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:

Why, there grows down here abundance

And a plentitude for all;

Roses, myrtles, beauty and joy;

Yes, and sugar beans withal--

Aye, sugar beans in bursting pods

For everyone are here,

But they're left to heaven's angels

And the sparrows of the air.

"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.

FOOTNOTES:

[176] "The power of emulation, in exciting to the most strenuous

exertions for the sake of the approbation and admiration of others, is

borne witness to by experience in every situation in which human beings

publicly compete with one another, even if it be in things frivolous, or

from which the public derives no benefit. A contest, who can do most for

the common good, is not the kind of competition which Socialists

repudiate."--John Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy." Every

union, every association of people, who pursue equal aims, likewise

furnishes numerous examples of greater effort with no material, but only

an ideal, reward in view. The emulators are moved by the ambition to

distinguish themselves, by the desire to serve the common cause. But

this sort of ambition is no vice; it is a virtue; it is put forth in the

interest of all; and the individual finds his satisfaction in that along

with all others. Ambition is harmful and objectionable only when it is

put forth to the injury of the whole, and at the expense of others.

[177] Von Thuenen says in his "Der isolirte Staat": "The reason why the

proletarians, on the one hand, and property classes, on the other, face

each other permanently as enemies lies in the antagonism of their

interests; and they will remain unreconciled _so long as this division

of interests is not removed_. Not only the well-being of his wage-giver

but--through discoveries in industry, the pavement of streets and

building of railroads, the forming of new business connections--the

revenues of the Nation also may increase. Under our present social

order, however, the workingman is touched by none of these; his

condition remains what it was, and _the whole increase of revenues

accrues to the employers, the capitalists and the landlords_." This last

sentence is an almost literal anticipation of the words of Gladstone in

the English Parliament, when he declared in 1864 "this intoxicating

increase of incomes and power" that England had experienced in the

course of the previous twenty years, "has been confined exclusively to

the possessing classes." Again on p. 207 of his work, v. Thuenen says:

"The evil lies in the divorce of the workingman from his product."

Morelly declares in his "Principles of Legislation": "Property divides

us into two classes--Rich and Poor. The former love their property and

care not to defend the State; the latter can not possibly love the

Fatherland, seeing that it bestows upon them naught but misery. Under

the system of Communism, however, all love the Fatherland, seeing that

all receive from it life and happiness."

[178] In weighing the advantages and the disadvantages of Communism,

John Stuart Mill says in his "Principles of Political Economy": "No soil

could be more favorable to the growth of such a feeling, than a

Communist association, since all the ambition, and the bodily and mental

activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and

self-regarding interests, would require another sphere of employment,

and would naturally find it in the pursuit of the general benefit of the

community."

[179] "Die Gesetze der sozialen Entwickelung."

[180] What does Herr Eugene Richter say to this calculation? In his

"Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) he makes merry over the enormous

shortening of the hours of work that we have held out in this work as

the result that would follow upon the obligation of all to work and upon

the higher technical organization of the process of production. He seeks

to minimize as much as possible the productivity of production on a

large scale, and to enhance the importance of production on a small

scale. He does so in order that he might claim that the expected

increased production was not practicable. In order to make Socialism

seem impossible, these defenders of the existing "order" are forced to

discredit the merits of their own social system.

[181] "Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and

strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very

incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very

small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With

adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will

ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce

eagerness; 50 per cent. positive audacity; 100 per cent. will made it

ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a

crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the

chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a

profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade

have amply proved all that is here stated." (P. J. Dunning, 1. c., p.

35.) Cited by Karl Marx in "Capital," p. 786, edition Swan-Sonnenscheim

& Co., London, 1896.

[182] A competitor with electricity, applied to lighting purposes, has

recently arisen in the shape of the so-called acetylene gas, which was

discovered in the United States, by means of an electrolytic process,

similar to that used in the preparation of aluminum. A compound is made

of calcium and carbon, called calcium-carbide, which, in touch with

water, produces the acetylene gas. Its lighting power is fifteen times

that of the ordinary illuminating gas, besides being much cheaper.

