published an excellent little work on that subject; and here again he asks no material help from the State. The working class must insure themselves against all the risks of their life by association, just as they must keep up the rate of their wages by association; and for the same reasons--first, because they are able to do so under existing economic conditions, and second, because it is only so the end can be gained consistently with the modern moral conditions of their life--_i.e._, with the maintenance of their personal freedom, equality, and independence. Brentano thinks that the sound principle of working-class insurance is that every trade union ought to become the insurance society for its trade, because every trade has its own special risks and therefore requires its own insurance premium, and because malingering, feigned sickness, claims for loss of employment through personal fault, and the like, cannot possibly be checked except by the fund being administered by the local lodges of the trade to which the subscribers belong. The insurance fund might be kept separate from the other funds of the union, but he sees no reason why it should not be combined with them, as it would only constitute a new obstacle to ill-considered strikes, and as striking in itself will, he expects, in course of time, give way to some system of arbitration. Brentano makes no suggestion regarding the mass of the working class who belong to no trade union. They cannot be dealt with in the same way, or so effectively. But this is quite in keeping with the general principle of the Socialists of the Chair--in which they differ _toto cælo_ from the socialists--that society is not to be ameliorated by rigidly applying to every bit of it the same plan, but only by a thousand modifications and remedies adapted to its thousand varieties of circumstances and situations. CHAPTER VII. THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS.