Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/30

 be evident to every one, that the progress of industry consists in the application of more force and more machinery put in the place of human labor, and that through this is the amount of capital stock made to increase over human labor. When, then, in this factory of the pioneers, 1,600 workingmen-stockholders were needed to contribute the necessary amount of capital to employ 500 workers, making a proportion of one to three, then by the workingmen in other branches, and in’ the larger institutions of production, together with the daily progress of civilization, the proportion would vary—as 1 to 4, 1 to 5, to 6, to 8, to 10, to 20, and so on. But let us remain at the proportion of 1 to 3. To found a factory in which 500 workmen find employment, there are needed 1,600 stockholders to furnish the necessary capital.

This is well enough, so long as I wish to found only a few factories. Gentlemen, in the imaginative process there is no trouble. I can tripple and quadruple the number and still go on while I have working men stockholders to help me. But when I extend these associations till the whole body of workingmen of the nation are embraced, where shall I find three, four, five, ten, twenty times the number of workingmen stockholders who are to stand behind the laborers employed in the factories and furnish the capital?

It will be easy to perceive that it becomes a mathematical impossibility to free the working class through the efforts of its members; and that all argumentt used to prove the contrary are mere illusions—phantasms of the brain. It will be equally apparent that the only road to successful abolishment of the law which governs wages, and which regulates as with a rod of iron, is the progress and development of free individual labor associations through the helping hand of the State.

The labor movement, founded upon the purely atomic isolated strength of working individuals has had its value, and an immense one it is, to unmistakably show the way how the emancipation may take place: practical proofs removing all doubts, real or assumed, of the practicability of the Idea; so compelling the State to see its duty in upholding by its assistance, the higher interests of the nation through the culture of its members.

At the same time I have proven to you that the State is really the great organization and association of the working-