[183] "The generality of laborers in this and most other countries, have

as little choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion, are practically

as dependent on fixed rules, and on the will of others, as they could be

on any system short of actual slavery."--John Stuart Mill's "Principles

of Political Economy."

[184] "A French workman, on his return from San Francisco, writes as

follows: 'I never could have believed that I was capable of working at

the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly

convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing.... Once

in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation

as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining

did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in

succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, etc. In consequence of

this finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a

mollusk and more of a man.'" (A. Courbou, "De l'Enseignement

Professional," 2eme ed. p. 50.) Cited by Karl Marx in "Capital", p. 493,

edition Swan-Sonnenschein Co., London, 1896.

[185] Tolstoi's "The Significance of Science and Art."

[186] What may be made of a man under favorable circumstances is

illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, who was a distinguished painter,

celebrated sculptor, favorite architect and engineer, excellent builder

of fortifications, musician and improvisator. Benvenuto Cellini was a

celebrated goldsmith, excellent molder, good sculptor, leading builder

of fortifications, first-rate soldier and thorough musician. Abraham

Lincoln was a splitter of rails, agriculturist, boatman, shop-assistant

and lawyer, until he was placed in the Presidential chair of the United

States. It may be said without exaggerating, most people are engaged in

occupations that do not correspond with their faculties, simply because,

not freedom of choice, but the force of necessity dictated their career.

Many a bad professor would do good work as a shoemaker, and many a good

shoemaker could be a good professor as well.

[187] It should always be kept in mind that production is then organized

up to the highest point of technical perfection, and all the people are

at work. It may thus happen that, under given circumstances, a

three-hour day is rather longer, and not shorter, than necessary. Owen

in his time--first quarter of the nineteenth century--considered two

hours' work sufficient.

[188] "It is not necessary to go a round-about way in order to ascertain

the amount of social labor crystallized in a given product. Daily

experience shows directly the requisite average. Society can easily

calculate how many hours are contained in a steam engine, in a

hectoliter of last year's wheat, in a hundred square meters of cloth of

a certain quality. Society will, therefore, never dream of re-expressing

these units of work,--crystallized in the products and known to it

directly and absolutely--by a merely relative, varying and insufficient

measure, formerly used by it as a make-shift that it could not get along

without; a measure, moreover, which itself is a third product, instead

of by their natural, adequate and absolute measure--time.... Society

will have to organize the plan of production according to the means of

production, under which category labor-power especially belongs. The

various utilities of the several articles of use, balanced with one

another and with the amount of labor necessary for their production,

will in the end determine the plan. People settle matters a good deal

more simply without the intervention of the celebrated 'money

value.'"--Fr. Engels' "Herr Eugene Duehring's Umwaelzung der

Wissensehaft."

[189] Herr Eugene Richter is so astonished at the dropping away of money

in Socialist society--abolished money will not be: with the abolition of

the merchandise character from the products of labor, money drops away

of itself--that he devotes to the subject a special chapter in his

"Irrelehren." What is particularly hard for him to understand is the

idea that it is immaterial whether the voucher for labor performance be

a piece of paper, gold or tin. On this head he says: "With gold, the

devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic

State"--that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a

Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must,

else a good portion of his polemic would fall through--"seeing that gold

has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the

possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values

wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith

even to lay out money on interest."

Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up

such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not

rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand

that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor

can there be any "money"; and where there is no "capital" and no

"money", neither could there be any "interest." Herr Richter is nailed

so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world

without "capital." We should like to know how a member of a Socialist

society could "save up" his gold certificates of labor, or even loan

them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members

possess what that one is offering them and--_on which he lives_.

