Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1876).djvu/7

 sweat of his brow," look at the laborer who works for wages. If he is skillful, industrious and strong, and if he is lucky enough to find employment, he may even be able to save a little. But the large majority of laborers cannot even think of that, in spite of all hardships they undergo, When they have to stop work, they are as poor as when they began it. And many, many laborers, hardtoiling men, are not able to protect themselves and their families from exposure and hunger. You need not go far, reader, you will find them everywhere. Ragged, palefaced, despairing people will meet your vision, and on inquiring you will learn, that they were industrious, orderly workers, and that there are thousands, aye hundreds of thousands of people living in the same miserable condition, in the cities as well as in the country.

Now look at the mechanics! A few of them may succeed; they may be able to reach a state, in which they are safe from sorrow and care for the necessaries of life. The greater number of mechanics, who have a little shop of their own and work on a small scale, have to battle with poverty and care. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of mechanics fail in this battle; they give up their small establishment and turn wages-laborers. One manufacturer on a large scale deprives hundreds of small mechanics of their independent existence. As things stand to day, only those will succeed in the great struggle for life, in the universal competition, who command large means, a great amount of capital.

In commerce it is the same merchants with small means rarely do a good business, many go bankrupt, merchants with large means grow richer and richer. It is similar with farmers throughout the civilized countries of Europe, though not so much in North-America, Owners of small farms just eke out a scanty living and have to work very hard; many gradually fall off: in general the peasantry get poorer. There is the usurer, who knows how to make profit of a poor crop. Very frequently we find, that small farms are bought by owners of large farms to be united with them. Only the latter understand and are able to farm wihwith [sic] profit.

Thus we see, how the large class of those, who work hard and assiduously, do not make money, do not amass riches, on the contrary, many of them must suffer from want and care. But now, who creates those riches, which fall to those, who never worked, or whose work hardly deserves the name of work? Who else, but that self same workingclass?

For industry and work scarcely a living! Riches for those, who never or seldom did anything useful! Do you call that just? You cannot!

In England it has been investigated and calculated by order of the government, how much of the total product of work of the English people falls to the lot of those, who really work, and how much to the lot of those, who do not work. What do you think was the result? The small number of those, who do not work (¼) draw more than one half, (⅝) of that amount, leaving to the large workingclass only ⅜, not even one half of that, what is pro-