Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/31

 men, the central point of help and protection, holding the smaller associations in hand by a series of functionaryism: This is the natural and legitimate purpose of the State: operating by supervision over each subordinate association as each subordinate association does toward its members.

But how enable the State to make this intervention?

The answer is clear: It is possible only through universal and direct suffrage.

When the law making body of Germany owes its existence to the popular vote, then, and only then will you be able to control the Government in the interest of labor.

When this element of popular power shall have been introduced and the law-making power be the result, then the necessary forms and measures of the intervention, may be discussed; and, backed by reason and science, men who understand your condition, and who are devoted to your cause will defend your interests. Then, too, the class without means will have to ascribe, all disastrous elections to themselves, finding their representatives in the minority.

Universal and direct suffrage, as has been shown, is the foundation of your political and social life: the basic principle of all self-help, and without which the condition of the workingman cannot be bettered.

Now, how to succeed in securing universal direct suffrage:

Cast a glance at England! For more than five years did the English people agitate against the corn laws; and so earnest and general was the agitation that they were abolished even by a Tory ministry. In like manner you workingmen of Germany must organize as a universal workingmen's association, peacefully but untiringly demanding continual agitation for the introduction of the universal and direct right of suffrage throughout all German countries—And mark my words: at the moment this combined movement reaches 100,000 members, it will. be an acknowledged power in the land and already a factor affecting the legislative bodies. Raise this cry in every workshop, in every village, in every hut. Let the city workman, with their deeper insight and higher culture, pour into the ear of their brethern of the rural districts, by debates and speeches their knowledge and experience, till mechanic and agricultural laborer, joining in the chorus of demands, compel the Government to grant the right insisted on.