WOMAN IN THE FUTURE.

This chapter can be condensed in few words. It only contains the

conclusions that flow from what has been said, conclusions that the

reader may draw for himself.

The woman of future society is socially and economically independent;

she is no longer subject to even a vestige of dominion and exploitation;

she is free, the peer of man, mistress of her lot. Her education is the

same as that of man, with such exceptions as the difference of sex and

sexual functions demand. Living under natural conditions, she is able to

unfold and exercise her mental powers and faculties. She chooses her

occupation on such field as corresponds with her wishes, inclinations

and natural abilities, and she works under conditions identical with

man's. Even if engaged as a practical working-woman on some field or

other, at other times of the day she may be educator, teacher or nurse,

at yet others she may exercise herself in art, or cultivate some branch

of science, and at yet others may be filling some administrative

function. She joins in studies, enjoyments or social intercourse with

either her sisters or with men,--as she may please or occasion may

serve.

In the choice of love, she is, like man, free and unhampered. She woos

or is wooed, and closes the bond from no considerations other than her

own inclinations. This bond is a private contract, celebrated without

the intervention of any functionary--just as marriage was a private

contract until deep in the Middle Ages. Socialism creates in this

nothing new: it merely restores, at a higher level of civilization and

under new social forms, that which prevailed at a more primitive social

stage, and before private property began to rule society.

Under the proviso that he inflict injury upon none, the individual shall

himself oversee the satisfaction of his own instincts. _The satisfaction

of the sexual instinct is as much a private concern as the satisfaction

of any other natural instinct._ None is therefor accountable to others,

and no unsolicited judge may interfere. How I shall eat, how I shall

drink, how I shall sleep, how I shall clothe myself, is my private

affair,--exactly so my intercourse with a person of the opposite sex.

Intelligence and culture, perfect individual freedom--qualities that

become normal through the education and the conditions of future

society--will guard everyone against the commission of acts that will

redound to his injury. Self-training and the knowledge of their own

being are possessions of the men and the women of future society to a

degree much above the present. The simple circumstance that all bashful

prudery and affectation of secrecy regarding natural matters will have

vanished is a guarantee of a more natural intercourse of the sexes than

that which prevails to-day. If incompatibility, disenchantment, or

repulsion set in between two persons that have come together, morality

commands that the unnatural, and therefore immoral, bond be dissolved.

Seeing, moreover, that all the circumstances and conditions, which until

then condemned large numbers of women to celibacy and to prostitution,

will have vanished, man can no longer superimpose himself. On the other

hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed the

numerous inconveniences that to-day affect married life, that often

prevent its favorable unfolding, or that even render it wholly

impossible.

The contradictions in and the unnatural features of the present position

of woman are realized with ever increasing force in wide social circles.

The sentiment finds lively utterance in the literature of the Social

Question as well as in works of fiction,--often, it must be confessed,

in wrongful manner. That the present form of marriage corresponds ever

less with its purpose, no thinking person any longer denies. Thus is

seen the phenomenon of the demand for freedom in the choice of love, and

for the untrammeled dissolution of the marriage bond, when necessary,

made by people who refuse to draw the requisite conclusions for the

change of the present social system. They believe that the freedom of

sexual intercourse must be asserted only in behalf of the privileged

classes. In a polemic against Fanny Lewald's efforts in behalf of the

emancipation of woman, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg expresses herself

this wise:

"If you (Fanny Lewald) claim the complete equality of woman with man in

social and political life, George Sand also must be right in her

struggles for emancipation, which aim no further than at what man has

long been in undisputed possession of. Indeed, there is no reasonable

ground for admitting the head and not the heart of woman to this

equality, to give and to take as freely as man. On the contrary, if

woman has by nature the right, and, consequently, also the duty--for we

should not bury the talent bestowed upon us--of exerting her brain

tissue to the utmost in the race with the intellectual Titans of the

opposite sex, she must then have precisely the same right to preserve

her equilibrium by quickening the circulation of her heart's blood in

whatever way it may seem good to her. Do we not all read without the

slightest moral indignation how Goethe--to begin with the greatest as an

illustration--again and again wasted the warmth of his heart and the

enthusiasm of his great soul on a different woman? Reasonable people

regard this as perfectly natural by the very reason of the greatness of

his soul, and the difficulty of satisfying it. Only the narrow-minded

moralist stops to condemn his conduct. Why, then, deride the 'great

souls' among women!... Let us suppose that the whole female sex

consisted of great souls like George Sand, that every woman were a

Lucretia Floriani, whose children are all children of love and who

brought up all these children with true motherly love and devotion, as

well as with intelligence and good sense. What would become of the

world? There can be no doubt that it could continue to exist and to

progress, just as it does now; it might even feel exceptionally

comfortable under the arrangement."[224]

Accordingly, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg is of the opinion that, if

every woman were a Lucretia Floriani, that is, a great soul like George

Sand, who draws her own picture in Lucretia Floriani, they should be

free for the "preservation of their equilibrium to quicken the

circulation of their heart's blood in whatever way it may seem good to

them." But why should that be the privilege of the "great souls" only,

and not of the others also, who are no "great souls," and can be none?

No such difference exists to us. If a Goethe and a George Sand--to take

these two from the many who have acted and are acting like them--live

according to the inclinations of their hearts--and about Goethe's love

affairs whole libraries are published that are devoured by his male and

female admirers in wrapt ecstasy--why condemn in others that, which done

by a Goethe or a George Sand, becomes the subject of ecstatic

admiration?

Indeed, such freedom in the choice of love is an impossibility in

bourgeois society. This fact was the objective point in our preceding

array of evidence. But place the whole community under social conditions

similar to those enjoyed by the material and intellectual elect, and

forthwith the opportunity is there of equal rights and freedom for all.

In "Jacques," George Sand depicts a husband who judges the adulterous

relations of his wife with another man in these words: "No human being

can command love; and none is guilty if he feels, or goes without it.

What degrades the woman is the lie: what constitutes her adultery is not

the hour that she grants to her lover, but the night that she thereupon

spends with her husband." Thanks to this view of the matter, Jacques

feels obliged to yield the place to his rival, Borel, and he proceeds to

philosophize: "Borel, in my place, would have quietly beaten his wife,

and perhaps would not have blushed to receive her afterwards into his

bed, debased by his blows and his kisses. There are men who cut the

throat of an unfaithful wife without ceremony, after the fashion of the

Orientals, because they consider her as legal property. Others fight

with their rival, kill him or drive him away, and again seek the kisses

of the woman they pretend to love, and who shrinks from them with

horror, or resigns herself in despair. These, in cases of conjugal love,

are the most common ways of acting, and I say that the love of the hogs

is less vile and less gross than that of these men." Commenting on these

passages, Brandes observes: "These truths, which are considered

elemental with our cultured classes, were 'sophisms that cried to

heaven' only fifty years ago." But the "property and cultured world"

dare not to this day openly avow the principles of George Sand,

although, in point of fact, it lives up to them in the main. As in

morality and religion, the bourgeois is a hypocrite in marriage also.

What Goethe and George Sand did, has been done and continues to be done

by thousands of others, who are not to be compared with Goethe, yet

without in the least losing the esteem and respect of society. All that

is needed is a respectable position, the rest comes of itself. All this

notwithstanding, the liberties of a Goethe and a George Sand are

improper, judged from the standpoint of bourgeois morality, and stand in

contradiction with the nature of its social principles. Compulsory

marriage is the normal marriage of bourgeois society: it is the only

"moral" union of the sexes: all other sexual union, by whomsoever

entered into, is immoral. Bourgeois marriage--we have proved the point

beyond cavil--is the result of bourgeois property relations. This

marriage, which is intimately related with private property and the

right of inheritance--demands "legitimate" children as heirs: it is

entered into for the purpose of acquiring these: under the pressure of

social conditions, it is forced even upon those who have nothing to

bequeath:[225] it becomes a social law, the violation of which the State

punishes by imprisoning for a term of years the men or women who live in

adultery and have been divorced.

In future society there is nothing to bequeath, unless the domestic

equipment and personal inventory be regarded as inheritance: the modern

form of marriage is thus devoid of foundation and collapses. The

question of inheritance is thereby solved, and Socialism need not

concern itself about abolishing the same. No right of inheritance can

arise where there is no private property.

Woman is, accordingly, free, and her children, where she has any, do not

impair her freedom: they can only fill all the fuller the cup of her

enjoyments and her pleasure in life. Nurses, teachers, female friends,

the rising female generations--all these are ready at hand to help the

mother when she needs help.

It is possible that there may be men in the future who will say with

Alexander von Humboldt: "I am not built for the father of a family.

Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, and the begetting of children a

crime." What of it? The power of natural instincts will restore the

equilibrium. We are alarmed neither by a Humboldt's hostility to

marriage nor by the philosophic pessimism of a Schopenhauer, a

Mainlaender or a v. Hartmann, who raise to man the prospect of

self-destruction in the "ideal State," In this matter we hold with Fr.

Ratzel, who justly says:

"Man may no longer look upon himself as an exception to the laws of

Nature; he should rather begin at last to ascertain the law that

underlies his own acts and thoughts, and to endeavor to live his life

according to the laws of Nature. He will arrive at the point when he

will arrange his social life with his fellows, that is, his family and

the State, not after the precepts of far-back centuries, but after the

rational principles of natural sense. Politics, morals, principles of

justice--all of which are at present fed from all possible sources--will

be determined according to the laws of Nature alone. An existence worthy

of human beings, dreamed of for thousands of years, will finally become

reality."[226]

That day is approaching with giant strides. Human society has traversed,

in the course of thousands of years, all the various phases of

development, to arrive in the end where it started from,--communistic

property and complete equality and fraternity, but no longer among

congeners alone, but among the whole human race. In that does the great

progress consist. What bourgeois society has vainly striven for, and at

which it suffers and is bound to suffer shipwreck--the restoration of

freedom, equality and fraternity among men--Socialism will accomplish.

