The Socialism of Herr Bismarck

L’Égalité.
No. 7, 2 March 1880

The Socialism of Herr Bismarck

I. — The Customs Tariff

In the debate on the notorious law that outlawed the German socialists, Herr Bismarck declared that repression alone was not enough to crush socialism: that, in addition, measures were required to remedy the undeniable social drawbacks, to ensure the regularity of labour, to prevent industrial crises, and what not? These “positive” measures for social salvation he promised to propose. For, he said, when one has, like myself, directed the affairs of one’s country for seventeen years, one has the right to consider oneself a competent judge in matters of political economy; which is like saying that one need only have eaten potatoes for seventeen years to know agronomy thoroughly.

In any case, Herr Bismarck, this time, kept his word. He has endowed Germany with two great “social measures” and he is not yet finished.

The first was a customs tariff intended to secure for German industry the exclusive exploitation of the home market.

Until 1848, Germany had had no large-scale industry properly speaking. Handicraft labour predominated. Steam and machinery were the exception. In 1848 and 1849, having brought upon itself a shameful defeat on the political field through its cowardice, the German bourgeoisie consoled itself by launching with ardour into large-scale industry. The face of the country was rapidly transformed. Whoever had not seen Rhenish Prussia, Westphalia, royal Saxony, Upper Silesia, Berlin, the maritime towns since 1849, no longer recognised them in 1864. Steam and machinery had broken in everywhere. Large factories had for the most part replaced the small workshops. Steam vessels were gradually taking the place of sailing ships, first in the coastal trade, then in the transatlantic trade. Railways were multiplying; in the construction yards, in the coal and iron mines, an activity reigned of which the ponderous Germans had until then believed themselves incapable. Compared with the development that large-scale industry had taken in England and even in France, all this was still not much; but at last, it was a beginning. And besides, all this had been accomplished without any help from governments, without subsidies or export premiums, and under a customs tariff which, compared to the tariffs of other continental countries, could pass as strongly free-trading.

This industrial movement, let it be said in passing, did not fail to have the social consequences it has had everywhere. The German industrial workers, until then, had vegetated under conditions that savoured of the Middle Ages. In general, they had still had some chance of gradually transforming themselves into petty bourgeois, into master craftsmen, into owners of several handlooms, etc. Now all that disappeared. The workers, becoming the wage-labourers of large capitalists, began to form a permanent class, a genuine proletariat. But whoever says proletariat, says socialism. Moreover, there still remained a trace of the liberties that the workers had conquered on the barricades in 1848. Thanks to these two circumstances, German socialism, which before 1848 had had to confine itself to clandestine propaganda and a secret organisation whose members were few, could now unfold in broad daylight and penetrate the masses. Thus it is from 1863 that the resumption of the socialist agitation by Lassalle dates.

Then came the war of 1870, the peace of 1871 and the billions. If France was far from ruining herself by paying them, Germany was brought within an inch of her ruin by receiving them. Squandered with an open hand by a government of parvenus in a parvenu empire, the billions fell into the hands of high finance, which hastened to make them fructify on the Stock Exchange. The finest days of the Crédit mobilier were revived in Berlin. There was a race to found the most joint-stock or limited companies, banks, land-bank and mobilier credit institutions, companies for the construction of railways, of factories of every kind, of construction yards, companies for speculation in land and buildings, and other things, whose industrial exteriors were but the pretext for the most shameless jobbery. The so-called public needs of trade, communication, consumption, etc., served only as a cloak to cover the unbridled need that the wolves of the Stock Exchange felt to make the billions work as long as they had them in hand. For the rest, all this had been seen in Paris in the glorious days of the Péreires and the Foulds; it was the same jobbers who reappeared in Berlin under the names of Bleichroeder and Hansemann.

What had happened in Paris in 1867, what had happened many times in London and New York, did not fail to happen, in 1873, in Berlin: the enormous speculation ended in a general crash. Companies failed by the hundreds; the shares of those that held their ground became unsaleable; the rout was complete all along the line. But, to be able to job, the means of production and communication, the factories, railways, etc., whose shares had furnished the material for speculation, had had to be created. At the moment of the débâcle, it was found, therefore, that the public need that had served as pretext had been far exceeded; that in four years more railways, factories, mines, etc., had been created than the regular development of industry would have produced in a quarter of a century.

