Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/587

 the suffering classes—not to us, the upper classes; for it is you who compose it. "What is the State?" I ask; and you see now from a few figures, more vividly than from heavy volumes, the answer. The great association of the poorer classes—yourselves—that is the State.

And why should not your great association have a helpful and fruitful effect upon your smaller associated groups? This question you may also put to those who talk to you about the inadmissibility of State intervention and about Socialism and Communism in the demand for it.

If, finally, you desire a special instance of the impossibility of producing an improvement in the condition of the working class in any other way than by free association through this helpful intervention of the State, you may look to England, that country which is most frequently called in evidence to prove the possibility for an association of individual workingmen established purely and exclusively through their unassisted powers, to improve the condition of the whole class—England, which in fact must appear best suited, for various reasons based on its particular national conditions, to carry out this experiment, without, nevertheless, demonstrating thereby a similar possibility for other countries.

And this special instance comes directly from those English workingmen's associations which up to this time have usually been referred to as triumphant proof of such an assertion. I speak of the Pioneers of Rochdale. This cooperative society, organized in 1844, established in 1858 a spinning and weaving establishment with a capital of £5,500 sterling. According to the statutes of this association, the workmen employed in the factory, whether they were stockholders in the association or not, drew a profit, in addition to the usual wages, equal to that distributed as dividends to the stockholders—the arrangement having been made that the annual dividends should be reckoned and distributed both on wages and on capital stock. Now the number of stockholders of this factory is one thousand