political party, and that they should have remained a purely economic
one. Besides, he looked on it as mere folly to expect, with Lassalle,
the accomplishment in thirty years of changes which, as we have seen, he
believed five centuries little enough time to evolve.
Rodbertus may thus be said to have had some relations with the present
movement, but Marlo stands completely apart from it: and his large and
important work, "Untersuchungen über die Organization der Arbeit, oder
System der Weltökonomie," published at Kassel in 1850-5--though
original, learned, and lucid--remained so absolutely unknown that none
of the lexicons mention his name, and even an economist like
Schaeffle--who was the first to draw public attention to it, and has
evidently been considerably influenced by it himself--had never read it
till he was writing his own work on socialism (1870). But though Marlo
cannot be said to have contributed in any respect to the present
socialistic movement, his work deserves attentive consideration as a
plea for fundamental social reform, advanced by a detached and
independent thinker, who has given years of patient study to the
phenomena of modern economic life, and holds them to indicate the
presence of a deep-seated and widespread social disease. Carl Marlo is
the _nom de plume_ of a German professor of chemistry named Winkelblech,
and he gives us in the preface to his second volume a touching account
of how he came to apply himself to social questions. In 1843 he made a
tour of investigation through Northern Europe in connection with a
technological work he was engaged in writing, and visited among other
places the blue factory of Modum, in Norway, where he remained some
days, charmed with the scenery, which he thought equal to that of the
finest valleys of the Alps. One morning he went up to a neighbouring
height, whence he could see the whole valley, and was calmly enjoying
the view when a German artisan came to ask him to undertake some
commission to friends in the fatherland. They engaged in conversation.
The artisan went over his experiences, and repeated all the privations
he and his fellows had to endure. His tale of sorrow, so alien
apparently to the ravishing beauty around, made a profound impression on
Winkelblech, and altered the purpose and work of his life. "What is the
reason," he asked himself, "that the paradise before my eyes conceals so
much misery? Is nature the source of all this suffering, or is it man
that is to blame for it? I had before, like so many men of science,
looked, while in workshops, only on the forges and the machinery, not on
the men--on the products of human industry, and not on the producers,
and I was quite a stranger to this great empire of misery that lies at
the foundation of our boasted civilization. The touching words of the
artisan made me feel the nullity of my scientific work and life in its
whole extent, and from that moment I resolved to make the sufferings of
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