After the railways, of which we shall speak later, speculation had thrown itself principally upon the iron industry. The works had multiplied; more than one establishment had even been founded that eclipsed Le Creusot. Unfortunately, on the day of the crisis it turned out that there were no consumers for this gigantic production. The large iron-works companies found themselves face to face with bankruptcy. Being the good German patriots that they were, their directors demanded help from the government: protective import duties that would secure for them the exploitation of the home market against the competition of English iron. But if protective duties were demanded for iron, they could not be refused to other industries, nor even to agriculture. A noisy agitation for customs protection was therefore organised throughout Germany, an agitation that permitted Herr Bismarck to introduce a customs tariff intended to fulfil this aim. This tariff, enacted into law in the summer of 1879, is now in force.

But German industry, as it was, had always lived in the open air of free competition. Having come last, after that of England and France, it had had to confine itself to filling the small gaps that its predecessors had left it; to supplying, for the most part, articles too paltry for the English, too ugly for the French; fabrication on a small scale of products constantly changing, vile price and vile commodity. Let no one think that it is we who say this, it is the very terms of the official judgment on the German products exhibited at Philadelphia (1876), delivered by the official commissioner of the German government, Herr Reuleaux, a man of European scientific reputation.

Such an industry can only maintain itself on neutral markets as long as free trade reigns at home. If it is demanded that German fabrics, worked metals, machines sustain competition abroad, all that serves them as raw material, cotton, linen or silk yarn, raw iron, metal wire, must reach them at the same low price at which their foreign competitors buy them. Thus, one of two things. Either it is desired to continue exporting fabrics and metal industry products; then free trade will be required, at the risk of seeing these industries use materials drawn from abroad. Or it is desired to protect, by customs duties, spinning and the production of raw metals in Germany; then there will soon be an end to the possibility of exporting the products for which yarn and raw metal form the raw materials.

By protecting spinning and metallurgy through his famous tariff, Herr Bismarck destroys the last chance that German fabrics, worked metals, needles, machines had, until then, of finding an outlet abroad. But Germany, whose agriculture in the first half of the century produced a surplus for export, now cannot dispense with a supplement of foreign agricultural products. If Herr Bismarck forbids his industry to produce for export, with what will this import be paid for, and many others besides, which all the tariffs in the world will not prevent her from needing.

To resolve this question, nothing less was required than the genius of Herr Bismarck combined with that of his Stock Exchange friends and advisers. Here is how it is done:

Take iron. The period of speculation and feverish production has endowed Germany with two establishments (Union de Dortmund and Laurahütte) each of which alone suffices to produce what is needed on average for the entire consumption of the country. Then there is the gigantic establishment of Krupp at Essen, another similar one at Bochum, then an infinity of smaller ones. So that the consumption of iron at home is covered three or four times over at least. One would say that this is a situation imperiously demanding the most unlimited free trade, alone capable of securing an outlet for this enormous surplus of production. One would say so, but that is not the opinion of those concerned. As there are at most a dozen establishments that count and that dominate the others, what the Americans call a ring is formed: an association for the maintenance of prices at home and for the regulation of export.

As soon as there is an auction for rails or other products of their works, the Committee designates, in turn, the member to whom the contract is to fall, and fixes the price at which he is to accept it. The other confederates make offers at a higher price, likewise agreed upon in advance. So that all competition ceases, there is absolute monopoly. The same for export. To ensure the execution of this plan, each member of the ring deposits, in the hands of the Committee, a blank bill of 125,000 francs to be put into circulation and presented for payment as soon as the signatory breaks his engagement. In this way, the monopoly price extorted from German consumers will allow the works to sell, abroad, their surplus of production at prices that even the English refuse — and the German philistine (who, for the rest, deserves it) pays the piper. That is how German export becomes possible again, thanks to the very protective duties which, in the eyes of the vulgar public, seem to destroy it.

You want examples? Last year, an Italian railway company which we could name needed 30,000 or 40,000 tonnes (of 1,000 kilogrammes) of rails. After long negotiations, an English works took 10,000; the rest was taken in delivery, at a price refused in England, by the Union of Dortmund. An English competitor, on being asked why he could not do better than the German establishment, replied: Who in the world can compete against a bankrupt?

