Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/447

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUMEV JAJNUARY, IQOO NUMBER4

THE RECENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST LABOR ORGANI- ZATIONS IN GERMANY.

It is a fact which cannot have escaped the observation of foreigners that there is today in Germany very little enthusiasm for a vigorous and thorough social reform; that the laborers' struggle for emancipation encounters today in Germany more opposition than formerly. At the beginning of this decade we Germans enjoyed a season in which it seemed as though all the cultured people of the nation, the Kaiser at their head, were about to offer their aid to elevate the laboring classes. In the year 1889 the Kaiser gave a personal audience to a deputation of striking miners, and he warned the masters that they ought to put their hands in their pockets. Six months later he sent the celebrated communication to his minister of commerce, with the demand upon the state to satisfy the just complaints and wishes of the laboring classes. How far the Kaiser was at that time inclined to meet the wishes of the laborers may be seen from the two following utterances: (i) "It is one of the tasks of the sovereign power to regulate the time, the duration, and the character of labor in such a way that maintenance of the health, the demands of morality, and the economic needs of the laborers and their title to legal equality will be provided for." In this way account was taken of the wishes of the laborers for introduction of a law for a maximum labor day, and, more than

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