Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/553

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 531 labour 20 to 40 per cent. shorter than in Europe, the cost of production is only from 10 to 25 per cent. more. He possibly bases his inference on the Victorian Tariff, in which however now certain articles have had their duty raised to 35 per cent. 'JOHN RAE THE GERMAN SOCIALIST PARTY. TH Committee of the German Socialist party have published a draft of the revised programme which they have prepared by direction of the Halle Congress last year for submission to the ensuing Congress at Erfurt in October. The present programw. e of the party has remained unaltered since its adoption by the Gotha Congress of 1875, im- mediately after the union of the Marxists and the Lassalleans, and the object of the revision is to bring it more into line with the needs and opinions of the time. In preparing the new programme the Committee took counsel with leading Socialists elsewhere, and indeed the draft now published is based on a sketch sent to the Committee by the veteran Friedrich Engels. The most notable change is the com- plete excision from the party programme of the scheme of productive associations on state credit which constituted the original policy of the party under Lassalle. That, Bebel explains, is now considered obsolete. Collectivization of property is still stated to be the goal of the Socialist party, but pr. oductive associations are no longer believed to be the way. The new planks are womanhood suffrage, proportional representa- tion, payment of representatives, institution of international courts of arbitration, appointment of judges by popular election, free school- books, free medical attendance and free medicine, abolition of truck, prohibition of night-work, creation of a State Labour Departme. nt and local labour offices and chambers, abolition of the farm service ordinances, state insurance of all working men, with participation by working men in the management. Decision on peace and war by the representatives of the people is substituted for decision on peace and war by the people, because Bebel explainsrathe latter is now seen to. be impr. acticable. Instead of simply declaring religion to be a private affair, a more restricted phraseology is now adopted. Voting at elections is no longer to be made obligatory. The change from twenty to twenty-one years as the age for acquiring electoral rights is a mere slip of the pen, Bebel says. Instead of a single progressive income tax, the new programme proposes a progressive income, capital, and succession tax. Instead of leaving the normal day of labour and the age for permissible child-labour unclerefrained, it fixes the former at eight hours as a maximum, and the latter at fourteen years, and it substitutes for the.prohibition of Sunday labour the requirement of a consecutive period of repose from labour of at least thirty-six hours in every week.