In Scotland, a railway bridge is to be built across an arm of the sea near Edinburgh. The bridge requires 10,000 tonnes of Bessemer steel. Who accepts the lowest price, who beats all his competitors, and this on the native soil itself of the great iron industry, in England? A German, Bismarck’s protégé in more than one respect, Herr Krupp of Essen, the “king of cannon”.

So much for iron. It goes without saying that this fine system can only postpone for a few years the inevitable bankruptcy of these great conspiring establishments. Meanwhile, let other industries imitate them, and they will ruin—not foreign competition, but their own country. One would think one was living in a land of madmen; yet all the facts related above are taken from the free-trade bourgeois newspapers of Germany itself. To organise the demolition of German industry under the pretext of protecting it—are they then wrong, those German socialists who have been repeating for years that Herr Bismarck is working for socialism as if he were paid by them?

L’Égalité.  
Nr. 10, 24. März 1880

II. — The State Railways.

From 1869 to 1873, during the rising tide of Berlin speculation, two establishments, at times hostile, at times allied, shared the domination of the Bourse; the Diskontogesellschaft and the Bleichröder bank. They were, so to speak, the Péreires and the Mirés of Berlin. Speculation turning primarily on railways, these two banks conceived the idea of indirectly making themselves masters of most of the great lines already existing or to be built. By buying and retaining a certain number of the shares of each, one would control their boards of directors; the shares themselves would serve as a deposit for loans by means of which new shares would be bought, and so on. Pure repetition, one sees, of the ingenious little operation which at first carried the success of the two Péreires to its height, and which finally ended in the crisis of the Crédit Mobilier that is well known. The same success crowned the Berlin Péreires at the beginning.

In 1873 the crisis came. Our two banks found themselves greatly embarrassed by their piles of railway shares, from which it was no longer possible to make the swallowed millions disgorge. The plan to subjugate the railway companies had failed. So they changed front, they tried to sell them to the State. The plan to concentrate all the railways in the hand of the imperial government has its origin, not in the social salvation of the country, but in the individual salvation of two insolvent banks.

The execution of the plan was not too difficult. They had “interested” in the new companies a great many members of parliament, where they thus dominated the National Liberal and moderate Conservative parties, i.e., the majority. High officials of the Empire, Prussian ministers had had a hand in the jobbery by means of which these companies had been founded. In the last resort, Bleichröder was Herr Bismarck’s banker and financial factotum. Means were therefore not lacking.

Meanwhile, for the sale of the railways to the Empire to be worthwhile, the price of the shares had to be raised. Therefore, in 1873, an “Imperial Railway Bureau” was created; its head, a renowned jobber, at one stroke raised the tariffs of all the German railways by 20 per cent; this was supposed to increase the net revenue and consequently also the value of the shares by about 35 per cent. That was the only measure this gentleman took; that was the only one for which he had accepted his office; so he gave it up shortly afterwards.

In the meantime, they had succeeded in making the project palatable to Bismarck. But the small kingdoms resisted; the Federal Council refused outright. New change of front: it was resolved that Prussia should first buy all Prussian railways, subject to ceding them, if need be, to the Empire.

Besides, there was, for the imperial government, another hidden motive which made it desire the acquisition of the railways. And this is connected with the French milliards.

Out of these milliards, considerable sums had been retained to form three “imperial funds”, one for the construction of a parliament building, the second for fortresses, the third finally for the invalids of the three latest wars. The total amounted to 926 million francs.

Of these three funds, the most important and at the same time the most curious was that for the invalids. It was destined to eat itself up; that is to say, that at the time when the last of these invalids would have died and the fund as well, capital and income, would have disappeared. A fund that consumes itself—one would again say that it would take madmen to invent it. But they were no madmen; it was the jobbers of the Diskontogesellschaft who had invented it, and for a reason. Therefore it took almost a year to get the idea accepted by the government.

Nevertheless it appeared to our stock-jobbers that this fund would not eat itself up quickly enough. Moreover, they deemed it advisable to endow the two other funds with the same fine quality of eating themselves up. The means was simple. Even before a law had fixed the nature of the securities in which these funds were to be invested, a commercial establishment belonging to the Prussian government was instructed to purchase suitable securities. This establishment applied to the Diskontogesellschaft which sold, for the three imperial funds, 300 millions of francs of railway shares, then unsaleable, and which we could specify.

