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ally does, there is a strong temptation to provide him with one. Then he will probably be as useful in the next campaign as he has been in the past. Few men are so devoted to their party that they will do work-the not very elevating work required -merely for the sake of seeing the party victorious. The duties of an office which has been obtained for party service become greatly extended. The ideal office-holder, from a political point of view, is that one who, on retiring, said that he had always faithfully discharged the duties of his office except when they conflicted with those to his party.

The really important inference from his proposition, however, Mr. Clarkson does not draw. The Government being a political instead of a business organization, it evidently should not engage in business. There can be no doubt whatever that business methods are infinitely better than political in industrial matters. The reason why this conclusion is not drawn is manifest; what would become of the offices? Mr. Clarkson intimates that, if it were not for the offices, politics would lose their charm for the average citizen. If he had said for the average politician he would probably have been very near the truth. But the people cannot afford to do business by political methods merely that there may be a class of politicians interested in the offices. There would be enough work for government to do after leaving all business affairs to be carried on after business methods. Mr. Clarkson says of government, that it is "the guardian of liberty." That is what it should be; but there is reason to believe that it takes away as much liberty in one direction as it secures in another. If the relation of the government to citizens were solely to secure for each man the greatest freedom for his activities compatible with the like freedom of other citizens; if its relation to trade and industry were solely to secure a fair field for the free play of industrial forces; and if it really succeeded in securing these

things, it would fulfil a function of the very highest importance to national life,—a function compared to which its transportation of mail matter, its stupid attempts to stimulate prosperity by means of taxation, its not very efficient regulation of domestic commerce, its impotent striving to prevent citizens from doing themselves harm, sink into utter insignificance. There would be fewer offices for politicians to wrangle over, and "politics" would be less synonymous with corruption.

IMPERIAL SOCIALISM.

In the years 1883, '84 and again in '89, the German Reichstag, led presumably by Prince Bismarck, laid the foundation for that superstructure of meddlesome and tyrannical legislation which the young Emperor now invites the Reichstag of 1890 to erect. The retirement of Prince Bismarck does not, therefore, at any rate, denote the inauguration either of a better or of a new policy. On the contrary, a comparison of the Acts of '83, '84 and '89 with that now recommended by the Emperor in his opening speech to the Reichstag, on May 6th, can only suggest the reflection that Bismarck, not William, is the ideal Emperor. The political rulers of Germany may continue to be of the House of Hohenzollern; but the political ideas of Germany-are of the House of Bismarck.

If Prince Bismarck were called on to express his notion of Socialism, he could not do better than paraphrase the current definition of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. He might say, "Good socialism is my socialism, bad socialism is your socialism." And, if he were addressing the young Emperor, he might go on to add, with perfect truth, "My socialism, at any rate, is Imperial-yours is that of a third-grade English pot-house politician." In proof of which he would invite the Emperor to compare the Acts of '83, '84 and '89 for the compulsory insurance of workmen, with the Act now proposed.

By the first Act, persons of either sex employed in factories, railroads, building operations, mines, quarries, in any industry where steam or other natural power is used, are insured against sickness. Agricultural laborers, not included in this, were provided for on similar principles by an Act of 1886. Domestic servants may join the insurance system of the Act voluntarily; for others, the insurance is compulsory, and is effected by the following means: All employers of persons coming under the provisions of the Act, must pay in to central organizations established for the purpose, stated premiums whose aggregate forms the insurance fund. The premiums consist of two parts-one third being nominally paid out of the employer's pockets, the other two thirds being deducted from stipulated wages. The insurance associations are agents of the government, subject to its supervision and control, without the intervention of the judiciary. In other words, the measure is a system of compulsory administratively organized insurance.

The laborer disabled by sickness from work, gets "free" medical attendance, etc., and half-pay (up to about 40 cents a day) for a period of thirteen weeks, beginning on the third day of sickness.

