Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/294

 280 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Therefore these contests in relation to the increase of the navy were indirectly of great advantage to the working class. Our workingmen are almost universally members of the Social Democratic party, and this party is a decided antagonist of "militarism " and, for that reason, of the enlargement of the navy, because they have no interest in the defense of a country in which the workingman has not equal rights with others. It is probable, however, that the working people would learn to think in another fash- ion of the navy and foreign policy as soon as they had attained legal and social equal- ity of rights in the state. It is apparent from the debates over the navy proposition that the government will see itself increasingly compelled to solicit the aid of the work- ing people for its navy projects, because its former supporters begin to prove unfaith- ful to it. The Agrarians (peasants and large landholders), who have hitherto approved every military demand without examination, begin to assume a distrustful attitude toward the navy. For the strengthening of the navy implies security for industry and commerce, while increasing industrial development means the wider entanglement of Germany in the economic affairs of the world, and larger importation of foreign grain and meat into Germany. Therefore the opposition of the Agrarians to the navy and to commercial treaties is a phenomenon which appears naturally, as might be fore- seen. If at last most of them did vote for the navy bill, it was only in order not to lose the influence with the emperor which they still enjoy. The time is sure to come when they will no longer take this view, and when, not only in words, as they have already done, but by action, they will be in opposition to increase of the navy. At that moment the emperor cannot do otherwise than conduct his foreign policy by the aid of the workingmen, because he must have one group of the people who will furnish him a majority. Then, before all, the right of coalition and complete equality must be guaranteed to the workingmen. The Agrarian opposition to the navy which this winter began to appear was indirectly the security for an imperial policy favorable to the workingmen.

The spirit which led to the "Jail Bill " has in the meantime made itself manifest in the individual states. In several of the small states bills have been proposed to pun- ish the violation of a contract by agricultural laborers with imprisonment as a crime. In other cases, the violation of a contract is indeed indictable in civil law, but cannot be prosecuted criminally ; so that here we have an exceptional law which places the agricultural laborers in a position inferior to that of other people. And in other states they have commenced to prohibit picketing by police ordinances, a prohibition which was, indeed, contained in the "Jail Bill," but was not in harmony with the imperial law. In the same direction we notice the partisan interference of several governments on the side of business managers in great strikes ; especially observable in the attitude of the Saxon government in the miners' strike and of the Prussian government to the striking employe's of the great Berlin street-car company.

In spite of this unfriendly attitude to the workingmen our bureaucracy works quietly and slowly along the way fixed for it in the first period of the social policy of William II. The unwieldiness which is often rightly charged to the account of our official administrators has at least this good element that good influences and impulses are propelled and make themselves felt for a long time. For example, dur- ing the last year much progress has been made in necessary and urgently needed reforms in our state insurance of workingmen. After the insurance of invalids had been reformed in the summer, the accident insurance was subjected to critical exami- nation in the winter. In this case the governments have met the views of the asso- ciations of capitalists more nearly than was the original purpose ; but, in spite of this, the new law was so superior to the old that on the final vote in the Reichstag it was passed unanimously. Other laws protecting workingmen were either introduced or passed, as new regulations for seamen, employe's in hotels and mercantile estab- lishments. All these laws might have come earlier, for they have been demanded by those interested for many years. And they contain less than the workingmen desire, or they have been crippled in the manipulations of the Reichstag. At the same time, they imply advance as compared with what has been law hitherto, and they prove thereby that, even if slowly and awkwardly, the bureaucratic social reform really goes forward.

As we judge of this advance in protection of workingmen, so we may form an opinion of the moderate advance in relation to the right of coalition. Three years