Bourgeois society could only set up the theory; here, as in so many

other respects, their practice was at odds with their theories. It is

for Socialism to harmonize the theory with the practice.

Nevertheless, while man returns to the starting point in his

development, the return is effected upon an infinitely higher social

plane than that from which he started. Primitive society held property

in common in the gens and clan, but only in the rawest and most

undeveloped stage. The process of development that took place since,

reduced, it is true, the common property to a small and insignificant

vestige, broke up the gentes, and finally atomized the whole of society;

but, simultaneously, it raised mightily the productivity of that society

in its various phases and the manifoldness of social necessities, and it

created out of the gentes and tribes nations and great States, although

again it produced a condition of things that stood in violent

contradiction with social requirements. The task of the future is to end

the contradiction by the re-transformation upon the broadest basis, of

property and productive powers into collective property.

Society re-takes what once was its own, but, in accord with the newly

created conditions of production, it places its whole mode of life upon

the highest stage of culture, which enables all to enjoy what under more

primitive circumstances was the privilege of individuals or of

individual classes only.

Now woman again fills the active _role_ that once was hers in primitive

society. She does not become the mistress, she is the equal of man.

"The end of social development resembles the beginning of human

existence. The original equality returns. The mother-web of existence

starts and rounds up the cycle of human affairs"--thus writes Bachofen,

in his frequently quoted work "Das Mutterrecht," forecasting coming

events. Like Bachofen, Morgan also passes judgment upon bourgeois

society, a judgment that, without his having any particular information

on Socialism, coincides essentially with our own. He says:

"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so

immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its

_management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has

become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power_. The human

mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time

will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the

mastery over property, and define the relations of the State to the

property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the

rights of its owners. _The interests of society are paramount to

individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and

harmonious relations._ A mere property career is not the final destiny

of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of

the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but

a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment

of the ages yet to come. _The dissolution of society bids fair to become

the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim;

because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction.

Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and

privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of

society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily

tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty,

equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes._"[227]

Thus we see how men, proceeding from different starting-points, are

guided by their scientific investigations to the identical conclusions.

The complete emancipation of woman, and her equality with man is the

final goal of our social development, whose realization no power on

earth can prevent;--and this realization is possible only by a social

change that shall abolish the rule of man over man--hence also of

capitalists over workingmen. Only then will the human race reach its

highest development. The "Golden Age" that man has been dreaming of for

thousands of years, and after which he has been longing, will have come

at last. Class rule will have reached its end for all time, and, along

with it, the rule of man over woman.

FOOTNOTES:

[224] "Frauenrecht und Frauenpflilcht. Eine Antwort auf Fanny Lewald's

Briefe 'Fuer und wider die Frauen.'"

[225] In his work "Bau und Leben des sozialen Koerpers" (The Structure

and Life of the Social Body), Dr. Schaeffle says: "A loosening of the

bonds of matrimony by the facilitation of divorce is certainly

undesirable. It flies in the face of the moral objects of human pairing,

and would be injurious to the preservation of the population as well as

the education of the children." After what has been said herein it

follows that we not only consider this view wrong, but are inclined to

regard it as "immoral." Nevertheless, Dr. Schaeffle will allow that the

idea of introducing and maintaining institutions that do violence to its

own conceptions of morality, is simply unimaginable in a society of much

higher culture than the present.

[226] Quoted in Haeckel's "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte."

[227] Morgan's "Ancient Society."

PART IV

INTERNATIONALITY

INTERNATIONALITY.

In the very nature of things, an existence worthy of human beings can

never be the exclusive possession of a single privileged people.

Isolated from all others, no nation could either raise or keep up such

an establishment. The development that we have reached is the product of

the co-operation of national and international forces and relations.

Although with many the national idea still wholly sways the mind, and

subserves the purpose of maintaining political and social dominations,

possible only within national boundaries, the human race has reached far

into internationalism.

Treaties of commerce, of tariffs and of shipping, postal unions,

international expositions, conventions on international law and on

international systems of measurement, international scientific

congresses and associations, international expeditions of discovery, our

trade and intercommunication, especially the international congresses of

workingmen, who are the carriers of the new social order and to whose

moral influence was mainly due the international congress for factory

legislation in the interest of the workingmen, assembled in Berlin in

the spring of 1890 upon the invitation of the German Empire,--these and

many other phenomena testify to the international character that,

despite national demarcations, the relations between the various

civilized nations have assumed. National boundary lines are being broken

through. The term "world's economy" is taking the place of "national

economy": an increasing significance is attaching to it, seeing that

upon it depends the well-being and prosperity of individual nations. A

large part of our own products is exchanged for those of foreign

nations, without which we could no longer exist. As one branch of

industry is injured when another suffers, so likewise does the

production of one nation suffer materially when that of another is

paralyzed. Despite all such transitory disturbances as wars and race

persecutions, the relations of the several nations draw ever closer,

because material interests, the strongest of all, dominate them. Each

new highway, every improvement in the means of intercommunication, every

invention or improvement in the process of production, whereby goods are

made cheaper, strengthens these relations. The ease with which personal

contact can be established between distantly located countries and

peoples is a new and powerful link in the chain that draws and holds the

nations together. Emigrations and colonizations are additional and

powerful levers. One people learns from the other. Each seeks to excel.

Along with the interchange of material products, the interchange of the

products of the mind is going on, in the original tongue as well as in

translations. To millions the learning of foreign living languages

becomes a necessity. Next to material advantages, nothing contributes

more towards removing antipathies than to penetrate into the language

and the intellectual products of a foreign people.

The effect of this process of drawing together, that is going on upon an

international scale, is that the several nations are resembling one

another ever more in their social conditions. With the most advanced,

and therefore pace-setting nations, the resemblance is now such that he

who has learned to understand the social structure of one, likewise

knows that of all the others in essentials. It happens similarly as in

Nature where, among animals of the same species the skeleton formation

and organization is the same, and, if in possession of a part of such a

skeleton, one can theoretically construct the whole animal.

A further result is this, that where the same social foundations are

found, their effects must be the same--the accumulation of vast wealth,

and its opposite pole of mass-poverty, wage-slavery, dependence of the

masses upon the machinery of production, their domination by the

property-holding minority, and the rest of the long train of

consequences.

Indeed, we see that the class antagonisms and the class struggles, that

rage throughout Germany, equally keep all Europe, the United States,

Australia, etc., in commotion. In Europe, from Russia across to

Portugal, from the Balkans, Hungary and Italy across to England and

Ireland, the same spirit of discontent is prevalent, the identical

symptoms of social fermentation, of general apprehension and of

decomposition are noticeable. Externally unlike, according to the degree

of development, the character of the people and their political

organization, these movements are all essentially alike. Deep-reaching

social antagonisms are their cause. Every year these antagonisms become

more pronounced, the fermentation and discontent sinks deeper and

spreads wider, until finally some provocation, possibly insignificant in

seeming, brings on the explosion, that then spreads like lightning

throughout the civilized world, and calls upon the people to take

sides--pro or con.

The battle is then on between New and Old Society. Masses of people step

upon the stage; an abundance of intelligence is enlisted, such as the

world never before saw engaged in any contest, and never again will see

gathered for such a purpose. _It is the last social struggle of all._

Standing at the elevation of this century, the sight is obvious of the

steady coming to a head of the forces for the struggle in which the New

Ideas will triumph.

The new social system will then rear itself upon an international basis.

The peoples will fraternize; they will reach one another the hand, and

they will endeavor to gradually extend the new conditions over all the

races of the earth.[228] No people any longer approaches another as an

enemy, bent upon oppression and exploitation; or as the representative

of a strange creed that it seeks to impose upon others;--they will meet

one another as friends, who seek to raise all human beings to the height

of civilization. The labors of the new social order in its work of

colonization and civilization will differ as essentially in both purpose

and method from the present, as the two social orders are essentially

different from each other. Neither powder nor lead, neither "firewater"

(liquor) nor Bible will be used. The task of civilization is entered

upon with the instruments of peace, which will present the civilizers to

the savages, not as enemies, but as benefactors. Intelligent travelers

and investigators have long learned to know how successful is that path.

When the civilized peoples shall have reached the point of joining in a

large federation, the time will have come when for evermore the storms

of war shall have been lain. Perpetual peace is no dream, as the

gentlemen who strut about in uniforms seek to make people believe. That

day shall have come the moment the peoples shall have understood their

true interests: these are not promoted by war and dissension, by

armaments that bear down whole nations; they are promoted by peaceful,

mutual understandings, and jointly laboring in the path of civilization.

Moreover, as was shown on page 238, the ruling classes and their

Governments are seeing to it that the military armaments and wars break

their own backs by their own immensity. Thus the last weapons will

wander into the museums of antiquity, as so many of their predecessors

have done before, and serve as witnesses to future generations of the

manner in which the generations gone by have for thousands of years

frequently torn up one another like wild animals--until finally the

human in them triumphed over the beast.

National peculiarities are everywhere nourished by the ruling classes in

order that, at a given conjuncture, a great war may furnish a drainage

for dangerous tendencies at home. As a proof of the extent to which

these national peculiarities engender wars, an utterance of the late

General Fieldmarshal Moltke may here be quoted. In the last volume of

his posthumous work, which deals with the German-French war of 1870-71,

this passage occurs among others in the introductory observations:

"So long as nations lead separate existences there will be dissensions

that only strokes can arbitrate. In the interest of humanity, however,

it is to be hoped that wars may become as much rarer as they have become

more fearful."

