Page:Johann Jacoby - The Object of the Labor Movement - tr. Florence Kelley (1887).djvu/14

 Rh sciousness which sustains and elevates the individvualindividual [sic] and inspires the masses to battle for their social rights. It is a strange fate which decrees that Capitalist production itself shall assemble and drill the powers destined to make an end of capitalist and class rule.

From the great central rallying places of industry the Labor Movement has proceeded, which within a few decades has spread from England over France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, and has attained power and definite form in the foundation of the International Workingmen's Association. Everywhere we see unions forming whose object is the improvement of the material condition of the laboring class; craftsmen's guilds and workingmen's clubs, educational and beneficial associations, co-operative, loan and credit societies, trades unions and co-operative manufacturing companies. Under the prevailing conditions of credit and production all these undertakings, originating in the working class and resting upon the principle of self-help must prove powerless to cure the misery of the masses. But they have accomplished a vast work for the intellectual and moral elevation of the laboring class and in paving the way for a thorough reform of labor. The true significance of these associations, their value which cannot be overestimated lies in this that, wholly apart from the especial object at which they aim, they are a school for self-culture for their members; that they confer upon them skill in the independent management of their own affairs and in harmonious action with others for common ends; that by education, promotion of a comprehension of business and fraternal public spirit they prepare the worker for a gradual transition from the prevailing Wage-System to the co-operative method of production of the future.

It was the spirit of co-operation which in the the Middle Ages raised the working middle class to so high a level of culture and prosperity, of power and consequence. The re-awakening of the spirit of co-operation in our day will bear similar and still more precious fruit, not for one class alone but for the whole human society. The labor question as we apprehend it, is no mere stomach and money question, it is a question of Civilization, Justice and Humanity. When our saving of State and Society, the "glorious" achievements of our policy of blood and iron like a lost tradition shall long have been forgotten, it will be remembered to the credit of our time that it quickened and cherished the spirit of co-operation, the germ of human greatness and virtue in the laboring world, so laying the foundation for a new and truly moral social life which shall rest upon the principle of equality and fraternity. The founding of the smallest workingmen's club will be for the historian of Civilization of greater worth than—the victory of Sadowa.

Let us pass to the second question:

What has the employer to do?