Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/32

 By debate and discussion, daily, and without cessation, was the great English agitation a success; by the same means alone will universal suffrage be gained in Germany. The more the echo of your voices is heard, the less will be the opposition to the pressure. And as auxilliary to your movement, found treasuries to which every member of the association must contribute to defray expenses of plans of organization.

Along with these treasuries—which, despite the smallness of the contribution, will form a power for agitation purposes, enabling you to have the daily papers to repeat the same demands, proving the rightfulnesss of your claims to deliverance from our present social condition.

Spread with the same means pamphlets. Also pay agents to carry the same views into every corner of the nation that the cry may reach the heart of every workingman, every householder, every agricultural laborer. Pay out of these moans to all such workingmen who may suffer persecution and injury because of their activity in the cause. Let your voices continually be heard; in season and out of season; perpetual, never tiring; in place and out of place: a continual presence, compelling men to listen. The more repeated the more it will spread, and become mighty in the land.

All the art of practical success is contained in the secret to concentrate force at one spot, the vital and important point. In your propaganda look neither to the left side nor to the right. Be deaf to all but universal and direct suffrage or that which is connected with it and that leads to it.

When you have really established in the national mind this demand, and which in a few years you may succeed in doing through the 89 to 96 per cent. of the population which constitutes the proportion of the poorer classes in society, then will your wishes no longer be sought to be withheld. The Government may quarrel and struggle over political rights with the Bourgeoisie. They may even refuse you political rights; deny you even under the ordinary pressure felt in political legislation, the right of suffrage. But a question brought before Parliament backed by 89 to 96 per cent. of the people clamoring for its passage as a bill: a question affecting the national life: a question of stomach and brains, and hot with the vitalities of both, no power can long withstand. Gentlemen, no authority can resist this.