(d) That the wages of labor, as Lassalle held, must remain under capitalism on the line of bare subsistence, auf den nothwendigsten Lebensunterhalt, — is likewise acknowledged to be a mistake. It was first held to be a "law of nature," then qualified, and finally in the form first stated frankly given up.

(c) That the great struggle was to be one of clearly defined classes - "proletariat against dividend-receiver" has been fundamental with socialists since the Revolution of 1848. It was the alarm note with which Marx and Engels opened their long campaign. Upon none of the six points just now in view have the social democrats insisted with more untiring importunity than upon the fact that the wage-earning class was separated in all its interests, as by a gulf, from its foe the capitalistic class. From the first bugle note of the International, "proletarians of all countries unite!" down to the obscure programmes printed at this day in American cities, the call is to organize "on class lines." For no object have the German leaders striven harder, than to deepen this sense of antagonism among the workingmen. Liebknecht, to the end, clung to his policy of class strife. One of his last appeals was that the "class fight" be maintained, "the sharper the struggle the better for our party."

Yet when the veteran of the party spoke these words at Hamburg in 1897, his friends knew that the lash fell upon a dead horse. From the day when the party turned its back on the absolutism of the Marx programme, and entered on the way of legal and parliamentary processes, the magic of the Klassenkampf was gone. As long as it was said, “We

will work with no political party,-zu verwerfen ist jeder Pakt mit einer andern Partei, - we will fight the state's attempt to win us by its workingmen's insurance or by any other palliative, so long was there life and meaning in the shibboleth of class antagonism. It is now resolved to go to the polls with any party that can give them temporary help. They must give and take. It must in the same spirit welcome every "palliative," even if it mark but an inch toward their distant goal. All this is now being done by the social democrats in Germany with a heartiness that marks the greatest change in the practice and theory of the movement.

It is to be observed that these lessons have been learned through the experience gathered in political agitation of thirty years. Until the fall of Bismarck, the government did all in its power to tighten the hold of the social democrats upon every revolutionary conception they held. As long as the iron hand of the chancellor was felt in drastic laws that made socialist opinion criminal, the counter policy was one of "Macht und Gewalt." The first important utterance that I have seen from any socialist, in favor of conciliatory and parliamentary measures, was after these laws were revoked and the present emperor had admitted that the social question was of momentous consequence and should have every attention that the government could give it.

A dozen years ago, I heard the bitterest denunciation of the state labor insurance, by socialists who now defend it in public speeches. "It is not enough," they urge, "but all there is of it is good." Steps in factory legislation that were once jeered at are now

approved. Whether for the Reichstag, Landtag, or the common council of the city, socialists now coöperate, not alone in elections, but in the general policy of social and industrial improvement.

Last year in the province of Brandenburg, socialist municipal representatives met for deliberation. It perplexes one to find a proper term of comparison between the present discussion and those that filled the air at such gatherings ten years ago. The questions are now about the introduction of direct employment by the city, of extending the franchise, of a better tenement-house bill, of the hours of labor, of extending municipal control over the street cars, etc. When party tactics are chiefly directed to agitation of this kind, the Klassenkampf in its former sense, if not quite dead, is no longer alive.

To have struck at its roots this vicious growth of the class fight is the chief moral triumph in the changes here noted. As these sectional hatreds are overcome, the ground is first reached on which the longed-for social reorganization can begin. The conditions that shall make such reorganization possible can spring neither from hate nor suspicion. They can come only from a completer sense of a common and not a divided social destiny.

If we look once more at socialism in which the ideals of business and of politics really unite, we shall have the final illustration of the collectivist theory at work with results more remarkable still.

The German and Belgian experience offers society its chance of wise and generous coöperation.

CHAPTER XI

SOCIALISM AT WORK

SOCIALISM in its advanced stage is seen at its best just now in Belgium. A small country, sore pressed in its industrial struggle by its great neighbors, England, France, and Germany, its capitalists have been driven to the closest cutting of the wage scale. They have used new mechanical inventions to weaken the trade union, in order to employ women and young apprentices more freely. Constant recourse has been had to the law against coalitions in the same spirit that we now use injunctions. Especially among the mining and iron industries, strikes were frequent, prolonged, and bitter. Behind the formation of this party were the long, riotous strikes in that great industry of the country, coal mining. There were the same traditional abuses that have been the shame of our own coal region, systematized pilfering from the miners in the loading and weighing of coal, in deductions by sale of powder and through the truck stores, and a vicious use of credit. The final result of all this was to throw these masses into a sullen and determined political opposition. Socialistic organization began with the appearance of the International in 1866. At the first Congress in Ghent, 1877, the Marxian policy was adopted. There was an instant revolt of the autonomists, or anar

chist sections.

There was the same bitter internal strife that everywhere appears during the period of abstractions.

Two years after this first Congress, a movement began which for twenty years has added increasing strength to the cause. In 1879 a socialist workingman in Ghent, Edouard Anseele, angry at the incessant bickering over phrases and programmes, began an experiment with a coöperative bakery. In 1898 I went about this city with M. Anseele to see the stores, the bakery, and splendid club-house with its great garden. He said: "The plan of bombarding capitalism with loaves of bread has succeeded beyond any dream I ever had. I knew that the wage system was doomed, and that competition must yield to coöperation, but I did not expect to see, while I am still young, six thousand loyal members in this small city. They tell us we are atheists and without a religion; but without a religion these poor families would not sacrifice all they have to build up our cooperative in Ghent. It is our religion to found a society in which the poor shall have just as many chances for leisure, good homes, and the best education that their talent deserves. We believe we can do this only by training the common people to create more and more wealth themselves without the parasites. We therefore begin by shaking off as many middlemen as we can drive to productive work, by doing better ourselves what they did. We began with bread, because it is the great necessity of us all. All who buy our bread are fighting the sweater who works his laborers in mean dens fourteen and fifteen hours. Every loaf that we make stands for a clean shop, three and