[190] "All people of average healthy build _are born with almost equal

intellectual powers, but education, laws and circumstances alter them

relatively_. The correctly understood interest of the individual is

blended into one with the common or public interest."--Helvetius' "On

Man and His Education." Helvetius is right with regard to the large

majority of people; but that does not take away that the natural

faculties of each are different for different occupations.

[191] "If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with

all its chances, and the present state of society with all its

sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property

necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor

should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to

the labor--the largest portions to those who have never worked at all,

the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a

descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder

and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily

labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the

necessaries of life; if this or Communism, were the alternative, all the

difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the

balance."--John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." Mill

strove diligently to "reform" the bourgeois world, and to "bring it to

reason." Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all

clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the

fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his

auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of

faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in

his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie affects loyalty, religion and

faith in authority because through the acceptance of these "virtues" by

the masses its own rule is safeguarded; in its own sleeves, however, it

laughs at them.

[192] "Scholarship is as often the hand-maid of ignorance as of

progress."--Buckle's "History of Civilization in England."

[193] According to the census of 1882 there were in Germany engaged in

trade and transportation 1,570,318 persons, inclusive of those occupied

in hotels and inns, and exclusive of 295,451 domestics.

[Some opinion may be formed of the volume of useless labor, parasitism,

in the United States, from the census figures for 1900. Under this head

of "Trade and Transportation" alone come 4,766,964 persons. Among them,

substantially useless, are the 241,162 agents, the 73,277 brokers, the

92,919 commercial travelers, the 76,649 hucksters and peddlers, the

790,886 merchants and dealers (except wholesale), the 42,293 merchants

and dealers (wholesale), the 74,072 officials of banks and companies,

the 33,656 livery stable keepers, the 71,622 messengers and errand and

office boys, and the 59,545 packers and shippers--in all 1,556,081. Of

the remaining 3,210,883--among whom are 254,880 bookkeepers and

accountants, 632,127 clerks and copyists, 611,139 salesmen and

women--fully two-thirds could be spared to-day under a rational social

system. The proportion of wasteful forces, and even parasitism, is still

larger under the heads of "Professional Service" and "Domestic and

Personal Service," among which--to pick up only a few of the worst

items--are 111,638 clergymen, 114,460 lawyers, 86,607 government

officials, including officers of the United States army and navy, 33,844

saloon keepers, 1,560,721 servants and waiters, 43,235 soldiers, sailors

and marines (U. S.), etc., etc.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[194] Even the Fathers of the Church, Bishops and Popes could not

refrain from preaching in a communistic vein during those early

centuries when community of property still prevailed, but its theft was

assuming larger proportions. The Syllabus and the encyclicals of the

nineteenth century have lost all recollection of this tone, and even the

Roman Popes have been compelled to become subjects of capitalist

society, and now pose as its zealous defenders against the Socialists.

In contrast therewith Bishop Clemens I. (deceased 102 of our reckoning)

said: "The use of all things in this world is to be common to all. It is

an injustice to say: 'This is my property, this belongs to me, that

belongs to another.' Hence the origin of contentions among men."

Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who lived about 347, exclaimed: "Nature bestows

all things on all men in common, for God has created all things that

their enjoyment might be common to all, and that the earth might become

the common possession of all. Common possession is, therefore, a right

established by Nature, and only unjust usurpation (usurpatio) has

created the right of private property."

St. John Chrysostomus (deceased 407) declared in his homilies directed

against the immorality and corruption of the population of

Constantinople: "Let none call aught his own; we have received

everything from God for enjoyment in common, and 'mine' and 'thine' are

words of falsehood."

St. Augustine (deceased 430) expressed himself thus: "Because private

property exists there exists also law suits, enmities, dissensions,

wars, rebellions, sins, injustice, murder. Whence proceed all these

scourges? From property only. Let us then, my brothers, refrain from

possessing anything as our property; at least let us refrain from loving

it."

