CAMPAIGN A GAINST GERMAN ORGANIZED LABOR 435
treatment, and for rescue of them by these means from the arms of the Social Democracy. At that time the German Social Democracy was certainly very unfriendly to religion, and was also very cool in its feelings of patriotism.
But this spring of a fine and large social reform was not long to endure. The law for protection of labor which the govern- ment proposed in the Reichstag in 1890-91 was far from meet- ing the expectations which the imperial decree had properly raised, and the friends of social reform were unable to amend the law so as to incorporate more inclusive terms. Nevertheless, this law is the sole actual outcome of that period of enthusiasm and agitation. With the year 1892 the reaction in the temper of the governing classes began to be evident. From the Kaiser himself no word of encouragement and stimulus in the field of social politics was any longer heard. On the contrary, the great capitalists acquired more and more influence with him. He made their thoughts and views more and more his own. His addresses in public were more and more in their favor. The church also withdrew with the Kaiser from the social undertak- ings upon which it had entered. The decree of the church authorities of the year 1890 was recalled five years later. Clergy- men who were socially disposed, who took an interest in the labor movement, were punished or disciplined, or at least con- stantly watched and nagged. The Evaneglical Social Congress was more and more avoided by church officials, and many of the clergy. Indeed, in 1896 permission was refused in Leipzig for the congress to use a church for a commemorative religious serv- ice. In a word, the number of those who stood fast in the earlier temper and still wished to help the laboring class grew continually smaller, and their influence became weaker. They were more and more pushed into an attitude of defense ; they could not obtain new laws for the laborers ; they were obliged rather to bend all their energy to defense of the old laws, dating from earlier and better times, against new attacks. The general right of suffrage for the Reichstag — this chief weapon in the political struggle of the laborers — presently became more and more an object of dislike and of more or less open attack in the
