can succeed, as the increased division of labor makes it necessary to employ a large force of men, and mechanical inventions have forced producers to use many and expensive machines. The laborers have not the means to found large manufactories; consequently government must advance these means in order to cause the existing and unhappy social conflict to cease. Government is to advance capital to different groups of laborers, who conduct various enterprises. These groups are associated, new ones are continually added, and, finally, their united power is so great that they can stand alone without government aid. This all appears harmless enough, and no government would be justified in refusing 100,000,000 of thalers, or $75,000,000, if so much good could be done by it. But one of the ablest men of his time must have been fully conscious of the utter insufficiency of such a sum. If he had any other idea in his mind than simply to use his demand of government as a rallying-point for purposes of agitation, it cannot well be doubted that he had further petitions to address to government as soon as they had granted his first one. It is not at all improbable he might have been willing to see collateral inheritances abolished, and the income derived therefrom devoted to co-operative undertakings. Proposals, like abolition of interest on loans, must have followed, with the view of rendering private competition impossible. Thus would be introduced the socialistic state longed for by the social democratic party founded by Lassalle. “On the 23d of May, 1863, German social democracy was born. Little importance was attached to the event at the time. A few men met at Leipsic, and, under the leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle, formed a new political party called the ‘Universal German Laborers’ Union’ (‘Der Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein’). That was all. Surely, no one could be expected to ascribe great weight to the fact that a handful of working-men, led by a dreamer, had met and passed a few resolutions—resolutions, too, as modest in their expression of purpose as they were harmless in appearance. It was simply declared that the laborers ought to be represented in the different German parliaments, as only thus could their interests be adequately cared for and the opposition between the various classes of society terminated; and in view of this fact it was resolved that the members of the Union should avail themselves of all peaceful and legal means in endeavoring to bring about universal suffrage. “But it was soon discovered that the members of the Union, the first organization in Germany of social democracy, desired political power only as a means of overthrowing entirely the existing order of the production and distribution of wealth.”[184]