retirement. As he never could forget this, he naturally retained his ancient grudge against the social democracy until his dying day. Bismarck caused it to be stated repeatedly in his personal organ, the "Hamburger Nachrichten," that the only way to deal with the social democrats was to drive them to deeds of desperation, pursue them into the streets, and there shoot them down. [Groans.] No demonstration, I beg. Let us rejoice in the frankness of our opponents.

Then came the summer of 1894, with Caserio's attack upon Carnot in Lyons. It might reasonably be asked how Germany can be affected by the occurrence of an assassination in a neighboring country. German citizens were concerned in it neither directly nor indirectly. Nor has so much as an effort to establish the contrary been made in any quarter. Yet the fact that a foreign anarchist in a foreign land had done this deed sufficed to set the German propertied class in motion against the little knot of German anarchists, but still more against the detested Social-democratic party.

There fell, about this time, from a royal mouth, in southwest Germany, the expression that the hour had now come "to beat the general grand march" against social democracy. And at the convention of the national liberal party in Frankfort-on-the-Main, in September of that very year, it was decided, behind locked doors, to implore the government to proceed with a sharpening of the general laws against the social democrats, if not with the new antisocialist law. That was done. It certainly contributed much to the fall of Caprivi that he was of opinion that any law against the socialists would do more harm than good. He held in this respect a view which in 1890 was the emperor's likewise. But this view ceased to be shared by final authorities, and when Count von Caprivi fell, it was Prince von Hohenlohe who came before the Reichstag with the so-called Revolution Bill. In full session as well as in committee we did all we could to prevent the enactment of the measure. The Roman Catholic party, however, was dominated by the idea of utilizing an increased severity of the criminal laws to reach the so-called intellectual fathers of revolution—the liberal professors with their caustic and

partly atheistic observations. The ultramontanes on the committee, with the conservatives, succeeded in putting the government's demands through with slight modification. At the same time new features were incorporated into the Revolution Bill, which it was hoped would strike emancipated science. On this obstruction the Revolution Bill went finally to pieces. In the face of the stry opposition of the entire learned and cultivated wor!upported by the liberal bourgeoisie, the government at last to withdraw the bill.

But the desire to dance on the democracy's corpse remained. When the Geneva assassination occurred, in September of the present year, our enemies thought they had gained the upper hand. A few days after the murderous deed, which, as may easily be realized, filled the whole civilized world with consternation, that famous telegram of the capitalist magnates to the emperor, calling for new laws of an exceptional nature, was passed. It ran :—

"The dreadful deed by which her Majesty the Empress of Austria has fallen a victim, reveals by fresh and frightful evidence the goal of anarchy and of all agitation tending in its direction. The profound commotion of our hearts attests that we are one with your majesty in the sense that our duty is to oppose with the sternest statutory measures the attempt to destroy our religion, our love for our noble dynasty, and our love of fatherland. We, the undersigned representatives of German industry, venture therefore with profound deference to give the assurance that we are faithful to your majesty in the struggle against the ruthless enemies of our political and social order. With unalterable confidence in your majesty's capacity and wisdom, we shall support, and further to the utmost, all measures deemed proper by your majesty in defeating the criminal aims of unscrupulous fanaticism, and in upholding the threatened authority of the state."

This despatch was signed by four representatives of the German capitalistic magnate class, as we may dub this element in the empire-men who stand to the fore in all efforts hostile to labor. These gentlemen speak in their telegram of the defense of "our religion." We can only smile at that. For what is the religion of these gentlemen? I fancy I am scarcely mistaken when I conjecture that these. gentlemen believe in it about as much as I do, which is not at all. "Religion must be upheld on account of the peo

ple," was said once, years ago, by a very high authority. But these gentlemen do not put themselves on a level with the people. Religion is to them merely the leading string by means of which the masses are conducted in contentment, subjection, and dependence through this earthly vale of tears.

"Love for our noble dynasty" is likewise alluded to in the telegram. That made me think of an article that appeared in 1892 or 1893 in the "Kolnische Zeitung," whose columns supply these gentlemen with their daily political wisdom. At that time a property tax bill was before the Prussian Landtag. When Von Miguel was shaping the tax laws along more rational lines, he saw that a strict property declaration would be required if the bourgeoisie were to be kept from whistling the treasury down the wind too thoroughly. The result was that the income tax law was followed by a bill to create the so-called total property taxthat is, a moderate tax based upon a compulsory declaration of the value of a man's entire assets. The bourgeoisie were not hard hit by the bill. The property tax, compared with that levied by many Swiss cantons, is extraordinarily low. Yet this measure sufficed to rouse the "Kolnische Zeitung into fierce opposition. It declared that if such bills were passed by the Prussian Landtag, men would be forced to revise their monarchical convictions. [Laughter.] These gentlemen even discovered that they might eventually find themselves republicans. [Laughter.] They were but rational monarchists-monarchists, that is to say, only because that form of government was most conducive, for the time being, to the advancement of their own interests. Thus did the love of our "noble dynasty" once more assert itself among the bourgeoisie.