Pope Gregory the Great declares about 600: "Let them know that the earth

from which they spring and of which they are formed belongs to all men

in common, and that therefore the fruits which the earth brings forth

must belong to all without distinction."

And one of the moderns, Zacharia, says in his "Forty Books on the

State": "All the evils with which civilized nations have to contend, can

be traced back to private property in land."

All these authorities have recognized more or less accurately the nature

of private property, which, since its existence, as St. Augustine

correctly puts it, brought law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars,

rebellions, injustice and murder into the world,--all of them evils that

will disappear with its abolition.

[195] "The employment of water in the cultivation of fruit as well as of

vegetables is highly desirable; water associations with these ends in

view could turn with us also deserts into paradises." Official report on

the Chicago Exposition of 1893, rendered by the Imperial Commissioner,

Berlin, 1894.

[196] This prospect seems nearer realization and in a quite different

manner than the most far-sighted could have imagined. The discovery of

acetylene gas is the point of departure for a long line of products of

organic chemistry, that, with proper treatment, can be drawn from it.

Among the articles of enjoyment, that may be expected to be gained first

of all on this path, is alcohol, the production of which promises to be

the easiest of all and very cheap, and is expected in but few years. If

this succeeds, a large part of the agriculture of the East Elbian

district, which depends upon the production of alcohol, will be put in

jeopardy. The circumstance will bring on a revolution in the respective

agricultural interests that will play mightily into the hands of

Socialism. Evidently, what Werner, Siemens and Berthelot held out, is

approaching reality.

[197] Dr. G. Ruhland, "Die Grundprinzipien aktueller Agrarpolitik."

[198] A petition by Julius Zuns, which finally was not sent to the

Reichstag, on the subject of an agrarian investigation.

[199] Dr. Rudolf Meyer, "Der Kapitalismus fin de siecle."

[200] "There is a prescription for securing the fertility of the fields

and perpetual repetition of their produce. If this prescription be

consistently carried out it will prove more remunerative than any which

has ever been applied in agriculture. It is this: Let every farmer, like

the Chinese coolie, who carries a sack of corn or a hundred weight of

rape, or carrots or potatoes, etc., to town, bring back with him as much

if possible or more of the ingredients of his field products as he took

with him, and restore it to the field whence it came. He must not

despise a potato paring or a straw, but remember that one of his

potatoes still needs a skin, and one of his ears of corn a stalk. The

expense for this importation is slight, the outlay secure; a savings

bank is not securer, and no investment brings in a higher rate of

interest. The returns of his fields will be doubled in ten years: he

will produce more corn, more meat and more cheese without expending more

time or labor, and he will not be driven by constant anxiety to seek for

new and unknown means, which do not exist, to make his ground fertile in

another manner.... Old bones, soot, ashes, whether washed out or not,

and blood of animals and refuse of all kinds ought to be collected in

storehouses, and prepared for distribution.... Governments and town

police should take precautions for preventing the loss of these

materials by a suitable arrangement of drains and closets."--Liebig's

"Chemical Letters."

[201] "Every coolie (in China) who carries his produce to market in the

morning, brings home two buckets full of manure on a bamboo rod in the

evening. The appreciation of manure goes so far that every one knows how

much a man secretes in a day, a month and a year, and the Chinaman

considers it more than rude if his guest leaves his house carrying with

him a benefit to which his host thinks himself justly entitled as a

return for his hospitality.... Every substance derived from plants or

animals is carefully collected and used as manure by the Chinese.... To

complete the idea of the importance attached to animal refuse, it will

suffice to mention the fact that the barbers carefully collect and trade

with the hairs cut from the heads and beards of the hundred millions of

customers whom they daily shave. The Chinese are acquainted with the use

of gypsum and chalk, and it not infrequently occurs that they renew the

plaster in their kitchens merely for the purpose of using the old

plaster as manure."--Liebig's "Chemical Letters."

[202] Karl Schober, Address delivered on the agricultural, municipal and

national economic significance of city refuse; Berlin, 1877.

[203] "Life, Its Elements and the Means of Its Conservation."

[204] According to the census of 1890, Germany had 26 large cities of

over 100,000 inhabitants each. In 1871 it had only 8 of them. In 1871,

Berlin had, in round figures, 826,000 inhabitants; in 1890 it had

1,578,794--it had almost doubled. A number of these large cities were

compelled to take within their municipalities the contiguous industrial

towns, that in themselves had populations large enough for cities.

Through the process, the population of the former rose immediately.

Thus, within the period of 1885 to 1890, Leipsic rose from 170,000 to

353,000; Cologne from 161,000 to 282,000; Madgeburg from 114,000 to

201,000; Munich from 270,000 to 345,000 inhabitants, etc. At the same

time, most of the other cities that incorporated no contiguous towns

increased considerably during that period. Breslau grew from 299,000 to

335,000; Dresden from 246,000 to 276,000; Frankfurt-on-Main from 154,000

to 180,000; Hanover from 140,000 to 163,000; Dusseldorf from 115,000 to

146,000; Nuerenberg from 115,000 to 142,000; Chemnitz from 111,000 to

139,000 inhabitants. Similar growths were also registered by many

middle-sized cities of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.

[In the United States, the concentration of population in large cities

has been marked. In 1790 only 3.4 per cent. of the total population

lived in cities. The proportion of urban to the total population then

grew from census year to census year (decade to decade) as follows: 4.0

in 1800; 4.9 in 1810; 4.9 in 1820; 6.7 in 1830; 8.5 in 1840; 12.5 in

1850; 16.1 in 1860; 20.9 in 1870; 22.6 in 1880; 29.2 in 1890; and 33.1

in 1900. According to the census of 1900 there live 14,208,347 of the

population in cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants; 5,549,271 in

cities of 25,000 to 100,000 inhabitants; 5,286,375 in cities of 8,000 to

25,000 inhabitants; 3,380,193 in cities of 4,000 to 8,000 inhabitants;

and 2,214,136 in cities of 2,500 to 4,000 inhabitants. In country

districts there live 45,573,846 of a total population of 76,212,168,

including Alaska and Hawaii.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[205] Prof. Adolf Wagner says in his work "Lehrbuch der politischen

Oekonomie von Rau": "Small private holdings in land constitute an

economic basis, that can be substituted by no other institution for a

most important part of the population--an independent, self-sustaining

peasantry, together with its peculiar socio-political position and

function." Where, for the sake of his conservative friends, the author

does not enthuse _a tout prix_ for the small farmer, he is bound to

regard this class as one of the poorest. Under existing circumstances,

the small farmer is downright inaccessible to higher culture: he toils

at hard labor from early dawn till late, and lives often worse than a

dog. Meat, butter, eggs, milk, which he produces, he does not enjoy: he

produces them for others: under present circumstances he can not raise

himself into better conditions: he thus becomes an element that clogs

civilization. He who loves retrogression, seeing he finds his account

therein, may also find satisfaction in the continuance of such a social

stratum. Human progress demands its disappearance.

[206] At the Erfurt "Union Parliament" of 1850, Prince Bismarck

thundered against the large cities as "the hot-beds of revolution," that

should be razed to the ground. He was quite right: capitalist society

produces its own "grave-diggers" in the modern proletariat.

[207] Frederick Engels, "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to

Science."

[208] ["Religion" In English is not quite the same as "Die Religion" in

German. For all their etymology is identical, custom and social

institutions have imparted to the German term a meaning, or a shade of a

meaning, that it lacks in English. "Die Religion" is in Germany a State

institution; it is part of the curriculum of colleges; and it is there

so utterly creedy, churchianic, and dogmatic that it is a positive

abomination even to the students who mean to devote themselves to

theology. That, however, even in the German language the word has a

varying meaning may be gathered from the epigram of Schiller: "To what

religion I belong? To none. Why? Out of religiousness"--literally in

German, "out of religion." The reproduction in this translation of the

idea conveyed by the term "Die Religion" presented its difficulties. As

none could be found in English to convey its varying sense, the word

"religion" has been preserved throughout as the nearest equivalent.--THE

TRANSLATOR.]

