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York, limited itself to "agitation"—
after a style; but they knew not
their ground, evoked no response,
and, owing to the frequently repulsive mannerisms of their principal
spokesmen, were often even laughed
at and despised; they grew disheartened; the less intellectually
honest, vainer and less informed,
like Alexander Jonas, Julius Grun-
zig, Hermann Schlueter and others,
imputed their failure, not, as in fact,
to their own shortcomings, but, to
use their own words, to the "hopeless stupidity and corruption of the
American people"; and thus, by degrees, the "Party" shrank into social clubs—singing and drinking and
card-playing societies, with an occasional outing when a member died,
and periodical celebrations in which
thrilling speeches were delivered by
themselves to themselves.
While this development was going on, there were others setting in
also. Years ago the earnings of
labor were higher; a thrifty mechanic, who did not object to pinching
himself some, could lay by money
in the bank. With the development
of the capitalist system, earnings
declined, savings became harder to
make and jobs rarer to get.
Driven out of the shop by improved machinery and concentrating
capital, the workingmen with savings in the bank fell back upon that,
and started small stores, in short,
rebounded into the middle class. One
of the results of that—the seeming
increase of the middle class—
stumped the unscientific mind. The
German Socialist, Edward Bernstein, concluded Marx was wrong,
and the vulgar economists everywhere started new songs on the
beauties of capitalism. Another re
sult—the one we are here concerned
with—was the changing of the angle
of vision of the former workingman,
who had become bourgeois. Speaking only a few years ago of the intellectual decline of the German Social Democracy, August Bebel referred to the numerous workingmen
in Germany, who, being victimized
by reason of their political activity,
had to be provided with small stores
by the German party, and, with their
change of class interests, slid off
from their pristine clear-cut radicalism. The economic development of
capitalism here, above referred to,
that caused workingmen with deposits to become small traders, wrought
a like change in them. The change
told strongly among certain German
workingmen.
Ther= is a third development that
needs mention. It is akin to the one
last considered. The worker, who
had some savings, being thrown on
the street by machinery, could fall
back upon his savings and become
bourgeois; the worker, who had
none, stood on the ragged edge of
the abyss of labor fakerism. Into
that abyss fell not a few. Their
unions became reactionary "pure
and simple"; all sense of solidarity
vanished; there was no longer a
question of organizing and protecting the working class; the union became a means for those in it to get
a job by and to put others out of
their jobs; and finally it ripened
into an engine of capitalism, sold to
the politicians by the leading fakers.
Now, then, all these interests —
the German labor faker, the German bourgeois ex-workingman and
the singing, etc., society tired-out
Socialist — clustered in this city
around and centered in a German
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