Now then, this national separate existence, that is, the hostile

shutting off of one nation from another, will vanish. Thus future

generations will be able to achieve without trouble tasks that gifted

heads have long conceived, and unsuccessfully attempted to accomplish.

Condorcet, among others, conceived the idea of an international

language. The late Ulysses S. Grant, ex-President of the United States,

uttered himself this wise on a public occasion: "Seeing that commerce,

education and the rapid exchange of thought and of goods by telegraphy

and steam have altered everything, I believe that God is preparing the

world to become one nation, to speak one language and to reach a state

of perfection in which armies and navies will no longer be needed." It

is natural that with a full-blooded Yankee the leading _role_ be played

by the "dear God," who, after all, is but the product of historic

development. Hypocrisy, or perhaps also ignorance in matters that

concern religion, is nowhere as stupendous as in the United States. The

less the power of the State presses upon the masses, all the more must

religion do the work. Hence the phenomenon that the bourgeoisie is most

pious wherever the power of the State is laxest. Next to the United

States, come England, Belgium and Switzerland in this matter. Even the

revolutionary Robespierre, who played with the heads of aristocrats and

priests as with nine-pin balls, was, as is known, very religious, whence

he ceremoniously introduced the "Supreme Being," which shortly before

had, with equal bad taste, been dethroned by the Convention. And seeing

that the frivolous and idle aristocrats of France had been greatly

bragging about their atheism, Robespierre regarded atheism as

aristocratic, and denounced it in his speech to the Convention on the

"Supreme Being" with these words: "Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of

a Supreme Being, that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes

triumphant crime, comes from the people. If there were no God, one would

have to be invented." The virtuous Robespierre had his misgivings

concerning the power of his virtuous republic to cancel the existing

social antagonisms, hence his belief in a Supreme Being that wreaks

vengeance and seeks to smooth the difficulties that the people of his

time were unable to smooth. Hence also was such a belief a necessity to

the first republic.

One step in progress will bring another. Mankind will ever set new

tasks to itself, and the accomplishment of the same will lead it to such

a degree of social development that wars, religious quarrels and similar

manifestations of barbarism will be unknown.

FOOTNOTE:

[228] "National and human interests stand to-day opposed to each other.

At a higher stage of civilization these interests will coincide and

become one."--v. Thuenen, "Der Isolirte Staat."

PART V

POPULATION _and_ OVER-POPULATION

POPULATION AND OVER-POPULATION

It has become quite fashionable with people who occupy themselves with

the social question to consider the question of population as the most

important and burning of all. They claim that we are threatened with

"over-population;" aye, that the danger is upon us. This, more than any

other division of the Social Question, must be treated from an

international standpoint. The feeding and the distribution of the people

have pre-eminently become international issues of fact. Since Malthus,

the law underlying the increase of population has been the subject of

extensive dispute. In his celebrated and now notorious "Essay on the

Principles of Population," which Marx has characterized as a

"school-boyish, superficial and pulpiteer piece of declamatory

plagiarism on Sir James Stewart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace and others"

and which "contains not one original sentence," Malthus lays down the

proposition that mankind has the tendency to increase in geometric

progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), while food could increase only

in arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.); and that the

consequence is a rapid disproportion between the numbers of the

population and the supply of food, that inevitably leads to want and

starvation. The final conclusion was the necessity of "abstinence" in

the procreation of children, and abstinence from marriage without

sufficient means for the support of a family, contrariwise there would

be no place at "the banquet table of Nature" for the descendants.

The fear of over-population is very old. It was touched upon in this

work in connection with the social conditions of the Greeks and Romans,

and at the close of the Middle Ages. Plato and Aristotle, the Romans,

the small bourgeois of the Middle Ages were all swayed by it, and it

even swayed Voltaire, who, in the first quarter of the eighteenth

century, published a treatise on the subject. The fear ever turns up

again--this circumstance must be emphasized--_at periods when the

existing social conditions are disintegrating and breaking down_. Seeing

on all sides privation and discontent at such periods, the privation and

discontent are forthwith ascribed to the shortness of the supply of

food, instead of to the manner in which the existing supply is

distributed.

All advanced social stages have hitherto rested upon class-rule, and the

principal means of class-rule was the appropriation of the land. The

land gradually slips from the hands of a large number of proprietors

into those of a small number that utilize and cultivate it only

partially. The large majority are rendered propertyless and are stripped

of the means of existence; their share of food then depends upon the

good will of their masters, for whom they now have to work. According to

the social condition of things, the struggle for the land takes its form

from period to period; the end, however, was that the land continued

steadily to concentrate in the hands of the ruling class. If undeveloped

means of transportation or political isolation impede the intercourse

abroad of a community and interfere with the importation of food when

the crops fail and provisions are dear, forthwith the belief springs up

that there are too many people. Under such circumstances, every increase

in the family is felt as a burden; the specter of over-population rises;

and the terror that it spreads is in direct proportion to the

concentration of the land in few hands, together with its train of

evils--the partial cultivation of the soil, and its being turned to

purposes of pleasure for its owners. Rome and Italy were poorest off for

food at the time when the whole soil of Italy was held by about 3,000

latifundia owners. Hence the cry: "The latifundia are ruining Rome!" The

soil was converted into vast hunting-grounds and wonderful

pleasure-gardens; not infrequently it was allowed to be idle, seeing

that its cultivation, even by slaves, came out dearer to the magnates

than the grain imported from Sicily and Africa. It was a state of things

that opened wide the doors for usury in grain, a practice in which the

rich nobility likewise led. In consideration of this usury of grain the

domestic soil was kept from cultivation. Thereupon the impoverished

Roman citizen and the impoverished aristocracy resolved to renounce

marriage and the begetting of children; hence the laws placing premiums

on marriage and children in order to check the steady decrease of the

ruling classes.

The same phenomenon appeared towards the close of the Middle Ages, after

the nobility and clergy had, in the course of centuries and with the aid

of all the crafty and violent means at their command, robbed unnumbered

peasants of their property and appropriated the common lands to

themselves. When, thereupon, the peasants revolted and were beaten down,

the robber-trade gained new impetus, and it was then also practiced upon

the Church estates by the Princes of the Reformation. The number of

thieves, beggars and vagabonds was never larger than immediately before

and after the Reformation. The expropriated rural population rushed to

the cities; but there, due to causes that have been described in

previous pages, the conditions of life were likewise

deteriorating,--hence "over-population" was felt all around.

The appearance of Malthus coincides with that period of English industry

when, due to the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Watt, powerful

changes set in both in mechanism and technique, changes that affected,

first of all, the cotton and linen industries, and rendered breadless

the workingmen engaged in them. The concentration of capital and land

assumed at the time large proportions in England: along with the rapid

increase of wealth, on the one hand, there went the deepening misery of

the masses, on the other. At such a juncture, the ruling classes, who

have every reason to consider the existing world the "best of all

possible worlds," were bound to seek an explanation for so contradictory

a phenomenon as the pauperization of the masses in the midst of swelling

wealth and flourishing industry. Nothing was easier than to throw the

blame upon the too-rapid procreation of the workingmen, and not upon

their having been rendered superfluous through the capitalist process of

production, and the accumulation of the soil in the hands of landlords.

With such circumstances for its setting, the "school-boyish, superficial

and pulpiteer piece of declamatory plagiarism," that Malthus published,

was a work that gave drastic utterance to the secret thoughts and wishes

of the ruling class, and justified their misdeeds to the world. Hence

the loud applause that it met from one side, and violent opposition from

another. Malthus had spoken the right word at the right time for the

English bourgeoisie; hence, although his essay "contained not one

original sentence," he became a great and celebrated man, and his name a

synonym for the doctrine.[229]

Now, then, the conditions that caused Malthus thus to give his signal of

alarm and proclaim his brutal doctrine--he addressed it to the working

class, thus adding insult to injury--have since grown worse from decade

to decade. They have grown worse, not alone in the fatherland of

Malthus, Great Britain, but in all the countries of the world run by the

capitalist system of production, whose consequences ever are the robbery

of the soil and the dependence and subjugation of the masses through

machinery and the factory. This system consists, as has been shown, in

the separation of the workingman from his means of production--be these

land or tools--and in the transfer of the latter to the capitalist

class. That system produces ever new branches of industry, develops and

concentrates them, and thereby throws ever larger masses of the people

upon the street as "superfluous." On the field of agriculture it

promotes, as the Rome of old, the latifundia ownership with all its

sequences. Ireland, in this respect the classic land of Europe, and

afflicted worst of all by the English system of land-grabbing, had in

1887 an area of 884.4 square miles of meadow and pasture land, but only

263.3 square miles of agricultural fields and the conversion of

agricultural fields into meadows and pastures for sheep and cattle and

into hunting grounds for the landlords makes every year further

strides.[230]

Moreover the agricultural fields of Ireland are, in great measure, in

the hands of a large number of small tenants, who are not able to

cultivate the land in the most profitable manner. Thus Ireland presents

the aspect of a country that is retrogressing from an agricultural into

a pastoral condition. The population, that at the beginning of the

nineteenth century was over eight million strong, has declined to about

five million, and still several millions are "in excess." Ireland's

normal state of rebellion against England is thus easily explained; and

yet the struggle of the "Home Ruler" aims only at the creation of an

Irish landlord class and no wise carries the wished-for deliverance to

the mass of the Irish people. The Irish people will perceive that so

soon as the Home Ruler shall carry out his plans. Scotland presents a

picture similar to that of Ireland with regard to the ownership and

cultivation of its soil.[231]

A similar development reappears in Hungary, a country that entered upon

the modern field of development only recently. Hungary, a land in point

of the fertility of her soil, as rich as few in Europe, is overloaded

with debt, and her population, pauperized and in the hands of usurers,

emigrates in large numbers. Hungary's soil is now concentrated in the

hands of modern capitalist magnates, who carry on a ruinous system of

cultivation in forest and field so that Hungary is not far from the

time when it will have ceased to be a grain exporting country. It is

quite similarly with Italy. In Italy, just as in Germany, the political

unity of the nation has taken capitalist development powerfully under

the arm; but the thrifty peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy, of Tuscany,

Romagna and Sicily are ever more impoverished and go to ruin. Swamps and

moors are reappearing on the sites occupied but recently by the well

cultivated gardens and fields of small peasants. Before the very gates

of Rome, in the so-called Campagna, a hundred thousand hectares of land

lie fallow in a region that once was the "garden of Rome." Swamps cover

the ground, and exhale their poisonous miasmas. If, with the application

of the proper means the Campagna were thoroughly drained and properly

irrigated, the population of Rome would have a fertile source of food.