And how about the fatherland, that is so often in the mouths of these men? Was not Herr von Hassler, who is the magnate of Germany's textile industries (and who signed the telegram to the emperor) the very one to oppose in 1871-like the Social-democratic party, although from different motives-the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, because he dreaded the competition of the Alsatian textile industries? And it is notorious that every socialist or democrat who then opposed annexation was regarded as

a traitor to his country. Yet Herr von Hassler and the German textile magnates were opposed to it, too. Their love of fatherland must, therefore, have gone to sleep at the bottom of their money-bags. All these fine assurances are but hollow mockeries. They simply serve the purpose of making faction in order that the German working classes may be fettered politically, and in order that they may be put out of the economic position that would enable them to fight successfully their battle with capitalism. That is the secret lurking behind yonder telegram.

Precisely such tactics were employed in 1878, when efforts were made to have it appear that the bloodthirsty Hödel and the unprincipled Nobiling belonged to our party. Then, too, it was their wish to make the laboring people helpless, in order more conveniently to carry out that great scheme for robbing the working classes-the new policy of protective tariff. With perfect justice did the court chaplain's paper say of the despatch then forwarded by the capitalist magnates: "The men who sent such a telegram wanted to exploit their own egoism.'

Another business these gentlemen have gone into is that of flinging anarchists and socialists into the same vat. Without letting myself be drawn now into a theoretical discussion of the differences between socialism and anarchy, the mere fact that the adherents of these two movements confront one another in the bitterest hostility, must convince every rightly thinking man that socialism has nothing in common with anarchy, and vice versa. If in Proudhon,

Max Stirner, Bakunin, and others, the anarchists behold their intellectual fatherhood, we, on our part, give that recognition as socialists to Marx, Engels, and Lassalle, who always stood in direct opposition to the anarchists. Seldom have two men presented such a striking contrast in all their points of view as Bakunin, who may be styled the father of the propaganda by deed, and Karl Marx, the sworn enemy of every policy of conspiracy and assassination -Bakunin, representative of the most extreme individualism, who saw in plots and in deeds of violence directed. against persons in authority a means of attaining his ideal of society; and Karl Marx, who, with Engels, was the founder of the material conception of history, according to

which the power of the individual for good or evil is but limited; thus the individual can wield power in any direction only to the extent that he acts as the representative of special class interests.

Anarchists are the extreme, though logical, development of capitalist liberalism, whose object is almost their own. Socialism, true to the Marx doctrine of the class struggle, is the political representative of the proletariat, which, so far as it has arrived at class consciousness, has organized itself into the Social-democratic party. It aims thus at the acquisition of political power in order to establish a new social system based upon complete equality of rights and complete equality of duties.

The theory that even the most powerful individual can act only as the representative of class interests is illustrated with peculiar clearness by the character of Bismarck. No man had such good reason to hate the Social-democratic party as he, and by nobody was the social democracy more roundly hated than by this very Bismarck. Our mutual love and our mutual hate rested, therefore, upon perfect reciprocity. But in all the socialist press, and in all the socialist literature, there is not so much as a hint that it would be a good thing if this man were put out of the way. Nor in any like situation would we dream of such a thing. But how often has the capitalist press said that had this man not existed we would have to-day no united Germany. There could not be a more contradictory idea. German unity would have been brought about without Bismarck. The conception of unity and freedom was so potent with the German people in the sixties that it would have been carried out either with the Hohenzollerns or without them. The unity of Germany was not alone a political necessity. It was a historical necessity, and above all an economic necessity, chiefly in the interest of the capitalist class and its development. The conception of unity would ultimately have prevailed through sheer elemental force. Therefore Bismarck utilized it for his own ends by realizing it in his own fashion in the interest of the Hohenzollerns, and in the interest, likewise, of the capitalist class and of the landed aristocracy. The proof of this compromise is to be found in the German conception of the empire, which seeks