Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/12

 duction on a small scale. England and France, nations ahead of us in economical development, show this in a much greater degree than with us. Germany, however, is making mighty progress on the same road. Your daily experience will be sufficient to corroborate this.

There follows, then, from these Delitzsch Loan and Raw Material Associations, allowing they did help the small tradesmen, that owing to the necessarily expanding tendencies of our industries, they all constantly developing into rich firms and corporate institutions, their influence would all the while be lessening, the large firms and corporations gradually absorbing the lesser tradesmen, the recipients of their benefits, they gradually becoming sunk in the ranks of the purely working-class: an absorption the inevitable result of our peculiar modern culture.

The other point alluded to is still more important:

Notwithstanding the fact that a few tradesmen so assisted, are enabled to carry on a small business in living competition with the larger concerns, the confession of Prof. Huber is adverse to the Credit and Raw Material Associations as a successful means to ends. He says, "Unfortunately, despite our favorable perceptions that competition between dwarf-production and corporative industry was possible, we have to say that it is not satisfactorily so.

But the inherent defects of the system, and which, at the first, became developed in my mind, will, I am convinced, be still more conclusive. How far, as an assistant, to the small tradesman, can the Loan Association go? Only so far as enabling him to have good and cheap raw material—no further; placing him on an equality with his competing neighbor who had already capital of his own with which to purchase, At best it is but lengthening the lease which, in time, must expire; yielding to the larger capitalist, whose mass-production, with its smaller profits and other advantages, stock and rule the markets. The principle sways civilization: the inferior corporation yielding to the larger.

It may be urged that the small tradesman who carries on his trade helped by the Raw Material Association has advantages over the capitalist who uses his own money, and is therefore better able to endure the strain of his heavy competition. We must bear in mind, however, that the wholesale price feature