Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1876).djvu/6

 borers, who looked at their money quite confused, walked off smiling.

This teaches that the division of money is but an idle invention.

And with a little brain and thought, everybody must be easily come to the conclusion, that the great number of those, who confess to the principles of Socialism cannot possibly consist of block-heads or rather lunatics, which they would prove to be, if they demanded such nonsense. In Germany 400,000 voters voted the socialistic ticket—should they all be crazy?

Therefore, there must be something else in Socialism. The number of Socialists in Germany is constantly growing. Even Prince Bismark confesses that. There must be something in it.

Now, if we go to the meetings of the Socialists, if we read their papers and pamphlets, what do we find?

They do not intend to introduce division of property; on the contrary, they are for abolishing its division. That sounds strange, but it is so.

The Socialists are of the opinion, that division of property is flourishing in our society at present, and further they are of the opinion, that this division is carried on in a very unjust manner, If you doubt, only think of our Belknaps, Goulds, Crooked-Whiskeymen etc., and say, whether those fellows did or did not understand to divide and to appropriate to themselves large sums of money. Think of those swindling Railroad- and other Companies. How many honest mechanics, farmers, laborers, have been swindled by them out of the little sums they had gathered by hard work and saving?

The Socialists do not claim the honer of being the first to discover, that this kind of distribution is going on everywhere throughout the world, they have learned it. Men who belong to their adversaries, have taught them. John Stuart Mill, that celebrated Englishman, who is opposed to Socialism, says in one of his writings: "As it is now, the product of labor is distributed in almost an inverse ratio, those getting the largest parts, who never worked any; the next largest portions fall to those, whose work is, so to say, only nominal, and so forth; the recompensation for work shrinking in the ratio, as work becomes harder and more disagreeable, until at last the most defatigating and exhausting physical labor cannot count with certainty on gaining even the most necessary means for existence.

This sounds really dreadful, but if you look around and consult your own experience, is it not so? Certainly, it is!

There are people, who have a princely income, who plunge from one pleasure into another—and perhaps they have never in their life done the least useful thing; they need not work, they do not work themselves, but—they draw the proceeds of the work of other people and enjoy them.

On the other hand, look at him, who "eats his bread in the