Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/581

 nose without your perceiving it, and by entertaining you with very dubious historical retrospects as to the situation of the working class in previous periods—retrospects which are all the more questionable because manufactured products, becoming constantly cheaper, are far less consumed by the working class than the food products which are their chief articles of consumption, and are in no way subject to any similar tendency of constantly increasing cheapness! These are retrospects, finally, which could have value only if they undertook investigations from every point of view into the general position of workingmen at different ages—investigations of the most difficult nature and to be carried on only with the utmost circumspection, investigations for which those who talk to you about them have not even the material at hand, and which they, therefore, should all the more leave to special scholars.

(3) Let us now come back from this necessary digression to the question: What influence can the consumers' leagues have upon the situation of the working class according to the law of wages discussed under No. 2? The answer will be a very easy one.

As long as only particular groups of workingmen unite in consumers' leagues, general wages will not be affected thereby, and the consumers' leagues will accordingly furnish, through lower prices, to the workingmen who belong to them—as long as this condition lasts—that minor relief for the oppressed condition discussed and admitted under No. 1; but as soon as the consumers' leagues begin to take in more and more the whole working class, then, in consequence of the above-considered law, the inevitable result will follow that the wage, because sustenance has become cheaper through the consumers' leagues, will drop to just that extent.

The consumers' leagues can never, even in the slightest degree, help the whole working class, and they can furnish to the single groups of workingmen who compose them the above-considered aid only as long as the example of