The second Act, '84, initiates compulsory insurance against accident. Insurance associations, one or more, are established in each trade; the members of the association are the employers, the "beneficiaries" are the same as those under the first Act-except women. The premiums are all nominally paid by the employers. The accidents insured against are those occuring in the course of employment, and the allowance begins after the lapse of the thirteen weeks covered by the sickness insurance. After this, all the expenses of cure are paid by the accident association; the sufferer is pensioned for as long as the disability lasts-if total, then two-thirds of the former wages; if partial, then two-thirds of the loss by reduced wages. If the accident is fatal, widows, children, and dependent parents are pensioned, so that the former and the last get 20 per cent each of the lost husband's or son's wages, while the children each get 15 per cent, till their share with the mother's amounts to 60 per cent.

The third Act is a system of disability and oldage pensioning, and "is even wider in scope than its fellows. The opening section includes in its provisions, once for all, practically every hired person over sixteen-mechanic, apprentice, laborer, domestic servant. . . For these, the conditions imposed are in no way onerous, and in some directions are more singular in what is waived than in what is insisted on. Thus, a pension is not granted if the applicant can be shown to have injured himself with the express object of getting it, or if the disability was the result of a criminal act whereof he was convicted. But drunkenness, brawls, sexual excesses, which are carefully excepted from the compensations of the earlier acts on sickness and accident, may be the occasion of pensions under this measure; a person whom habitual

drunkenness has disabled from work may yet become entitled to a pension for the rest of his life."

The qualifications for benefits under this Act, are, in case of old age, to have worked for thirty "years of contribution," in case of disability from other cause, to have worked five "years of contribution." These "years of contribution" consist of forty-seven weeks; the contributions are the insurance premiums, varying from 3 cents to 7 per week, and paid, nominally, half by the employers, half by the employed. The pensions vary from $25 to $75 a year. (Abridged from Prof. Taussig's article in the Forum for October, 1889.)

When Mr. Taussig wrote this account he introduced the Act of '89 as "the final measure." We are now reminded by the Emperor's speech of the relativity of this expression; Prince Bismarck's final measure it may be, but now comes William-and after him? When one has been feeding on strong meat and is suddenly put off on potatoes, the taste is apt to be flat; so we shall not be surprised if the Emperor's socialism is a little mealy. The dish he finds to offer us is a hash made up from the remnants of Factory and Workshop Actsthe inventions of third-rate English politicians, diluted with some compulsory holiday stuff for which he may have got the receipt from New York demagogues.

The bill announced by the Emperor, published on May 7th, and no doubt introduced in the Reichstag before this, proposes various restrictions on personal liberty. Workmen employed in mines, salt-works, quarries, foundries, and other similar branches of industry, are prohibited from laboring on Sundays and holidays. At Easter, Christmas, and Whitsuntide they must take a holiday of fortyeight hours; on Sundays of twenty-four hours. In certain other handicrafts they shall not work more than five hours on Sundays and holidays. Police authorities may extend the time of labor in some cases. The prohibition of Sunday labor may be extended to other occupations than those enumerated in the bill, by an Imperial order.

To these restrictions of personal liberty are added restrictions of parental rights. Children shall not be allowed to work till they have completed the attendance at the primary school (Burger Schule?), and in no case shall they be employed under thirteen years of age. Their hours of labor shall not exceed thirty-six in some cases or sixtynine in other cases. Then the bill goes on to regulate the conditions under which employers must place the workmen as to the construction of factories and dangers to life or health.

The employment of women is prohibited between the hours of 8.30 P. M. and 5.30 A. M., and on the

days preceding Sundays after 5.30 P. M. Women shall not work more than eleven hours a day, with a pause of at least an hour at noon. They shall not return to work within four weeks of confinement-whether this means before or after, or both, is left in doubt by the report. Police authorities may permit individual women to work up to 10 P. M., but the day's work shall not be longer than thirteen hours.

The reflections suggested by these extensions of socialism are so many and diverse, and anything that could be said would be so inadequate, that one is tempted to leave them without comment. Indeed, it may truly be said that the measures speak for themselves. We may have done with the Emperor in one word, and it is this contrasting the pusillanimity of his scheme with the magnitude of that of the Iron Chancellor, who shall say that Bismarck is not every inch a King?