But Italy suffers of the ambition to become a "leading power:" she is

ruining herself with military and naval armaments and with African

colonization plans, and, consequently, has no funds left for such tasks

as the reclaiming of the Campagna for cultivation. And as the Campagna,

so are South Italy and particularly Sicily. The latter, once the granary

of Rome, sinks ever more into deepening poverty. There is no more

sucked-out, poverty-stricken and maltreated people in all Europe than

the Sicilian. The easily-contented sons of the most beautiful region of

all Europe overrun half Europe and the United States as lowerers of

wages because they care not to starve to death upon the native soil that

has ceased to be their property. Malaria, that frightful fever, is

spreading over Italy to an extent that, frightened at the prospect, the

government instituted in 1882 an investigation, which brought to light

the deplorable fact that, of the 69 provinces of the country, 32 were

severely afflicted by the disease, 32 were infected, and only 5 had so

far remained free. The disease, once known only in the rural districts,

penetrated the cities, where the urban, increased by the rural

proletariat, constitutes a center of infection.

These facts, together with what has been said touching the effects and

results of the capitalist system of production, teach us that want and

misery with the masses are not the results of insufficiency in the means

of existence, but of an unequal distribution, that furnishes some with a

superfluity and condemns others to privation. It causes the destruction

and squandering of supplies, and, along with that, negligence in

producing these. The Malthusian assertions have sense only from the

standpoint of the system of capitalist production. Whoever stands on

that principle has every reason to defend it, otherwise the ground would

slip from under him.

On the other side, however, the capitalist system itself favors the

production of children, in so far as it needs cheap "hands" in the shape

of such in its factories. The begetting of children, moreover, often

becomes a matter of calculation with the proletariat. They cost the

parents little or nothing: they soon earn their own support. In the

house industries the proletarian is even obliged to have many children:

they equip him all the better for the competitive struggle. It certainly

is an abominable system: it conceals the pauperization of the workingman

and it provokes his own rendering of himself superfluous through the

children who work for the most miserable of wages. The immorality and

harmfulness of this system are obvious, and they spread with the

extension of capitalism. It is precisely for that reason that the

bourgeois ideologists--and all bourgeois economists are that--defend the

Malthusian theories. Hence in Germany also and in particular the notion

of "over-production" ever finds support among the bourgeoisie. Capital

is the innocent defendant, the workingman is the criminal.

Unfortunately, however, for this theory Germany has "superfluity," not

of proletarians only, but also of "intellectuals." Capital brings about

not only an over-production of soil, goods, workingmen, women and

children, but also of "officials and learning"--as we shall show. There

is only one thing that is not "superfluous" in this capitalist

world--capital and its owner, the capitalist.

If the capitalist economists are Malthusians they are simply what their

capitalist interests compel them to be. Only, they should not shift

their bourgeois whims to the shoulders of Socialist society. John Stuart

Mill says among other things: "But Communism is precisely the state of

things in which opinion might be expected to declare itself with

greatest intensity against this kind of selfish intemperance. An

augmentation of numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the

toil of the mass, would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and

unmistakable inconvenience to every individual in the association;

inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of

employers, or the unjust privileges of the rich. In such altered

circumstances, opinion could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation

did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some description, this or

any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community. The

Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection

drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending

in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil." And Prof. Ad.

Wagner says: "Least of all could freedom of marriage or freedom of

procreation be tolerated in a Socialist community."[232] These authors

proceed from the theory that the tendency towards over-population is

one common to all social conditions, but both allow that Socialism is

better able than any other social system to establish the equilibrium

between population and food. The latter is true, not so the former.

True enough, there were one time Socialists, who, tainted by the

Malthusian theories, perceived the "imminent danger" of over-population.

But these Socialist Malthusians have disappeared. A clearer insight into

the nature of bourgeois society, together with the fact that, judging

from the plaintive songs of our Agrarians, we produce not too little but

too much food, and that the resulting low prices render the production

of foodstuffs unprofitable, has enlightened them on the subject.

A part of our Malthusians imagine--and the chorus of the mouth-pieces of

the bourgeoisie parrot-like echo their utterances--that a Socialist

society, in which there is freedom in the choice of love and ample

provision for a livelihood worthy of human beings, must soon degenerate

into a rabbit warren: it would succumb to excessive sexual indulgence

and to excessive procreation. Exactly the reverse is most likely to

happen, as certain observations go to prove. Until now the largest

number of children were had, not by the best, but by the worst situated.

It may even be said without being guilty of exaggeration: the poorer the

condition of a proletarian stratum, the more numerous also is its

average blessing of children, conceding exceptions here and there. Even

Virchow confirms this. He says: "As the English workingman in his

deepest degradation, in the utter vacancy of the mind, finally knows but

two sources of enjoyment, drunkenness and coition, so did the population

of Upper Silesia, until recent years, concentrate all its wishes, all

its desires upon these two things. Liquor and the gratification of

sexual cravings had become sovereign with it. Hence it is easy to

understand that its population gained as rapidly in numbers as it lost

in physical vigor and moral fibre." Karl Marx expresses himself

similarly when he says in "Capital:" "As a matter of fact, not only the

number of births and deaths but the absolute size of families is in

reverse ratio to the height of wages, i. e., to the means of subsistence

which the various categories of workmen have at their disposal. _This

law of capitalist society would sound absurd among savages, or even

civilized colonists._ It reminds us of the enormous power of

reproduction among animals that are individually weak and much hunted

down;" and Marx furthermore quotes Laing, who says: "If all the world

were in comfortable circumstances, the earth would soon be depopulated."

We see Laing's views are opposed to Malthus: he is of the opinion that a

good living is not conducive to the increase but to the decrease of

births. In the same vein says Herbert Spencer: "Always and everywhere

progress and procreative capacity are opposed to each other. It follows

that the higher development, that mankind looks forward to, will

probably have as a result a decline in procreation."

Thus we see men, who otherwise differ, absolutely at one on this head,

and their views coincide wholly with ours.

The whole question of population could be practically disposed of off

hand with the observation that there is no danger of over-population

within sight: we find ourselves in front of such a superabundance of

food, which even threatens to increase, that the greatest worry, now

afflicting the producers of means of subsistence, is to furnish this

wealth of food at tolerable prices. A rapid increase of consumers would

even be the most desirable thing for producers. But our Malthusians are

tireless in the raising of objections: thus we are forced to meet these,

lest they have the excuse that they can not be refuted.

They claim that the danger of an over-population in a not-distant future

lies in the law of a "decreasing yield of the soil." Our fields become

"tired of cultivation;" increasing crops are no longer to be looked for;

seeing that fields, fit for cultivation, become daily rarer, the danger

of a scarcity of food is imminent, if the population continue to

increase. We believe to have proved beyond doubt, in the passages on the

agricultural utilization of the soil, what enormous progress mankind can

make with respect to the acquisition of new masses of nutriment. But we

shall give further illustrations. A very able landlord of wide acres and

economist of acknowledged worth, a man, accordingly who excelled Malthus

in both respects, said as early as 1850--a time when chemical

agriculture was still in its swaddling clothes--on the subject of

agricultural production: "The productivity of raw products, especially

foodstuffs, will in future no longer lag behind the productivity of the

factory and of transportation.... Chemical agriculture has only started

in our days to open to agriculture prospects that will no doubt lead to

many false roads, but that in the end will place the production of

foodstuffs as fully in the power of society, as it lies now in its power

to furnish yards of cloth, if but the requisite supply of wool is at

hand."[233]

Justus v. Liebig, the founder of chemical agriculture, holds that "if

human labor and manure are available in sufficient quantity, the soil is

inexhaustible, and can yield uninterruptedly the richest harvests." The

"law of a decreasing yield of the soil" is a Malthusian notion, that had

its justification at a time when agriculture was in an undeveloped

state; the notion has long since been refuted by science and

experience. The law is rather this: "The yield of a soil stands in

direct ratio to the human labor expended (science and technique being

included), and to the proper fertilizers applied to it." If it was

possible for small-peasant France to more than quadruple the yield of

her soil during the last ninety years, without the population even

doubling, much better results are to be expected from a Socialist

society. Our Malthusians, furthermore, overlook the fact that, under our

existing conditions, not our soil merely is to be taken into account,

but the soil of the whole earth, that is, to a great extent, territories

whose fertility yields twenty, thirty and many more times as much as our

corresponding fields of the same size. The earth is now extensively

appropriated by man; nevertheless, a small fraction excepted, it is

nowhere cultivated and utilized as it could be cultivated and utilized.

