she was obliged to live in cramped circumstances. The Countess had begun a suit against her husband for separation and alimony, but did not make much headway until Lassalle took charge of the case, in 1846. After an eight years’ contest, he secured a brilliant triumph. The Countess, although over forty, was still beautiful, and Lassalle, in taking up her case, appears to have been actuated by the same motives as the knights-errant of an earlier period who went about redressing wrong and protecting the weak. The entire affair is illustrative of his fiery, romantic temperament. It was in 1862 that Lassalle began his agitation in behalf of the laboring classes, an agitation which resulted in the formation of the German Social Democratic Party. Previous to his time, German laborers had been considered contented and peaceable. It had been thought that a working-men’s party might be established in France or England, but that it was hopeless to attempt to move the phlegmatic German laborers. Lassalle’s historical importance lies in the fact that he was able to work upon the laborers so powerfully as to arouse them to action. It is due to Lassalle above all others that German working-men’s battalions, to use the social democratic expression, now form the vanguard in the struggle for the emancipation of labor. Lassalle’s writings did not advance materially the theory of social democracy. He drew from Rodbertus and Marx in his economic writings, but he clothed their thoughts in such manner as to enable ordinary laborers to understand them, and this they never could have done without such help. Even for an educated man their works are not easy reading; for the uneducated they are quite incomprehensible. Lassalle’s speeches and pamphlets were eloquent sermons on texts taken from Marx. Lassalle gave to Ricardo’s law of wages the designation, the iron law of wages, and expounded to the laborers its full significance, showing them how it inevitably forced wages down to a level just sufficient to enable them to live. He acknowledged that it was the key-stone of his system, and that his doctrines stood or fell with it.