[209] Karl Marx: "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts-Philosophie."

[210] How the ancients thought upon the subject appears from the

following utterance of Aristotle: "A tyrant (the term applied to

autocrats in Old Greece) must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion

to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a

ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they

do not easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his

side."--Aristotle's "Politics." Aristotle was born 384 B. C. at Stagira,

whence he is frequently called "the Stagirite."

"A prince, then, is to have particular care that nothing falls from his

mouth but what is full of the five qualities aforesaid, and that to see

and to hear him, he appears all goodness, integrity, humanity and

religion, which last he ought to pretend to more than ordinarily because

more men do judge by the eye than by the touch; for everybody sees, but

few understand; everybody sees how you appear, but few know what in

reality you are, and those few dare not oppose the opinion of the

multitude who have the majesty of their prince to defend them; and in

the actions of all men, especially princes, where no man has power to

judge, every one looks to the end. Let a prince, therefore, do what he

can to preserve his life, and continue his supremacy, the means which he

uses shall be thought honorable, and be commended by everybody; because

the people are always taken with the appearance and event of things,

and, the greatest part of the world consists of the people; those few

who are wise taking place when the multitude has nothing else to rely

upon."--Macchiavelli in his celebrated work, "The Prince." Macchiavelli

was born in Florence, 1469.

[211] Whenever the modern bourgeois is at a loss for reasons to justify

some enormity with, a thousand to one he falls back upon "morality." In

the spring of 1894, it went so far that, at a meeting of the Evangelical

Synod, a "liberal" member of the Berlin Chamber of the Exchequer

pronounced it "moral" that only taxpayers should have the right to vote

at Church meetings (!)

[212] "A certain degree of well-being and culture is a necessary

external condition for the development of the philosophic spirit....

Thence we find that people began to philosophize only in those nations,

that had raised themselves to a considerable height of well-being and

culture."--Tennemann, quoted by Buckle in a foot note, _ubi supra_.

"Material and intellectual interests go hand in hand. The one can not

exist without the other. Between the two there is the same connection as

between body and soul: to separate them is to bring on death."--v.

Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat."

"The best life, as well for the individual in particular, as for the

State in general, is that life in which virtue is decked out with

_external_ goods also, sufficient to make possible an active indulgence

in beautiful and good actions."--Aristotle's "Politics."

[213] When Eugene Richter in his "Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) repeats

the old wornout phrase about the Socialists aiming at a "Penitentiary

State"--that the question is no longer about a "State" will have by this

time become clear to our readers--he presupposes the existence of a

"State" or social order _that will violate its own interests_. A new

State or social order radically different from the preceding one can not

possibly be produced at will; to imagine such a thing would be to ignore

and deny all the laws of development, obedient to which State and

Society have hitherto risen and developed. Eugen Richter and those who

share his views may take comfort: if Socialism really implies the silly

and unnatural aims imputed to it by them, it will go to pieces, and

without the aid of the "Irrelehren" of Richter. But it happens that

there is no political party that stands as squarely and logically upon

the evolutionary field as the Social Democratic.

Quite as unfounded as all the other objections are the remarks of Eugene

Richter: "For a social condition, such as the Socialists want, the

people must be angels." As is well known, there are no angels, nor do we

need any. Partly are men influenced by conditions, and partly are

conditions influenced by men, and the latter will be increasingly the

case in the measure that men learn to know the nature of the social

system that they themselves rear, and in the measure that the experience

thus gathered is consciously applied by them by corresponding changes in

their social organization,--and that is Socialism. What we need is not

other people, but wiser and more intelligent people than most of them

are to-day. It is with the end in view of making people wiser and more

intelligent that we agitate, Herr Richter, and that we publish works

like this one.

