It is the German governmental policy to do everything for the welfare of its citizens that can be done; and, in return, it expects the people to let the government alone. The medieval conception of class responsibility survives. It is the attitude of a self-righteous parent toward ignorant and wilful children. The government assumes the right, and possesses the power, to regulate every phase of the citizen's life, in domestic, industrial, educational, moral, and political affairs. It is a regal survival of the theory that government is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Germany is a made-to-order country that clings to medieval conservatism in government; a country that is thoroughly modern in industry and distinctly middle-age in caste; where the workingman has always been treated with patronizing condescension and his political acts watched with jealousy; and where he has, against great odds, determined to work out his own salvation. Surrounded by preordained and rigid conditions, he has perfected an organization that is the most remarkable example of proletarian achievement found anywhere in history. To the development and description of this organization we will now address ourselves. German Social Democracy, while Marxian in theory, owes its active existence to Ferdinand Lassalle, one of those brilliant and daring geniuses who flash, in an hour of adventure, across the prosaic days of history.[2] He was pronounced a _Wunderkind_ by William von Humboldt; dashed his way through university routine; attracted the friendship of poets, philosophers, and politicians; was lionized by society; became a revolutionist in 1848, and was, at the age of twenty-three, indicted for inciting a mob of Düsseldorf workingmen to acts of violence. He defended himself in a brilliant speech which launched him fully into the campaign of the workingman.[3] Early in his career he volunteered to defend the cause of the Countess Hatzfeldt, whose unfaithful husband was squandering his estates and suffering her to live in want. Lassalle fought the case through thirty-six courts for nine years, and won an ample fortune for the countess, who became the main financial support of Lassalle's campaigns. After his first arrest, Lassalle was kept under vigilance by the government. But finally, through the interposition of distinguished friends, he was allowed to return to Berlin. There, in 1862, he delivered a series of addresses that soon brought him into conflict with the police. His defense in the court was published later under the title, _Science and the Workingman_. This he followed with a letter, _Might and Right_,[4] sent broadcast over the land.