Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/75

Rh Besides, the Progressives in their sympathetic study of English institutions and precedents had hit upon a happily peaceful way of solving the social and economic problems of the day. If they could consecrate Prussia to "liberty"—liberty of trade, liberty of contract, liberty of association, liberty of education, liberty of self-help—they would wean the workingmen from socialistic Utopias and win them to a proper respect for law and order and individual rights, not the least of which was the right of private property. Like their English contemporaries, these Prussian liberals were not simon-pure democrats: as well-to-do middle-class people, they themselves were entrenched in the three-class electoral system of their country and could see no good reason for introducing a universal manhood suffrage which might imperil their majority in the House of Representatives and endanger glorious "liberty", especially since the workingmen, to enjoy the blessings of this liberty, had no need of the ballot. The workers had no need of direct parliamentary representation; the Progressives were their benevolent if self-constituted champions. When a group of workers humbly petitioned for full membership in the party, the magnanimous but hardly satisfactory reply was vouchsafed that "all workers might consider honorary membership as their birthright".

The magnanimity of the liberal leaders was not convincing to all the workers. There were some who suspected that "liberty" of the middle-class variety might not prove a panacea for long hours, small wages, and miserable factory and tenement conditions. It was before a group of these doubters and upon their invitation that Ferdinand Lassalle in 1862 delivered his lectures on the "Workers' Programme" (Arbeiterprogramm) and "What now?" (Was nun?). He confirmed their suspicions and strengthened their doubts. And thenceforth the issue was squarely joined between the middle-class Progressives and the Socialist followers of Lassalle.

Lassalle's following was never numerous. Although he was a brilliant speaker and writer, fired with the most ardent enthusiasm, tireless in travel and propaganda, and possessed in no small degree of organizing ability, he was unable to awaken the bulk of the German working class to any appreciation of the role which it might conceivably play in the national, political, and social life of Germany; and Der Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein, which Lassalle formed in 1863 and over which he exercised practically dictatorial powers, numbered at his death on August 31, 1864, fewer than five thousand adherents. Nevertheless, it is from this General Association of German Workingmen that the present-day German Social