The limits to the possibilities of Social Democracy are the limits of private ownership. This brings us at once to the verge of the eternal question of government--the finding of a just ratio between individual and collective responsibility: a ratio that varies with varying nationalities, and that will vary with the passing years. Each generation in every land will have to fix the limitations for itself. The new Social Democracy has acquired certain characteristics which will help us in determining the trend of its movements. In the first place it is an educated Social Democracy. The taunt of ignorance applied to the old Socialism of passion cannot be applied to the new Socialism of practice. The nations of Europe no longer debate the suitability of universal education. That question happily was settled for the United States with the landing of the Pilgrims. It took one hundred years for Europe to understand the Ordinance of 1787, that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Not all of the European nations have touched the heights of this ideal, but Social Democracy is struggling towards it, and schools, more or less efficient, are open to the workmen's children. This education is extended to adults by the press and by self-imposed studies. The eagerness with which men and women flock to lectures and night classes is a great omen. In Paris the _École Socialiste_ and _Université Populaire_, in Germany and Belgium the night classes in the labor union clubhouses, the debates and the lecture courses, are evidences of intellectual eagerness. In the second place it is a drilled democracy. It is organized into vast co-operative societies and trade unions. Here it learns the lesson of constant watchfulness over details. This training in the infinite little things of business is a good sedative. Socialists bargain and sell and learn the lessons of competition; do banking and learn discount; engage in manufacture and learn the problem of the employer. They are, moreover, drilled in parliaments, in city and county councils, in communal offices. They learn the advantages of give and take, are skilled in compromise, and feel the friction of opposition. All this has wrought a wonderful change in Socialism. To a Belgian co-operativist running a butcher-shop, the eight-hour day is a practical problem; and to a Bavarian member of a city council the question of opening communal dwellings ceases to be only a subject for debate. Nothing has brought these people to earth so suddenly as the infusion of earthly experience into their blood. And this transfusion has given them life. It has rid them of their many adjectives and given them a few verbs. It has robbed them in large measure of their mob spirit.[5] Every year the arbitrary governments of Europe are finding police coercion more and more unnecessary. The Socialist crowd is growing orderly, is achieving that self-control which alone entitles a people to self-government.