Not Great Britain alone could, as has been shown, produce a much larger

quantity of food than she does to-day, but France, Germany, Austria and

to a still much greater extent the other countries of Europe also could

do the same. In little Wurtemberg, with her 879,970 hectares of grain

soil, the mere application of the steam plow would raise the average

crop of 6,410,000 to 9,000,000 cwts.

European Russia--measured by the present standard of the population of

Germany--would be able to nourish, instead of her present population, of

90,000,000, one of 475,000,000 souls. To-day European Russia has about

1,000 inhabitants to the square mile, Saxony over 12,000.

The objection that Russia contains vast stretches of territory, whose

climate renders impossible any higher degree of cultivation, is true; on

the other hand, however, she has to the south a climate and fertility of

soil by far unknown in Germany. Then, again, due to the denseness of

population and the improved cultivation of soil therewith connected,

such as clearings of woods, draining, etc., changes, wholly

unmeasureable to-day, will be brought on in climate. Wherever man

aggregates in large numbers climatic changes are perceived. To-day we

attach too little importance to this phenomenon; we are even unable to

realize the same to its full extent, seeing that we have no occasion

therefor, and, as things are to-day, lack the means to undertake the

needed experiments on an adequate scale. Furthermore, all travelers are

agreed that in the high latitudes of Northern Siberia, where spring,

summer and autumn crowd together in rapid succession within a few

months, an astonishing luxuriance of vegetation suddenly springs forth.

Thus Sweden and Norway, to-day so sparsely populated, would, with their

mammoth woods and positively inexhaustible mineral wealth, their

numerous rivers and long stretch of coast lines, furnish rich sources of

food for a dense population. The requisite means and appliances are not

obtainable under present circumstances, and thus even that sparse

population casts off its shoals of emigrants.

What may be said of the north applies with still more force to the south

of Europe--Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Danubian States, Hungary,

Turkey, etc. A climate of surpassing quality, a soil so luxuriant and

fertile as is hardly found in the best regions of the United States,

will some day furnish an abundance of food to unnumbered people. The

decrepit political and social conditions of those countries cause

hundreds of thousands of our own people to prefer crossing the ocean

rather than to settle in those much nearer and more comfortably located

States. Soon as rational social conditions and international relations

will prevail there, new millions of people will be needed to raise those

large and fertile lands to a higher grade of civilization.

In order to be able to reach materially higher rungs on the ladder of

civilization we shall, for a long time to come, have in Europe, not a

superfluity, but a dearth of people. Under such circumstances, it is an

absurdity to yield to the fear of over-population. It must ever be kept

in mind that the utilization of existing sources of food, by the

application of science and labor, knows no limit: every day brings new

discoveries and inventions which increase the yield of the sources of

food.

If we pass from Europe to the other parts of the earth, the lack of

people and the excess of soil is still more glaring. The most luxuriant

and fruitful lands of the earth still lie wholly or almost wholly idle:

the work of bringing them under cultivation and turning them to use can

not be undertaken with a few hundred or thousand people: it demands mass

colonizations of many millions in order to be able to bring the

but-too-luxuriant Nature under human control. Under this head belong,

among others, Central and South America--a territory of hundreds of

thousands of square miles. Argentina, for instance, had in 1892 about

5,000,000 hectares under cultivation, the country has, however,

96,000,000 hectares at its disposal. The soil of South America, fit for

the cultivation of corn and lying fallow, is estimated at 200,000,000

hectares, at least. The United States, Austria-Hungary, Great Britain

and Ireland, Germany and France have all together only about 105,000,000

hectares devoted to cereals. Carey maintains that the 360-mile long

valley of the Orinoco alone could furnish enough food to supply the

whole present human race. Let us halve the estimate, and there is still

an abundance. At any rate, South America alone could feed the majority

of the population now extant on earth. The nutritive value of a field

planted with banana trees and one of equal size planted with wheat

stands as 133 to 1. While our wheat yields in favorable soil 12 to 20

times its seed, rice in its home yields 80 to 100, maize 250 to 300

times as much. In many regions, the Philippine Islands among them, the

productivity of rice is estimated at 400 times as much. The question

with all these articles of food is to render them as nourishing as

possible by the manner in which they are prepared. Chemistry has in this

a boundless field for development.

Central and South America, especially Brazil, which alone is almost as

large as all Europe--Brazil has 152,000 square miles with about

15,000,000 inhabitants, as against Europe's 178,000 square miles and

about 340,000,000 inhabitants--are big with a luxuriance and fertility

that stir the astonishment and wonderment of all travelers, besides

being inexhaustibly rich in minerals. Nevertheless, until now they are

almost closed to the world because their population is indolent and

stands, both in point of numbers and of culture, too low to overmaster

the power of Nature. How matters look in Africa we have been enlightened

on by the discoveries of recent years. Even if a good part of Central

Africa never be fit for European agriculture, there are other regions of

vast size that can be put to good use the moment rational principles of

colonization are applied. On the other hand, there are in Asia not only

vast and fertile territories, able to feed thousands of millions of

people, but the past has also shown how in places that are there now

sterile and almost desert, the mild climate once conjured up an

abundance of food from the soil, provided only man knows how to lead to

it the blessing-bestowing water. What with the destruction of the

marvelous aqueducts and contrivances for irrigation in Asia Minor and in

the regions of the Tigris and the Euphrates, with vandalic wars of

conquest and the insane oppression of the people by the conquerors,

fields, thousands of square miles wide, have been transformed into sandy

deserts. Likewise in Northern Africa, Spain, Mexico and Peru. Let there

be produced millions of civilized human beings, and inexhaustible

sources of food will be unlocked. The fruit of the date tree thrives

marvelously in Asia and Africa, and it takes up so little room that 200

trees can go on one acre of land. The durria bears in Egypt more than

3,000 fold, and yet the country is poor--not by reason of excessive

population, but as the result of a robber system that accomplishes the

feat of spreading the desert ever further from decade to decade. The

marvelous results attainable in all these countries by the agriculture

and horticulture of middle Europe is a matter that eludes all

calculation.

With the present state of agriculture, the United States could easily

feed fifteen and twenty times its present population (63,000,000)--that

is, 1,200,000,000 people. Under the same conditions, Canada could feed,

instead of 5,000,000 people, 100,000,000 people. Then there are

Australia, the numerous and in some instances large and extraordinarily

fertile islands of the great Indian Ocean, etc. "Multiply!"--such, and

not "Reduce your numbers!"--is the call that in the name of civilization

reaches the human race.

Everywhere, it is the social conditions--the existing method of

production and distribution--that bring on privation and misery, not the

number of people. A few rich crops in succession lower the prices of

food in such manner that a considerable number of our cultivators of the

soil are ruined. Instead of the condition of the cultivator being

improved, it declines. A large number of farmers to-day look upon a good

crop as a misfortune: it lowers prices so that the cost of production is

barely covered. And this is called a rational state of things! With the

view of keeping far away from us the abundance of the harvests of other

countries, high duties are placed on grain: thus the entry of foreign

grain is made difficult and the price of the domestic article is raised.

We have no scarcity but a superabundance of food, the same as of

industrial products. The same as millions of people need the yield of

the factories, but can not satisfy their wants under the existing system

of property and production, so are millions in want of food, being

unable to pay for it, although the prices are low and the necessaries of

life abundant. We ask again, Can this be called a rational state of

things? The craziness and insanity of it all is obvious. Our speculators

in corn often, when the crops are good, deliberately allow a large part

to perish: they know the prices rise in the measure that the products

are scarce. And yet we are told to look out for overpopulation! In

Russia, southern Europe and many other countries of the world, hundreds

of thousands of loads of grain perish yearly for want of proper storage

and transportation. Many millions of hundredweights of food are yearly

squandered because the provisions for gathering in the crops are

inadequate, or there is a scarcity of hands at the right time. Many a

corn field, many a filled barn, whole agricultural establishments are

burned down, because the insurance fetches higher gains. Food and goods

are destroyed for the same reason that ships are caused to go to the

bottom with their whole crews.[234] A large part of the crops is yearly

ruined by our military manoeuvres; the costs of manoeuvres that last

only a few days run up to hundreds of thousands of marks; and there are

many of them every year. Moreover, as stated before, large fields are

taken from cultivation for these purposes.

Nor must it be forgotten that there is the sea yet to be added to the

means for increasing the volume of food. The area of water is as 18 to 7

to that of land,--two and a half times as large. Its enormous wealth of

food still awaits a rational system of exploitation. The future opens a

prospect to mankind, wholly different from the gloomy picture drawn by

our Malthusians.

Who can say where the line is to be drawn to our chemical, physical,

physiologic knowledge? Who would venture to predict what giant

undertakings--so considered from our modern standpoint--the people of

future centuries will execute with the object in view of introducing

material changes in the climates of the nations and in the methods of

exploiting their soil?

We see to-day, under the capitalist social system, undertakings executed

that were thought impossible or insane a century ago. Wide isthmuses are

cut through; tunnels, miles long and bored into the bowels of the earth,

join peoples whom towering mountains separate; others are dug under the

beds of seas to shorten distances, and avoid disturbances and dangers

that otherwise the countries thus separated are exposed to. Where is the

spot at which could be said: "So far and no farther?"

If all these improvements were to be undertaken simultaneously, we would

be found to have, not too many but too few people. The race must

multiply considerably if it is to do justice to all the tasks that are

waiting for it. Neither is the soil under cultivation utilized as it

should be, nor are there people enough to cultivate three-fourths of its

face. Our relative over-production, continuously produced by the

capitalist system to the injury of the workingman and of society, will,

at a higher grade of civilization, prove itself a benefit. Moreover, a

population as large as possible is, even to-day, not an impediment to

but a promoter of progress--on the same principle that the existing

over-production of goods and food, the destruction of the family by the

enlisting of women and children in the factories, and the expropriation

of the handicrafts and the peasantry by capital have all shown

themselves to be conditions precedent for a higher state of

civilization.