Among these shares were 120 millions of Magdeburg-Halberstadt and amalgamated lines, a railway practically in bankruptcy, which had served to secure enormous profits for the jobbers, but which had hardly any chance of yielding anything whatever to the shareholders. This is understandable when one learns that the board of directors issued shares to the value of 16 million to cover the construction costs of three branch lines, and that this money has completely disappeared without even a start having been made on building these lines. And the invalids’ fund boasts of possessing a good number of these shares of non-existing railways.

The acquisition of these lines by the Prussian State would legalise at one stroke the purchase of their shares by the Empire; it would give them a certain real value. That was the interest which the imperial government had in this affair. Thus, the line in question here was among the first whose purchase was proposed by the Prussian government and ratified by the Chambers.

The price granted to the shareholders by the State was well above the real value of even the good lines. This is proved by the constant rise in their shares as soon as the resolution to buy them and especially as soon as the conditions of sale were known. Two great lines, whose shares were worth 103 and 108 respectively in December 1878, have since been bought by the State; today they are quoted at 148 and 158. Thus, nothing was more difficult for the shareholders than to hide their joy while they haggled.

It goes without saying that this rise brought luck above all to the great Berlin stock-jobbers who were in the secret of the government’s intentions. The Bourse, still rather depressed in the spring of 1879, came to life again. Before definitively parting with their dear shares, the speculators used them to organise a new orgy of stock-jobbing.

You see: the German Empire is just as completely under the yoke of the Bourse as the French Empire was in its day. It is the stock-jobbers who prepare the plans which the government must execute—for the profit of their pockets. What is more, Germany has this advantage, which the Bonapartist Empire lacked: if the imperial government meets with resistance from the petty princes, it transforms itself into the Prussian government which will certainly meet with none from its chambers, veritable branch establishments of the Bourse.

But what? Did not the General Council of the International already say, immediately after the war of 1870: You, Herr Bismarck, have overthrown the Bonapartist regime in France only to re-establish it in your own country!

Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx  
The Poverty of Philosophy. Foreword of 1880

I Karl Marx’s “Poverty of Philosophy” appeared in 1847 shortly after Proudhon’s Economic Contradictions, which bore the subtitle “Philosophy of Poverty”. What has decided us to reprint this work, the original edition of which is out of print, is that it contains the seeds of the theory developed after twenty years’ work in Capital. The reading of the Poverty of Philosophy and of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published by Marx and Engels in 1848, may therefore serve as an introduction to the study of Capital and of the works of other modern socialists, who, like Lassalle, have drawn their ideas from them. By authorising this republication in our organ, Marx wished to give us a proof of his sympathy.

A few words must still be said on the trenchant tone of this polemic against Proudhon. On the one hand, Proudhon, while attacking the official economists, such as Dunoyer, Blanqui the Academician, and the whole clique of the Journal des Économistes, knew how to tickle their self-esteem, at the same time as he poured coarse insult upon the utopian socialists and communists whom Marx honoured as precursors of modern socialism. On the other hand, to clear the way for critical and materialist socialism, which aims only at making the real, historical development of social production intelligible, it was necessary to make a sharp break with ideological economy, of which Proudhon, without knowing it, was the last incarnation.

Moreover, in an article published in the Berlin Social-Demokrat after Proudhon’s death, Marx did justice to the great qualities of that fighter, to his manly attitude after the June days of 1848, and to his talent as a political writer.

Karl Marx  
Questionnaire for Workers

III. 1)

1) Which is your branch of industry?

2) Is the concern in which you work carried on by private capitalists or by a jointstock company? Give the names of the private employer or the manager of the company.

3) State the number of persons employed.

4) State their sex and age.

5) Which is the lowest age at which children—male or female—are admitted?

6) State the number of overlookers and other employés who are not common wage-labourers.

7) Are apprentices employed and how many?

8) Are there besides the usual and regularly employed workmen others called in from abroad at certain seasons?

9) Is your master’s business exclusively or mainly carried on for local customers, for the general home market, or for export to foreign countries?