[214] It is surprising that, considering the fathomless blockishness of

our adversaries, none has yet claimed that in Socialist society everyone

would receive an equal portion of food and an equal quantity of linen

and clothing so as to "crown the work of uniformity." Such a claim is

quite stupid enough to expect its being made by our opponents.

[215] Fourier made this the subject of a brilliant argument, although he

ran into utopianism in the elaboration of his ideas.

[216] Condorcet demands in his plan of education: "Education must be

free, equal, general, bodily, mental, industrial and political, and it

must aim at real and actual equality."

Likewise Rousseau in his "Political Economy": "Above all, education must

be public, equal and mixed, for the purpose of raising men and

citizens."

Aristotle also demands: "Seeing the State has but one object, it must

also provide one and the same education for all its members. The care

hereof must be the concern of the State and not a private affair."

[217] Eugene Richter among them, in his "Irrelehren."

[218] "America's Bildungswesen," by Prof. Emil Hausknecht.

[219] "The person who has led an honorable and active life until old age

should not then have to live either on the charity of his children or of

bourgeois society. An independent old age, free from cares or toil, is

the natural reward for continuous exertions in the days of strength and

health."--v. Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat." But how is it to-day in

this bourgeois society? Millions look with dread towards the time when,

having grown old, they are thrown upon the street. And our industrial

system causes people to age prematurely. The very much boasted about

old-age and invalid pensions in the German Empire afford but a very

scanty substitute: even its most zealous defenders admit that. Their

aids are still more inadequate than the pensions which the

municipalities allow to the large majority of the officials whom they

provide with pensions.

[220] [It is a feature of theology to be positive, precise and emphatic

in descriptions of what the describer knows nothing about. No less

theologic, in this sense of the term, are negative assertions concerning

matters that science has not yet illumined. Whether "to be dead means to

be ended" or not, is no part either of the general question of

Socialism, or the specific question of Woman. Nevertheless, while

respecting the author's private opinion in the matter, and leaving his

sentence untouched, the following phrasing would seem preferable, as

free from the taint of what may be called the "theologic method," and

also more in keeping with the mental posture of positive knowledge:

"Whether to be dead means to be ended or not, is a matter on which man

awaits the fiat of Science."--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[221] [It is otherwise in the United States, where, as a rule, clergymen

have to "hustle"--both to curry favor with their parishioners and to

countermine the mines laid by their competitors for fatter "calls," or

by their numerous unemployed "brothers of the cloth." According to the

census of 1900, clergymen had the very highest death rate (23.5) among

the professional occupations for the registration area,--and it was

among the highest altogether. It was excelled only by the death rate of

the coopers (23.8); of the millers, flour and grist, (26.6); of the

sailors, pilots, fishermen and oystermen (27.7); and of the stock

raisers, herders and drovers (32.1). The census also shows that the

death rate of clergymen is on the increase--18.2 in 1890; now 23.5.--THE

TRANSLATOR.]

[222] Herr Eugen Richter in his "Irrelehren" is also raving mad over the

idea of abolishing the private kitchen. As far as we know, Herr Richter

is a bachelor. Obviously he does not miss his own kitchen: to judge from

the rotundity of his body, he does not fare ill. If Herr Richter were a

married man and possessed a wife, who had herself to administer the

kitchen department and to perform in it the needed work, instead of

leaving all that to servants, as is the fashion with the women of the

property classes, then, a hundred to one his wife would nicely prove to

him how happy she would be if she only could be freed from the bondage

of the kitchen through the large and thoroughly equipped communal

institute for meals.

[223] Niemeyer, "Gesundheitslehre."

PART III

WOMAN IN THE FUTURE