We now come to the other side of the question: Do people multiply

indefinitely, and is that a necessity of their being?

With the view of proving this great reproductive power of man, the

Malthusians usually refer to the abnormal instances of exceptional

families and peoples. Nothing is proven by that. As against these

instances there are others where, under favorable conditions, complete

sterility shortly sets in. The quickness with which often well situated

families die out is surprising. Although the United States offer more

favorable conditions than any other country for the increase of

population, and yearly hundreds of thousands of people immigrate at the

most vigorous age, its population doubles only every thirty years. There

are nowhere instances on a large scale of the assertion concerning a

doubling period of twelve or twenty years.

As indicated by the quotations from Marx and Virchow, which may be

considered to state the rule, population increases fastest where it is

poorest because, as Virchow justly claims, next to drunkenness, sexual

intercourse is their only enjoyment. When Gregory VII. forced celibacy

upon the clergy, the priests of lower rank in the diocese of Mainz

complained, as stated before, that differently from the upper prelates,

they did not have all possible pleasures, and the only enjoyment left

them was their wives. A lack of varying occupation may be the reason why

the marriages of the rural clergy are, as a rule, so fruitful of

children. It is also undeniable that our poorest districts in

Germany--the Silesian Eulengebirge, the Lausitz, the Erzgebirge and

Fichtelgebirge, the Thuringian Forest, the Harz, etc.,--are the centers

of densest population, whose chief food are potatoes. It is also certain

that sexual cravings are strong with consumptives, and these often beget

children at a state of physical decline when such a thing would seem

impossible.

It is a law of Nature--hinted at in the quotations made from Herbert

Spencer and Laing--that she supplies in quantity what she loses in

quality. The animals of highest grade and strength--lions, elephants,

camels, etc., our domestic animals such as mares, asses, cows,--bring

few young ones into the world; while animals of lower organization

increase in inverse ratio--all insects, most fishes, etc., the smaller

mammals, such as hares, rats, mice, etc. Furthermore, Darwin established

that certain wild animals, so soon as tamed, forfeit their fecundity.

The elephant is an illustration. This proves that altered conditions of

life, together with the consequent change in the mode of life, are the

determining factors in reproductive powers.

It happens, however, that it is the Darwinians who lead in the fear of

over-population, and upon whom our modern Malthusians bank. Our

Darwinians are everywhere infelicitous the moment they apply their

theories to human conditions: their method then becomes roughly

empirical, and they forget that, while man is the highest organic

animal, he, being in contradistinction to animals acquainted with the

laws of nature is able to direct and utilize these.

The theory of the struggle for existence, the doctrine that the germs

of new life exist in much larger numbers than are maintainable with the

existing means of existence, would be wholly applicable to man if man,

instead of straining his brains and enlisting the services of technical

arts for exploiting air, land and water, grazed like cattle, or like

monkeys indulged his sexual impulses with cynic shamelessness,--in

short, if he reverted to the monkey order. In passing be it observed

that the fact that, besides man, monkeys are the only beings with whom

the sexual impulse is not fixed to certain periods, is a striking proof

of the relationship between the two. But though closely related, they

are not identical, and are not to be placed on one level and measured by

one standard,--a fact that we commend to Ziegler, who, in his book

herein frequently referred to, holds up the two together.

The circumstance that, under the conditions of ownership and production

that have hitherto prevailed, the struggle for existence existed and

continues to exist for man also and many fail to find the conditions for

life, is perfectly true. But these failed, not because of the scarcity

of the means of existence, but because, due to social conditions, the

means of existence, though in greatest abundance, were kept from them.

False also is the conclusion that, because such has hitherto been the

state of things, it is unchangeable and will ever be so. It is here that

the Darwinians slide and fall: they study natural science and

anthropology, but not sociology, and thoughtlessly fall in line with our

bourgeois ideologists. Hence they drop into their false conclusions.

The sexual instinct is perennial in man; it is his strongest instinct

and demands satisfaction, lest his health suffer. Moreover, as a rule,

this instinct is strong in proportion to man's health and normal

development--just as a good appetite and a good digestion bespeak a

healthy stomach, and are the first prerequisites for a healthy body. But

gratification of the sexual instinct and begetting and conceiving are

not the same thing. The most varied theories have been set up on the

fecundity of the human race. On the whole, we are still groping in the

dark on this important field, mainly because for a couple of thousand

years a senseless shyness has stood in the way of man's occupying

himself freely and naturally with the laws of his own origin, and to

study thoroughly the laws of human procreation. That is gradually

changing and must change much more.

On one side the theory is set up that higher mental development and

strenuous mental exertion, in short, higher nervous activity, exert a

repressing influence upon the sexual impulse and weaken the procreative

power. This is disputed by the other side. The fact is pointed to that

the better situated classes have, on an average, fewer children and

that this is not to be ascribed solely to preventive measures.

Undoubtedly, intense mental occupation has a depressing influence upon

the sexual impulse, but that such occupation is indulged in by the

majority of our property classes is not so certain. On the other hand,

an excess of physical labor also has a repressing influence. But all

excessive effort is harmful, and therefore objectionable.

Others, again, claim that the manner of life, especially the food eaten,

coupled with certain physical conditions on the part of the woman,

determine the power to beget and to conceive. The nature of food more

than any other cause, this side argues, determines, as experience shows

in the instance of animals also, the effectiveness of the act of

procreation. Possibly, this is in fact, the determining factor. The

influence of the nature of nourishment on the organism of certain

animals manifests itself surprisingly with bees: they produce at will a

queen by the administering of special food. Bees, accordingly, are

further advanced in the knowledge of sexual development than men. They

have not, probably, been sermonized for two thousand years that it is

"indecent" and "immoral" to concern themselves with sexual matters.

It is also known that plants raised on good soil and well manured,

thrive luxuriantly, but yield no seed. That the nature of the food has

its influence upon the composition of the male sperm, and upon the

fecundity of the female egg with human beings also, is hardly to be

doubted. Thus mayhap the procreative power of the population depends in

a high degree upon the nature of the food it lives on. Other factors,

whose nature is still but little understood, also play a role. It is a

striking circumstance that a young couple may have no children after

long years of married life, yet, having separated, and each having mated

again, both new marriages are followed by healthy children.

One factor is of leading importance in the question of population in the

future--_the higher, freer position which all women will then occupy_.

Leaving exceptions aside, intelligent and energetic women are not as a

rule inclined to give life to a large number of children as "the gift of

God," and to spend the best years of their own lives in pregnancy, or

with a child at their breasts. This disinclination for numerous

children, which even now is entertained by most women, may--all the

solicitude notwithstanding that a Socialist society will bestow upon

pregnant women and mothers--be rather strengthened than weakened. In our

opinion, there lies in this the great probability that the increase of

population will proceed slower than in bourgeois society.

Our Malthusians need really not break their heads on the future of the

human race. Until now nations have gone down through the decline, never

through the increase of their population. In the last analysis, the

number of population is regulated without harmful abstinence and without

unnatural preventives, in a society that lives according to the laws of

Nature. On this head also the future will vindicate Karl Marx. His

theory also that every period of economic development carries with it

its own law of population will prove true under the rule of Socialism.

The author of the work "Die kuenstliche Beschraenkung der Kinderzahl"

(The Artificial Limitation of Progeny)[235] claims that Socialism is

playing a tricky manoeuvre by its opposition to Malthusianism: a rapid

increase of population promotes mass proletarianization, and this, in

turn, promotes discontent: if over-population is successfully checked,

the spread of Socialism would be done for, and its Socialist State,

together with all its glory, buried for all time. Thus we see one more

weapon added to the arsenal to kill Socialism with--Malthusianism. The

grandiose ignorance of the Socialist-killer Ferdy on Socialism,

transpires strongest from the following sentence, which he perpetrates

on page 40 of his work:

"Socialism will go further than the Neo-Malthusians in its demands. It

will demand that the minimum wage be so fixed that every workingman

shall be able to produce as many children as possible under given social

facilities for the acquisition of food.... The moment the ultimate

deductions of Socialism are drawn, and private property is abolished,

even the dullest will then say to himself: 'Why should I have to work

long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to

shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic

should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before

presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous stuff at

that!

In Socialist society, where alone mankind will be truly free and planted

on its natural basis, it will direct its own development knowingly along

the line of natural law. In all epochs hitherto, society handled the

questions of production and distribution, as well as of the increase of

population without the knowledge of the laws that underlie them,--hence,

unconsciously. In the new social order, equipped with the knowledge of

the laws of its own development, society will proceed consciously and

planfully.

SOCIALISM IS SCIENCE, APPLIED WITH FULL UNDERSTANDING

TO ALL THE FIELDS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY.

FOOTNOTES:

[229] That Darwin and others also became devotees of Malthus only proves

how the lack of economic knowledge leads to one-sided views.

[230] Fred. Freiligrath sings in his fervid poem "Ireland":

Thus naught the Irish landlord cares,

While hart and ox by peasant's toil

For him are raised--he leaves undried

Great bogs and swamps on Erin's soil--

Extensive mirelands unreclaimed,

Where sheaf by sheaf rich crops could wave;

He vilely leaves--a wanton waste--

Where water-fowl and wild ducks lave.

Four million acres feels his rod;

A wilderness accursed of God.

