Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1876).djvu/13

 necessary that capital, {the real foundation of successful labor, and which has been produced by labor, be owned by a minority? Has this minority a right to continue to take the best part of what labor produces?

The Socialists take the side of the labor. They maintain, that it is everybody's duty to work, unless he be sick or crippled. They maintain that, whoever is able to work and is not willing to do it, has no right to enjoy the fruits of the industry and labor of others.

If capitalists attempt to justify their way of making profit, by saying, that they have to run risks sometimes, that a part of their property might occasionally be lost, we answer, that labor has nothing to do with that. The real cause of it is the competition among the employers, the custom to produce at random, without investigating, whether that, what may be produced, is really wanted. For the class of capitalists there is no risk, because its wealth increases every day. But there is a great risk for the working-class. When business is slow, when the wages go down, when many workers are out of employment,—when in consequence of this mechanics, grocers and-even farmers suffer, the condition of the working part of the people is pitiable and many suffer. The newspapers tell about that. Have they not had startling accounts of people starving to death in our great cities? Look at the local columns of the daily papers and it is exceptional, if there is no account of some family or other being poverty-stricken, of people driven to despair, driven to commit suicide by want. And all this in cities that have stores and warehouses crowded with goods! Is this no risk?

But how could this state of things be changed?

This, certainly, cannot be done of a sudden. There is a natural process of development in this, as in all changes, that history has recorded so far. According to the reasoning of the Socialists, this development will be as follows:

Some time ago the middleclass formed the firm and solid foundation of society and state. Machinery was invented and a change occurred. Manufacturing, and even farming to a certain extent, were conducted on a large scale; the middle-class-people were pressed down into a class of wages-laborers, and were employed in large numbers by the manufacturers or employers. More and more this middle-class cease to be property-holders; it is getting more and more difficult for the mechanics and small farmers to hold their ground; thus the middle-class is constantly decreasing, the class of wages-laborers increasing, untill there will be only two classes of people—rich and poor. In this progress the number of rich people is diminishing, wealth becoming concentrated in the hands of comparatively few persons, who are getting enormously rich.

But this progress must have and will have its limit. There will be a time, when the large mass of the working-people will feel the consequences of such a difference, will find it unbearable,