10) Is the place of work rural or townish?
11) If your industry is carried on in a country place, does it form your main subsistence or is it accessory to, or combined with, agriculture?
12) Is the work entirely or mainly handwork or machine work?
13) State the division of labour in the business where you are employed.
14) Is steam power employed as the motive power?
15) State the number of sets of working rooms in which the different parts of the business are carried on and describe that part of the industrial process in which you are employed, not only technically, but with respect to the muscular and nervous strain it imposes and its general effects upon the health of the operative.
16) Describe the sanitary state of the place of work in regard to size (the space left for each operative), ventilation, temperature, whitewashing, water-closets, general cleanliness, noise of machinery, dust, dampness, etc.
17) Is there any supervision, governmental or municipal, over the sanitary state of the working place?
18) Are there any peculiar deleterious influences in your business which breed specific diseases amongst the workmen?
19) Is the working place overcrowded with machinery?
20) Are the motive power, the machinery of transmission and the working machinery so secured as to prevent bodily harm to the workmen?
21) State the main accidents to limb and life of the operatives during your personal experience.
22) If working in a mine, state the precautionary measures taken by your employer to secure ventilation and to prevent explosions and other dangerous accidents.
23) If working in a metal manufacture, chemical manufacture, for railways or other specially perilous industry, state whether precautionary measures are taken by your employer.
24) What means of illumination, gaslight, petroleum, etc. are applied in your working place?
25) Are there sufficient means of escape within and outside of the working buildings in case of fire?
26) In case of an accident, is the employer legally bound to indemnify the sufferer or his family?
27) If not, does he indemnify anyhow the parties that have come to grief in the work of enriching him?
28) Does there exist any medical attendance at your working place?
29) If you work at home, state the condition of your working room; whether you use only tools or also little machines; whether you employ your wife and children or other helpmates, adults or children, male or female; whether you work for private customers or for an employer; whether you engage directly with him or through middlemen.

I

1) State the usual daily hours of work and the usual number of working days in the week.
2) State the number of holidays during the year.
3) Which are the interruptions of the working day?
4) Are mealtimes fixed at certain regular intervals or are they irregularly taken? Are they taken in or outside of the building?
5) Is work performed during mealtimes?
6) If steam power is employed, state the actual time of starting and stopping it.
7) Is there nightwork?
8) State the working time of children and young persons under 16 years of age.
9) Do different sets of children and young persons relieve each other during the working day?
10) Are such legislative enactments as exist for children’s labour enforced by the government and strictly carried out by the employers?
11) Do there exist any schools for children and young persons engaged in your industry? If so, at what hours of the day are the children in school? What are they taught?
12) Where the work is continued night and day, what shifting system—relays of one set of workmen by another—is employed?
13) To what extent are the usual hours of work lengthened during times of business pressure?
14) Is the cleansing of machinery performed by an extra number of workmen, hired to that purpose, or is it gratuitously done by the operatives, employed at the machines, during their normal working day?
15) Which are the regulations and penalties with regard to the exact attendance of workmen at the time when the day’s work begins or when it recommences after meals?
16) How much time is daily lost to you by going from home to the working place and by returning home from the working place?

