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 438 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

was an impossibility. The Social Democracy had struck too firm roots in the laboring classes, and the unpatriotic inter- national and anti-monarchical thoughts were by the twelve-years special law to which the Social Democracy was subject from 1878 to 1890 too deeply provoked by the government itself for all to be suddenly changed at a single stroke. It would, to be sure, have been within the power of imperial statesmanship to win the laborers for a national and monarchical policy, if for a decade the policy of the spring of 1890 had been continued; but inasmuch as the Kaiser wanted to pick the fruits at the same moment in which he planted the tree, bitter disappointment was the necessary result.

In this situation the above-indicated influences of the squires and the capitalists must have fallen upon fruitful soil. The Kaiser, who thought he had been repulsed by the laborers, was obliged to take refuge with these other strata, because he cannot govern at all without a party upon which he can depend. Accordingly he adopted more and more the views of the capitalists. He also began to see in every struggle for wages merely an exhibition of the republican spirit, or of discontent and illegality. Moreover, to him every labor organization was only an association of Social Democratic agitators and whips (Hetzer), who were trying to bring about the overthrow of the state and of society. After his lively fashion, he gave more and more frequent expression to this feeling in speeches, table-talks, and other utterances. At the same time the Social Democracy did its utmost, through its unwise and improper attitude, especially at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the empire, to sharpen the existing opposition.

Accordingly, after several other attempts to head off the political or industrial labor movement, the most recent proposal was made, namely, the so-called " House of Correction Law." This unique name is sufficiently explained by the history of the proposal.

In the summer of 1897 the Kaiser visited the famous institu- tions of the well-known Pastor von Bodelschwingh near Biele- feld. In this neighborhood an uprising of the masons had