[231] "Two millions of acres ... totally laid waste, embracing within

their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass

of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The

deer forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide

district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best

pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid

waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the

fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The

resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss

sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000

sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest

ground in Scotland.... It might, &c.... All that forest land is as

totally unproductive.... It might thus as well have been submerged under

the waters of the German Ocean."--From the London "Economist," July 2,

1866, cited by Karl Marx in "Capital," p. 757, edition Swan-Sonnenschein

& Co., London, 1896.

[232] Rau's "Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie," p. 367.

[233] Rodbertus: "Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage."

[234] Similar conditions must have existed at the time of St. Basil. He

calls out to the rich: "Wretches that you are, what answer will you make

to the divine Judge? You cover the nakedness of your walls with carpets,

but do not cover the nakedness of human beings! You ornament your horses

with costly and smooth coverlets, and you despise your brother who is

covered with rags. You allow your corn to rot and be devoured in your

barns and your fields, and you do not spare even a look for those who

have no bread." Moral homiletics have since old done precious little

good with the ruling class, and they will do no better in the future.

Let the social conditions be changed so that none can act unjustly

towards his fellowman; the world will then get along easy enough.

[235] Hans Ferdy.

PART VI

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION.

Our arguments have shown that, with Socialism, the issue is not an

arbitrary tearing down and raising up, but a natural process of

development. All the factors active in the process of destruction, on

the one hand, and of construction, on the other, _are factors that

operate in the manner that they are bound to operate_. Neither

"statesmen of genius" nor "inflammatory demagogues" can direct events at

will. They may imagine they push; but are themselves pushed. But we are

near the time when "the hour has sounded."

Due to her own peculiar development, Germany, more than any other

country, seems designated as that which is to assume the leading _role_

in the pending revolution.[236]

In the course of this work we often spoke of an over-production of

goods, which brings on the crises. This is a phenomenon peculiar to the

capitalist world only; it was seen at no previous period of human

development.

But the capitalist world yields not merely an over-production of goods

and of men, it also yields _an over-production of intelligence_. Germany

is the classic land in which this over-production of intelligence, which

the bourgeois world no longer knows what to do with, is yielded on a

large scale. A circumstance, that for centuries was a misfortune to

Germany's development, has largely contributed to this state of things.

It consisted in the multiplicity of small States and the check exercised

by these political formations upon the development of upper capitalism.

The multiplicity of small States decentralized the intellectual life of

the nation: it raised numerous small centers of culture, and these

exercised their influence upon the whole. In comparison with a large

central government, the numerous small ones required an extraordinarily

large administrative apparatus, whose members needed a certain degree of

higher culture. Thus high schools and universities sprung up more

numerous than in any other country of Europe. The jealousy and ambition

of the several governments played in this no small _role_. The same

thing repeated itself when some governments began introducing compulsory

education for the people. The passion not to be left behind a

neighboring State had here its good effect. The demand for intelligence

rose when increasing culture, hand in hand with the material progress of

the bourgeoisie, quickened the longing for political activity, popular

representation and self-government on the part of municipalities. These

were small governmental bodies for small countries and circles,

nevertheless they contributed towards the general schooling, and caused

the sons of the bourgeoisie to covet seats in them and to adapt their

education accordingly.

As science, so did art fare.--No country of Europe has, relatively

speaking, so many painting and other art academies, technical schools,

museums and art collections, as Germany. Other countries may be able to

make better showings in their capitals, but none has such a distribution

over its whole territory as Germany. In point of art, Italy is the only

exception.

While the bourgeoisie of England had conquered a controlling power over

the State as early as the middle of the seventeenth, and the bourgeoisie

of France towards the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie of

Germany did not succeed until 1848 to secure for itself a comparatively

moderate influence over the government. That was the birth year of the

German bourgeoisie as a self-conscious class: it now stepped upon the

stage as an independent political party, in the trappings of

"liberalism." The peculiar development that Germany had undergone now

manifested itself. It was not manufacturers, merchants, men of commerce

and finance who came forward as leaders, but chiefly professors, squires

of liberal proclivities, writers, jurists and doctors of all academic

faculties. It was the German ideologists: And so was their work. After

1848 the German bourgeoisie was temporarily consigned to political

silence; but they utilized the period of the sepulchral silence of the

fifties in the promotion of their task. The breaking-out of the

Austro-Italian war and the commencement of the Regency of Prussia,

stirred the bourgeoisie anew to reach after political power. The

"National Verein" (National Union) movement began. The bourgeoisie was

now too far developed to tolerate within the numerous separate States

the many political barriers, that were at the same time

economic--barriers of taxation, barriers of communication. It assumed a

revolutionary air. Herr von Bismarck understood the situation and turned

it to account in his own manner so as to reconcile the interests of the

bourgeoisie with those of the Prussian Kingdom, towards which the

bourgeoisie never had been hostile, seeing it feared the revolution and

the masses. The barriers finally came down that had hampered its

material progress. Thanks to Germany's great wealth in coal and

minerals, together with an intelligent and easily satisfied working

class, the bourgeoisie made within few decades such gigantic progress as

was made by the bourgeoisie of no other country, the United States

excepted, within the same period. Thus did Germany reach the position of

the second industrial and commercial State in Europe; and she covets the

first.

This rapid material development had its obverse. The system of mutual

exclusion, that existed between the German States up to the

establishment of German unity, had until then furnished a living to an

uncommonly numerous class of artisans and small peasants. With the

precipitous tearing down of all the protective barriers, these people

suddenly found themselves face to face with an unbridled process of

capitalist production and development. At first, the prosperity epoch of

the early seventies caused the danger to seem slighter, but it raged all

the more fearful when the crisis set in. The bourgeoisie had used the

prosperity period to make marvelous progress, and thus now caused the

distress to be felt ten-fold. From now on the chasm between the

property-holding and the propertyless classes widened rapidly. This

process of decomposition and of absorption, which--promoted by the

growth of material power on the one hand, and the declining power of

resistance on the other--proceeds with ever increasing rapidity, throws

whole classes of the population into ever more straitened circumstances.

They find themselves from day to day more powerfully threatened in their

position and their condition of life; and they see themselves doomed

with mathematical certainty.

In this desperate struggle many seek possible safety in a change of

profession. The old men can no longer make the change: only in the

rarest instances are they able to bequeath an independence to their

children: the last efforts are made, the last means applied towards

placing sons and daughters in positions with fixed salaries, which

require no capital to carry on. These are mainly the civil service

offices in the Empire, States or municipalities--teacherships, the Post

Office and railroad positions, and also the higher places in the service

of the bourgeoisie in the counting rooms, stores and factories as

managers, chemists, technical overseers, engineers, constructors, etc.;

finally the so-called liberal professions: law, medicine, theology,

journalism, art, architecture and lastly pedagogy.

Thousands upon thousands, who had previously taken up a trade, now--the

possibility of independence and of a tolerable livelihood having

vanished--seek for any position in the said offices. The pressure is

towards higher education and learning. High schools, gymnasiums,

polytechnics, etc., spring up like mushrooms, and those in existence are

filled to overflowing. In the same measure the number of students at the

universities, at the chemical and physical laboratories, at the art

schools, trade and commercial schools and the higher schools of all

sorts for women are on the increase. In all departments, without

exception, there is a tremendous overcrowding, and the stream still

swells: fresh demands are constantly raised for the establishment of

more gymnasiums and high schools to accommodate the large number of

pupils and students.[237] From official and private sources warnings

upon warnings are issued, now against the choice of one then against

that of another career. Even theology, that a few decades ago threatened

to dry up for want of candidates, now receives its spray from the

superabundance, and again sees its livings filled. "I am ready to preach

belief in ten thousand gods and devils, if required, only procure me a

position that may support me"--that is the song that re-echoes from all

corners. Occasionally, the corresponding Cabinet Minister refuses his

consent to the establishment of new institutions of higher education

"because those in existence amply supply the demand for candidates of

all professions."

This state of things is rendered all the more intolerable by the

circumstance that the competitive and mutually destructive struggle of

the bourgeoisie compels its own sons to seek for public places.

Furthermore, the ever increasing standing army with its swarms of

officers, whose promotion is seriously paralyzed after a long peace,

leads to the placing of large numbers of men in the best years of their

lives upon the pension lists, who thereupon, favored by the State, seek

all manner of appointments. Another swarm of lower grade in the army,

takes the bread from the mouths of the other stratas. Lastly, the still

larger swarm of children of the Imperial, State and municipal officials

of all degrees are and can not choose but be trained especially for such

positions in the civil service. Social standing, culture and

pretensions--all combine to keep the children of these classes away from

the so-called low occupations, which, however, as a result of the

capitalist system, are themselves overcrowded.

The system of One Year Volunteers, which allows the reduction of the

compulsory military service to one instead of two or three years for

those who have obtained a certain degree of education and can make the

material sacrifice, is another source from which the candidates for

public office is swollen. Many sons of well-to-do peasants, who do not

fancy a return to the village and to the pursuit of their fathers, come

under this category.

As a result of all these circumstances, Germany has an infinitely more

numerous proletariat of scholars and artists than any other country, as

also a strong proletariat in the so-called liberal professions. This

proletariat is steadily on the increase, and carries the fermentation

and discontent with existing conditions into the higher strata of

society. This youth are roused and spurred to the criticism of the

existing order, and they materially aid in hastening the general work of

dissolution. Thus the existing condition of things is attacked and

undermined from all sides.

