Mr. Berger's bill was objected to by New York Socialists on the ground that the old parties could be expected to give a more liberal bill in the near future, and that it would then be difficult to explain the narrower Socialist position. Mr. Ghent answered that nowhere had such a liberal measure been enacted. To this the _Volkszeitung_ remarked that there is a tremendous difference between a bill that owes its origin to a capitalist government and one that comes from a Socialist representative of the working class: "The former sets up a minimum while the latter must demand the maximum." Finally, the _New York Local_ of the Socialist Party resolved: "That we request the National Executive Committee to resolve that Comrade Berger shall, before introducing any bill, submit it to secure its approval by the National Executive Committee." Mr. Berger's maiden speech also summed up excellently the general policy of Socialist "reformism." "When the white man is sick or when he dies," he said, "the employer usually loses nothing." Mr. Berger does not understand that, in modern countries, _employers as a class_ are seeing that the _laborers as a class_ are, after all, their chief asset: and are therefore organizing to care for them through governmental action, as working animals, even more systematically and infinitely more scientifically than slaves were ever cared for. He is exhausting his efforts to persuade, or perhaps he would say to compel, the government to the very action that the interests of its capitalist masters most strongly demand. Curiously enough, Mr. Berger expressed the "reformist," the revolutionary, and the State capitalist principle in this same speech, without being in the least troubled with the contradictions. He spoke of industrial crises, irregular employment and unemployment as if they were permanent features of capitalism:-- "These new inventions, machines, improvements, and labor devices, displace human labor and steadily increase the army of unemployed, who, starved and frantic, are ever ready to take the places of those who have work, thereby still further depressing the labor market." The collectivist capitalists have already set themselves aggressively to work to abolish unemployment, to make employment regular, to connect the worker that needs a job with the job that needs a worker, and to put an end to industrial crises, and with every promise of success. Immediately afterward, Mr. Berger made a correct statement of the Socialist position:-- "The average of wages, the certainty of employment, the social privileges, and the independence of the wage-earning and agricultural population, _when compared with the increase of wealth and social production_, are steadily and rapidly decreasing."