both they and their domestics lack.[222]

The Chicago Exposition of 1893 brought out a mass of interesting facts on the revolution that has taken place in the kitchen also, and in the preparation of food;—among other things a kitchen in which the heating and cooking was done wholly through electricity. Electricity not only furnished the light, but was also active in the washing of dishes, which thereupon required the aid of the human hand only in finishing up. In this kitchen of the future there was no hot air, no smoke, no vapors. Numberless apparatuses and subsidiary machinery performed a number of operations that until then had to be performed by human hands. This kitchen of the future resembled more a parlor than a kitchen that everyone who has nothing to do in, likes to stay away from. Work therein at the Chicago Exposition was pleasurable and free from all the unpleasantness that are features of the modern kitchen. Can a private kitchen be imagined even approximately equipped like that? And then, what a saving in all directions through such a central kitchen! Our women would seize the opportunity with both hands to exchange the present for the kitchen of the future.

The nutritive value of food is heightened by its facility of assimilation. This is a determining factor.[223] A natural system of nourishment for all can be reached only by future society. Cato praises the Rome of before his days for having had experts in the art of healing, but, down to the sixth century of the city, no occupation for exclusive physicians. People lived so frugally and simply, that disease was rare, and death from old age was the usual form of decease. Not until gourmandizing and idleness—in short, license with some, want and excessive work with others—had permeated society, did matters change, and radically so. In future, gluttony and license will be impossible, and likewise want, misery and privation. There is enough, and an abundance, for all. More than fifty years ago Henrich Heine sang:

"He who eats little lives well"—that is, long, said the Italian Cornaro in the sixteenth century, as quoted by Niemeyer. In the end chemistry will be active in the preparation and improvement of nourishment to a degree thitherto unknown. To-day the science is greatly abused in the interest of adulterations and fraud. It is obvious that a chemically prepared food that has all the qualities of the natural product will accomplish the same purpose. The form of the preparation is of secondary importance, provided the product otherwise meets all requirements.

As in the kitchen, the revolution will be accomplished throughout domestic life: it will remove numberless details of work that must be attended to to-day. As in the future the domestic kitchen is rendered wholly superfluous by the central institutions for the preparation of food, so likewise are all the former troubles of keeping ranges, lamps, etc., in working order, removed by the central heating and electric apparatuses for lighting. Warm and cold water supplies place bathing within the reach of all at pleasure, and without the aid of any person. The central laundries assume the washing, drying, etc., of clothes; the central cleaning establishments see to the dusting, etc., of clothing and carpets. In Chicago, carpet-cleaning machines were exhibited that did the work in so short a time as to call forth the admiration of the ladies who visited the Exposition. The electric door opens at a slight pressure of the finger, and shuts of itself. Electric contrivances deliver letters and newspapers on all the floors of the houses; electric elevators save the climbing of stairs. The inside arrangement of the houses—floorings, garnishing of the walls, furnitures—will be contrived with an eye to the facility of cleaning and to the prevention of the gathering of dust and bacteria. Dust, sweepings and offal of all sorts will be carried by pipes out of the houses as water, that has been used, is carried off to-day. In the United States, in many a European city—Zurich, for instance—there are to-day tenements, exquisitely equipped, in which numerous affluent families—others could not bear the expense—live and enjoy a large part of the conveniences just sketched.

Here again we have an illustration of how capitalist society breaks the way in revolutionizing human affairs, in this instance in domestic life,—but only for its elect. Domestic life being thus radically transformed, the servant, this "slave of all the whims of the mistress," is no more,—and the mistress neither. "No servants, no culture!" cries the horrified Herr v. Treitschke with comic pathos. He can as little imagine society without servants as Aristotle could without slaves. The matter of surprise is that Herr v. Treitschke looks upon our servants as the "carriers of civilization." Treitschke, like Eugen Richter, is furthermore greatly worried by the shoe-polishing and clothes-dusting question, which neither is able to attend to personally. It so happens, however, that with nine-tenths of the people everyone sees to that himself, or the wife does for her husband, or a daughter or son for the family. We might answer that what the nine-tenths have hitherto done, the remnant tenth may also do. But there is another way out. Why should not in future society the youth of the land, without distinction of sex, be enlisted for such necessary work? Work does not dishonor, even if it consist in polishing boots. Many a member of the old nobility, and officers of the army at that, learned the lesson when, to escape their debts, they ran off to the United States, and there became servants, or shoe-polishers. Eugen Richter, in his pamphlets, goes even so far as to cause the downfall of the "Socialist Imperial Chancellor" on the "Shoe-polishing Question," and the consequent falling to pieces of the "Socialist State." The "Socialist Imperial Chancellor" refuses to polish his own shoes; hence his troubles. The bourgeoisie has hugely enjoyed this description of Richter, and it has thereby furnished evidence of the modesty of its demands upon a criticism of Socialism. But Eugen Richter lived to experience the sorrow of not only seeing one of his own party members in Nuerenberg invent a shoe-polishing machine soon after the appearance of that pamphlet, but of also learning that at the Chicago Exposition of 1893 an electric shoe-polishing machine was exhibited that did the work perfectly. Thus the principal objection, raised by Richter and Treitschke against Socialist society, has been practically thrown overboard by an invention made under the bourgeois social system itself.

The revolutionary transformation, that radically changes all the relations of man, especially the position of woman, is, as we see, going on now under our own eyes. It is only a question of time when society will take the process into its own hands and upon a large scale, thus quickening and perfecting the change and affording to all, without exception, the opportunity to share its innumerable advantages.