All these circumstances have contributed to cause the German Social

Democratic party to take a hand in the leadership of the giant struggle

of the future. It was German Socialists who discovered the motor laws of

modern society, and who scientifically demonstrated Socialism to be the

social form of the future. First of all Karl Marx and Frederick Engels;

next to them and firing the masses with his agitation, Ferdinand

Lassalle. Finally German Socialists are the chief pioneers of Socialist

thought among the workingmen of all nations.

Almost half a century ago--grounded on his studies of the German mind

and culture--Buckle could say that, although Germany had a large number

of the greatest thinkers, there was no country in which the chasm

between the class of the scholars and the mass of the population was as

wide. This is no longer true. It was so only so long as knowledge was

confined to learned circles that stood aloof from practical life. Since

Germany has been economically revolutionized, science was compelled to

render itself useful to practical life. Science itself became practical.

It was felt that science attained its full worth only when it became

applicable to human life; and the development of large capitalist

production compelled it thereto. All the tranches of science have been,

accordingly, strongly democratized during the last decades. The large

number of young men, educated for the higher professions, contributed to

carry science among the people; then also the general schooling, higher

to-day in Germany than in most European countries, facilitated the

popular reception of a mass of intellectual products. But above all, the

Socialist Movement--with its literature, its press, its unions and

meetings, its parliamentary representation, and finally the incessant

criticism thereby promoted on all the fields of public life--materially

raised the mental level of the masses.

The exclusion law against the Social Democratic party did not check this

current. It somewhat hemmed in the Movement, and slightly reduced its

tempo. But, on the other hand, it caused the roots of the Movement to

sink deeper, and aroused an intense bitterness against the ruling

classes and the government. The final abandonment of the exclusion law

was but the consequence of the progress made by the Social Democratic

party under that very law, together with the economic development of the

nation. And thus the Movement goes marching onward, as march it must

under existing conditions.

As in Germany, the Socialist Movement has made unexpected progress in

all European civilized nations, a fact eloquently attested to by the

International Congresses of Labor, which, with intervals of two or three

years, gather with ever increased representations.

Thus with the close of the nineteenth century the great battle of minds

is on in all the countries of civilization, and is conducted with fiery

enthusiasm. Along with social science, the wide field of the natural

sciences, hygiene, the history of civilization and even philosophy are

the arsenals from which the weapons are drawn. The foundations of

existing society are being assailed from all sides; heavy blows are

being dealt to its props. Revolutionary ideas penetrate conservative

circles and throw the ranks of our enemies into disorder. Artisans and

scholars, farmers, and artists, merchants and government employes, here

and there, even manufacturers and bankers, in short, men of all

conditions, are joining the ranks of the workingmen, who constitute the

bulk of the army, who combat for victory, and who will win it. All

support and mutually supplement one another.

To woman also in general, and as a female proletarian in particular, the

summons goes out not to remain behind in this struggle in which her

redemption and emancipation are at stake. It is for her to prove that

she has comprehended her true place in the Movement and in the struggles

of the present for a better future; and that she is resolved to join. It

is the part of the men to aid her in ridding herself of all

superstitions, and to step forward in their ranks. Let none underrate

his own powers, and imagine that the issue does not depend upon him.

None, be he the weakest, can be spared in the struggle for the progress

of the human race. The unremitting dropping of little drops hollows in

the end the hardest stone. Many drops make a brook, brooks make rivers,

many rivers a stream, until finally no obstacle is strong enough to

check it in its majestic flow. Just so with the career of mankind.

Everywhere Nature is our instructress. If all who feel the call put

their whole strength in this struggle, ultimate victory can not fail.

And this victory will be all the greater the more zealously and

self-sacrificingly each pursues the marked-out path. None may allow

himself to be troubled with misgivings whether, despite all sacrifices,

labor and pains he will live to see the beginning of the new and fairer

period of civilization, whether he will yet taste the fruit of victory;

least of all may such misgivings hold him back. We can foresee neither

the duration nor the nature of the several phases of development that

this struggle for the highest aims may traverse until final

victory,--any more than we have any certainty on the duration of our own

lives. Nevertheless, just as the pleasure in life rules us, so may we

foster the hope of witnessing this victory. Are we not in an age that

rushes forward, so to speak, with seven-mile boots, and therefore causes

all the foes of a new and better world to tremble?

Every day furnishes fresh proof of the rapid growth and spread of the

ideas that we represent. On all fields there is tumult and push. The

dawn of a fair day is drawing nigh with mighty stride. Let us then ever

battle and strive forward, unconcerned as to "where" and "when" the

boundary-posts of the new and better day for mankind will be raised. And

if, in the course of this great battle for the emancipation of the human

race, we should fall, those now in the rear will step forward; we shall

fall with the consciousness of having done our duty as human beings, and

with the conviction that the goal will be reached, however the powers

hostile to humanity may struggle or strain in resistance.

OURS IS THE WORLD, DESPITE ALL;--THAT IS, FOR THE

WORKER AND FOR WOMAN.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[236] [Aside from the contradiction implied between this sentence and

that other, on page 247, in which the internationally overshadowing

economic development of the United States is admitted, the forecast,

though cautiously advanced, that Germany may take the lead in the

accomplishment of the pending Social Revolution, is justified neither by

her economic nor her social development, least of all by her geographic

location.

As to her economic development, Germany has made rapid and long strides

during the last twenty years; so rapid and so long that the progress has

caused the Socialists of Germany, in more instances than one, to

realize--and to say so--that, what with her own progress, and with

outside circumstances, Germany was distancing England economically. This

is true. But the same reason that argues, and correctly argues, the

economic scepter off the hands of England places it, not in those of

Germany, but in the hands of the United States.

As to her social development, Germany is almost half a revolutionary

cycle behind. Her own bourgeois revolution was but half achieved.

Without entering upon a long list of specifications, it is enough to

indicate the fact that Germany is still quite extensively feudal in

order to suggest to the mind robust feudal boulders, left untouched by

the capitalist revolution, and strewing, aye, obstructing the path of

the Socialist Movement in that country. The social phenomenon has been

seen of an oppressed class skipping an intermediary stage of vassalage,

and entering, at one bound, upon one higher up. It happened, for

instance, with our negroes here in America. Without first stepping off

at serfdom, they leaped from chattel slavery to wage slavery. What

happened once may happen again. But in the instance cited and all the

others that we can call to mind, it happened through outside

intervention. Can Germany perform the same feat alone, unaided? Do

events point in that direction? Or do they rather point in the direction

that the work, now being realized there as demanding immediate

attention, and alone possible and practicable, is the completion of the

capitalist revolution, first of all?

But even discounting both these objections--granting that both in point

of economic and of social development Germany were ripe for the

Socialist Revolution--her geographic location prevents her leadership.

No one single State of the forty-four of the Union, not even the Empire

State of New York, however ripe herself, could lead in the overthrow of

capitalist rule in America unless the bulk of her sister States were

themselves up to a certain minimum of ripeness. Contrariwise, any

attempt by even such a State would be promptly smothered. What is true

of any single State of the Union is true of any one country of Europe.

It is, therefore, true of Germany. Whatever doubt there be as to

Germany's ripeness, there can be none as to the utter unripeness of all

the other European countries with the single exceptions of France and

Belgium,--and surely none as to Russia, that ominous cloud to the East,

well styled the modern Macedon to the modern Greek States of the nations

of Western Europe. Though there is no "District of Columbia" in Europe,

the masses would be mobilized from the surrounding hives of the

Cimmerian Darkness of feudo-capitalism, and they would be marched

convergently with as much precision and despatch upon the venturesome

leader. And what is true as to Germany on this head is true of any other

European country. Facts and their relations to one another must be ever

kept in sight. 'Tis the only way to escape illusions--and their train of

troubles.

For the rest, not the sordid competitive spirit of the bourgeois world,

but that noble and ennobling emulation, cited by the Author in a

quotation from John Stuart Mill, animates the nations of the world that

are now racing towards the overthrow of capitalist domination. Surely

none will begrudge laurels due that one that shall be the first to scale

the ramparts of the international burg of capitalism, strike the first

blow, and give the signal for the final emancipation of the human

race.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[237] The number of students at the German universities averaged as

follows per six months:

Protestant Catholic

Quarter. Theology. Theology. Law. Medicine. Philosophy. Total.

1841-42--1846 2117 1027 3467 1943 3072 11626

1846-47--1851 1798 1297 4061 1827 3046 12029

1851-52--1856 1751 1300 4169 2291 2840 12351

1861-62--1866 2437 1153 2867 2435 4392 13284

1866-67--1871 2154 982 3011 2838 4626 13611

1871-72--1876 1780 836 4121 3491 5896 16124

1876-77--1881 1961 682 5134 3734 8057 19568

1881-82--1886 3880 952 5034 6869 9123 25838

1886-87 4546 1178 5239 8450 8666 27828

1887 4803 1232 5505 8685 8424 28455

1887-88 4632 1137 4810 8435 8450 28480

1888 4835 1174 6106 8915 8204 29275

1888-89 4642 1207 6304 8886 8255 29294

During the summer six months of 1893--notably the weaker of the two

seasons--the total number of students, exclusive of the University of

Brunswick, of which we had no returns, had risen to 31,976.

Unfortunately we had no like classification of the students, and are

hence prevented from inserting it in the above table.

The table shows that from 1841-2 to 1871 the number of students

increased little, and less than the population. From that date on the

increase was by leaps and bounds, until 1886-7; from this date on the

increase is again slow. From 1871 to 1888-9 the number of students

increased more than 116 per cent. It is an interesting fact that the

study of theology decreased steadily until 1881, but increased thereupon

all the quicker until it reached high-water mark in 1888. The reason was

that the excess of the supply for all the other posts increased in such

measure that it was difficult to secure a place. People then turned to

theology which had been neglected during the previous ten years.