Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/558

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
484
THE GERMAN CLASSICS

affection devoted to the welfare of the working classes, who has given the most painstaking study to their development and has written most excellent works upon that subject, particularly upon the history of industrial corporations or labor organizations. After having shown that the labor organizations of England, France, and Germany already have in hand a capital of fifty million thalers, Professor Huber says in this latest work (Concordia, p. 24):

"Under these circumstances and under the influences herein at work, and in view of the historical facts above indicated in outline, it is to be hoped that I need enter no disclaimer against Utopian daydreams of a universal millenium when I say that not only is a very substantial reform of the existing political conditions of the factory population practicable in such a measure as to bring about an elevation of their entire social and economic situation, but such a reform is to be looked for as in the natural course of things the assured outcome of the growth of labor organizations."

Here we have a prediction of a thoroughgoing social transmutation spoken of as the assured outcome of the labor-organization movement working out its effects simply within the lines of the peaceable and conventional course of things. But how if I, with all the stronger reason, had spoken of a prospective social change that might be expected to result from the combined force of the two factors, organized labor and universal suffrage?

But how can I be held accountable for the public prosecutor's literary limitations? for his lack of acquaintance with what is going on all around us in modern times and what science has already accepted and made a matter of record? Am I the scientific whipping-boy of the public prosecutor? If that were the case, the punishment which it would be for you, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, to mete out to me would be something stupendous. But all that apart, how can an allusion to an imminent social revolution, even to a pitchfork revolution, constitute an instigation to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie? And this is, after all, what the public prosecutor must be held to allege in the passage cited, and this in fact is what he does allege. Hatred and contempt can be