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So far as the general question of socialism is concerned, the very language of the law, as of its predecessors, emphasizes the essential characteristic of the system. All these regulations are prescribed; then the Reichstag is done with them. But the regulations have to be enforced, and in order to enforce them the whole regulative, executive, imperial organization has its authority and operation extended. A new set of actions has been taken from the voluntary list, and added to the list of dictated, compulsory acts. The freedom of the individual has been invaded, personal initiative has been restricted. And the inevitable consequence of the restriction of

personal initiative will be the decline of the feeling of personal responsibility, the decay, that is, of the mainspring of morality. The path of socialism has been smoothed, and barrier after barrier will give way. First, good socialism-that is, my socialism; next, bad socialism-that is, your socialism. You have no rights, says Bismarck, and after him William, but those we may imperially grant. But presently Democracy will arise in its strength, and say to Bismarck, to the Emperor, and to their class, you have no rights but those we may grant. And for every inch the Emperor has encroached, Democracy will encroach an ell.

By far the most important and least excusable of the restrictions of personal liberty accomplished by the new measure, are those which curtail the rights of women. The injury inflicted will be great and immediate. What a frightful commentary on the industrial state of women, that a proposition is being gravely debated to restrict their hours of labor to eleven or to thirteen

in the day! Their hours of labor-in the factory! But if they have housework to do they shall be "excused" from the factory half an hour earlier at noon! Yet, in proportion as the suggestion of the arduousness of the factory labor performed by women in Germany is justified by the facts, in that very proportion will the effects of the restriction of their opportunities be injurious. They shall not work between 8.30 P. M. and 5.30 A. M.? Not work? What then, dullards, blockheads? Faugh! Would that the hell paved with your good intentions were your own. Stupidity has its reward, and retribution, however lame, will overtake you in the end.

Listen to the Spectator commenting on the report of the Select Committee of the British House of Lords on Sweating. Sweating is the name applied by laborers to the operation of sub-letting contracts, by which they imagine, rightly or wrongly, that their wages get cut down. So a Com

mittee of august Blockheads was appointed to look into the matter and see whether Tories could not capture some proletarian votes by using the power of the Government for the purpose of appearing to benefit the workmen. This Committee, however, has been a little reticent in its report. The Government may look after its contractors better, they say, and Municipalities may do the same; there may be a little more inspection of insanitary workplaces, and Acts like the Truck Act may be more rigidly enforced, and-and-and some kinds of labor may be prohibited to women! But, says the Spectator, that is nearly all that can be done. Oh no, charming contemporary, not all, not nearly all. Take note of Germany, sir; keep your eye on the Emperor William and his Reichstag; they will find ways of regulating the bread out of women's mouths that you, perhaps, would never discover. Keep a stout heart;—and if you have a spare moment some time, please inform us what earthly connection the employment of women in certain "rough" occupations has with the Sweating system. Why has this investigation been left to the Lords, I should like to know? Surely the ingenuity of the Commons would add ten occupations to every one discovered by the Lords which should be prohibited to women-for the suppression of Sweating. Is the Strand becoming deserted in the evening, that recruits must be called out from the factories-between 8.30 P. M. and 5.30 A. M.?

If Berlin is not sufficiently successful in finding means of hampering women, turn your attention to Vienna. Municipalities, and especially their Police, have long held the well-earned title of miscreants extraordinary and tyrants plenipotentiary for troubling, hampering, supervising and regulating women. Some think that parliaments have done their share, and more; but for good, whole-souled, unconscious, unmitigated tyranny over women, Municipalities have borne away the palm. They

