Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/82

 That was all! Since then no progress has been made worth speaking about. After seventeen years we at last obtained a ten-hour work day for women in Germany. The male workers remain, as always, wholly unprotected.

In the field of labor legislation, and also in every field of social reform, complete stagnation reigns.

But the economic improvement which came since the end of the '80s brought to a number of sections of the working class the possibility, thanks to the increasing demand for labor power, of improving their condition through the "direct action" of the unions without the help of legislation.

This increasing demand was well marked by the decrease in the emigration from the German empire.

The number of emigrants from Germany has been as follows:

This sudden increase in the demand for labor power created a relatively favorable position for a considerable number of sections of the laborers in their opposition to capital. The unions, which, during the first two decades of the new era beginning in 1870, because of the economic depression and the political oppression in Germany, France and Austria, had developed but slowly, now grew rapidly. This was especially true in Germany, where the economic development was most rapid. The English trade unions, the old champions of the working class, were caught up with and, indeed, passed. Considerable improvements in wages, hours of labor and other conditions of employment were obtained.

In Austria, for example, the membership of the unions