Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/83

 grew in the period from 1892 to 1896 from 46,606 to 448,230. During the period from 1893 to 1907 the German unions affiliated with the Central organization increased from 223,530 to 1,865,506. The English trade unions, on the contrary, during the period from 1892 to 1906 only grew from 1,500,000 to 2,106,283. They added but 600,000 members to the German 1,600,000.

But it was not alone in rapidity of growth that German unions exceeded the English ones during this period. They presented a higher form of the economic movement. The English unions were purely a national development, the children of practice alone. The German unions were founded and led by the Socialists, who were guided by the fruitful theory of Marxism. Thanks to this fact, the German trade unions were able, from the beginning, to adopt a much more effective form. In place of the local and occupational divisions of the English unions they substituted the great centralized industrial organizations. They were able thereby largely to avoid jurisdictional disputes, as well as the guild-like ossification and aristocratic exclusiveness of the English unions. Far more than the English, the German unionists feel themselves the representatives of the whole proletariat and not simply of the organized membership of their own trade. The English unionists are but slowly overcoming these difficulties. The leadership in the international trade union world is falling more and more to the German unions, thanks to the fact that from the beginning they have been consciously or unconsciously more influenced by the Marxian teachings than their English comrades.

This brilliant development of the German unions made all the deeper impression upon the great mass of the proletariat in proportion as the course of social reform in parliament was checked, and the smaller the practical results attained by the working class during this period through political methods.