III

1) Which is the mode of engagement with your master? Are you engaged daily, weekly, monthly, etc.?
2) Which is the term stipulated for your receiving or giving notice of leave?
3) In case of breach of contract, if the master be the defaulter, which penalties does he incur?
4) If the workman be the defaulter, which penalties does he incur?
5) If apprentices are employed, state the terms of their contract.
6) Is your occupation regular or irregular?
7) Is your branch of industry mainly carried on in certain seasons or is work, in ordinary times, more or less evenly distributed over the whole year?
8) If your work is bound to certain seasons, how do you live in the interval?
9) Are your wages calculated by time or by piece work?
10) If by time, are they reckoned by the single hour or by the whole working day?
11) Are extra wages—and which—paid in case of overtime?
12) If your wages are paid by the piece, state the method of fixing them; if you be employed in industries where the mass of the work done is estimated by measurement or by weight (as for instance in coalmines), are there trickeries recurred to by your master and his underlings in order to defraud you of part of your earnings?
13) If you are paid by piece work, is the quality of the article made a pretext for fraudulent deduction from wages?
14) Whether calculated by time or by piece work, at what terms are your wages paid? In other words how long a credit must you give to your master before receiving pay for work done? Is it paid after the lapse of a week, a month, etc.?
15) Have you found that such delay in the payment of wages obliges you to frequently recur to the pawnshops, paying there high interest, and denuding you of things you ought to have at your command, or to take credit from shopkeepers, and, by becoming their debtors, to become their prey?
16) Are the wages paid directly by the employer or through a middleman, “marchandeur”, etc.?
17) If the wages are paid through “marchandeurs” or other middlemen, state the terms of your engagement.
18) State the daily or weekly amount of your wages in money.
19) State the wages for the same time of the women and children cooperating with you in the same workshop.
20) State the highest and lowest day wages during last month.
21) State the highest and lowest piece wages during last month.
22) State your actual earnings during the same time, and if you have a family, also those of your wife and children.
23) Are the wages paid in money or partly otherwise?
24) If you rent your house accommodation from your employer, state on what terms. Does he deduct the houserent from your wages?
25) State the price of your necessaries, such as:
a) rent of your dwelling and the term for which it is rented; the number of rooms composing it; for how many individuals; repairs and insurance; purchase and upkeep of furniture; bedding; heating, lighting, water, etc.
b) food: bread, meat, vegetables (potatoes, etc.); dairy produce, eggs, fish; butter, oil, lard; sugar, salt, spices; coffee, tea, chicory; beer, cider, wine, etc.; tobacco.
c) clothing (for parents and children); washing; hygiene, baths, soap, etc.
d) sundry expenses such as postage, loans and pawnshop charges, children’s school fees, apprenticeship fees, purchase of newspapers, books, etc. Contributions to friendly societies, for strikes, combinations, trade unions, etc.
e) the expenses, if any, occasioned by the exercise of your trade.
f) taxes.
26) Try to arrange in form of a budget your weekly and yearly income (and that of your family, if you have one) and your weekly and yearly expense.
27) Have you remarked during your personal experience a greater rising in the necessaries of life (such as houserent, price of food, etc.) than in that of wages?
28) State changes in the rate of wages for as long a time as you can remember.
29) State fall of wages during the times of stagnation or crisis.
30) State rise of wages in so-called times of prosperity.
31) State interruption of work through change of fashion, and partial or general crises.
32) State the changes in the price of the articles you produce or the services you render as compared with the simultaneous changes or permanency of your wages.
33) Have in the time of your experience workmen been displaced by the introduction of machines or other improvements?
34) Has with the development of machinery and the productive power of labour the intensity and the duration of labour decreased or increased?
35) Are you aware of any rise of wages in consequence of improved production?
36) Have you ever known instances wherein an ordinary operative was enabled to retire, at 50 years of age, on money earned as a wages-labourer?
37) What is the number of years for which, in your branch of industry, an operative of average health can continue his work?

IV

1) Do trade unions exist in your trade, and how are they managed?
2) How many strikes have occurred in your trade during your personal experience?
3) How long did those strikes last?
4) Were they partial or general?
5) Was their purpose an increase of wages or resistance to the reduction of the same; or did they relate to the length of the working day; or did they arise from any other motive?
6) What was their result?
7) Does your trade support the strikes of workmen belonging to other trades?
8) State the rules and the penalties for breach of them, established by your master for the government of his wages-labourers.
9) Do there exist combinations between the masters for imposing upon the workmen reduction of wages, increase of the working day, interference with strikes, and generally for enforcing their behests upon the working class?
10) Has, in your experience, the government abused the public force in the service of the masters against their men?
11) Has the same government, in your experience, ever interfered for the men against the encroachments and unlawful combinations of the masters?
12) Does the same government enforce the factory laws, as far as they exist, against the masters? Do its inspectors—if there are any—strictly fulfil their duties?
13) Do there exist in your workshop or your trade societies for mutual relief and assistance in cases of accidents, sickness, death, temporary incapacity for work, old age, etc.?
14) Is the membership of such societies voluntary or compulsory? Are their funds exclusively under the control of the workmen?
15) If the contributions to such funds are compulsory and under the control of the master, does he deduct the contributions from the wages; does he pay interest for them? have the working men giving or receiving leave their instalments returned?
16) Are there workingmen’s cooperative enterprises in your department of industry? How are they managed? Do they also employ extraneous operatives for wages in the same way as the capitalists do?
17) Are there in your trade workshops where part of the remuneration of the operatives is paid in kind?
18) Are there any other important matters you wish to mention?

In any cooperative enterprise is part of the wage of the operatives paid under the name of wages and another part in so-called shares in the master’s profit? Compare the entire income of those operatives with that of others where there does not exist this so-called partnership. State the engagements of | workmen living under this régime. State whether they are allowed to participate in strikes etc. or whether they are only permitted to be the obedient “subjects” of their master. Which is the general physical, intellectual and moral condition of workingmen and working women in your branch of trade? |

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