have not their equals on earth, and never will have. In Vienna the Police keep a ledger, called the "Servants' Book," in which they inscribe every girl's engagement and dismissal from domestic service. Every employer must give a "character" to the departing girl, and the character must read "treu, fleissig, sittsam"- honest, industrious, well-conducted. If either of these words does not appear in the "character," the employer is heckled by the Police till he or she has sworn that the girl is either not honest, industrious, or virtuous. Admirable contrivance! Only that of the Police, no human breast, being of stone, every girl in Vienna is honest, industrious and virtuous. The result is that a written "character" is of no value whatever to the girl, and one seeking employment must find some other, and, undoubtedly, more difficult means of satisfying the mistress of the household to whom she applies. The item in which I read this account stated the case a little differently: that mistresses had to resort to other means of getting information. As though it were not perfectly notorious that in Continental Europe, for every girl wanted, a dozen would be glad of the place, and that the onus of proving their character must fall on the girls. And then the Police! How supremely virtuous and incorruptible the body of men composing this municipal machine for regulating women has always been! Yes, the Policemen-take note of that. Not a city in the world but whose records bear witness to the most shameful scandals connected with Police supervision of women. And as to the records-how much of their history is recorded?

Therefore, proceed, lordly committeemen, and search out new restrictions of the personal liberty of women; and see to it that you have good men and true to carry out your regulations-je m' entend.

And proceed, Imperial Reichstag-give us here in America a few lessons. For as soon as we shall have disposed, as we

shortly shall have done, of our tariff issue, we shall be prepared to give ear to new voices of Socialism. Already the air resounds with the acclamations-but personal interest muffles the walls of the Capitol. Without doubt, too, we shall find it advantageous to begin by regulating the conduct of women still further-thus neither party will lose at the polls. But in whatever direction restrictions on the freedom of the individual are consummated, over whatever departments of social life supervision may be extended, the number of those engaged in regulating and supervising will be increased, and the number of those regulated and supervised will be diminished: as the regulating mass becomes a less and less tolerable incubus, it becomes more and more able to resist being shaken off, while the regulated class becomes less and less able to shake it off; till finally the load becomes intolerable altogether, and the result is, that what might formerly have been shaken off, must now be blown up. The political pendulum which for more than a hundred years, up to the middle of this century, had been swinging in the direction of personal freedom, has turned definitely upon the backward arc. But progress lies along the former path.

THE LEGACY OF WAR.

Mr. Lawrence Lowell, in his Political Essays published last winter, attributes an inconsistency to Herbert Spencer in deploring the retrogression of England since 1853 from a peaceful toward a military state, and at the same time holding that the law of evolution applies to the development of societies as well as to animals and plants.

"Strange as the suggestion that the British lion is recovering a dangerous amount of pugnacity may appear, it is no less astonishing to hear a man of science complaining of that animal for trying to change the unalterable course of nature. If it is true that the industrial follows the militant stage as certainly as the evening follows the morning, and if to reverse this

order is as impossible as to cause the shadow on the sundial to return ten degrees backward, then any indignation or alarm at the course pursued by English legislators, must be quite out of place." Mr. Lowell appears to have read The Man vs. the State, at any rate he refers to it; but it seems impossible that he can have read the Sociology, and it is evident that his idea of evolution is entirely inadequate. Natural history has made us familiar with many cases of "degeneration," but these cases do not present a very serious objection to the theory of organic evolution. To write the sentences quoted above is very much like accusing physicists of maintaining that all moving bodies inevitably move in a straight line.

Societies may be classified in various ways. The classification given in school geographies, I believe, is, enlightened, civilized, half-civilized, and savage. Another classification which has found much favor is, Christian and heathen; still another, Greek and barbarian. The classification will differ according to the purpose for which it is made; thus, with reference to domestic institutions, societies may be roughly classified as monogamous and polygamous; and so, with reference to political institutions, the classification into militant and industrial societies possesses many advantages. To say that the activities of a nation are predominately militant, tells us more about the nation than almost any other single statement.

It is not necessary to assert that every society has passed through a militant stage ; Mr. Spencer mentions several with reference to which there is no basis for such an assertion. There is no large, purely industrial society, and there never has been one. Mr. Spencer's contention is, that all the large societies which exist now, or have existed in the past, have been in great measure produced by the agency of war. "Neither the consolidation and re-consolidation of small groups into large ones; nor the organization of such compound and doubly compound groups; nor the concom

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