The noble striving to hasten to the aid of suffering humanity, 
which, to the credit of the 19th century, manifests itself 
everywhere at the present time, has not yet in Germany a central 
press organ giving publicity on the one hand to the evils which 
must be remedied, and on the other to the proposed or already 
implemented measures for their redress, and casting light on their 
success or failure. We hereby submit to the public the first issue of 
such an organ, and hope that every friend of humanity will feel 
prompted to support the Gesellschaftsspiegel with appropriate 
reports. 

In order to discover and apply the means for the radical and 
permanent elimination of the various and moreover artificially 
concealed evils in our social life, it is necessary first of all to find 
out what these evils are. For this reason the Gesellschaftsspiegel will 
cite before its forum all the maladies of the social body; it will 
publish general descriptions, monographs, statistical items, and 
individual typical cases serving to set the social relations of all the 
classes in their true light and to help the associations which are 
being formed to eliminate the social evils; it will stand exclusively 
on the ground of fact, and carry only facts and arguments based 
directly on facts, arguments the conclusions from which are also 
obvious facts. 

The condition of the working classes will be first and foremost the 
object of our attention, for their condition is the most glaring of 
all evils in present-day civilised society. Descriptions, statistical 
data, individual striking facts from all parts of Germany, especially 
from those in which unusual distress prevails, will be welcome. 
Also reports on the numerical relation of the needy classes, the 


672 Appendices 


propertyless classes in general, to the propertied; on the growth of 
pauperism, and so on. 

We shall include in the range of our survey the spiritual, 
intellectual and moral condition of the workers as well as their 
physical condition, and shall readily accept reports on the state of 
their health insofar as it is determined by the social conditions, 
and on the state of education and morality of the proletarians. 
Statistics on crime and prostitution, especially when accompanied 
by comparison of different periods of time, localities or living 
conditions, will also be given close attention. 

The most fruitful fields for the purposes of the Gesellschafts- 
Spiegel in this respect are: 

1) The large towns, which cannot exist without a numerous 
propertyless class crowded together in a small area. Besides the 
usual consequences which the absence of property entails 
everywhere, we shall have to consider here the effect which this 
centralisation of the population has on the physical, intellectual, 
and moral condition of the working classes. Descriptions, statisti- 
cal, medical, and other reports along with individual facts casting 
light on the “disreputable areas”, mostly shrouded in darkness, of 
our towns, large and small, will be welcome. 

2) The industrial and factory districts, whose existence also requires 
a numerous propertyless class. In this respect we wish to draw the 
attention of our contributors particularly to the following points: 

(a) The nature of work in itself: individual kinds of work which 
owing to their character or to the unsuitable way in which they are 
carried out or to the excessively long working hours are injurious 
to health; child and woman labour in factories and its conse- 
quences; neglect of working and non-working children and wives of 
proletarians, breaking up of the family, supplanting of adult male 
labour by women and children, accidents caused by machinery, 
and so on. 

(b) Dependence of the workers on their employers. In respect of this 
point we shall make it our duty to represent the interests of the 
defenceless working class against the power and especially against 
the unfortunately too frequent encroachments of the capitalists. 
We shall pitilessly hold up for public censure every single case of 
oppression of workers and shall be particularly grateful to our 
correspondents for most accurate reports on this subject giving 
names, places and dates. If in factories working hours are too long 
or night work is resorted to, if workers are obliged to clean ma- 
chines in their spare time, if factory-owners are brutal or 
tyrannical towards their workers, lay down tyrannical working 


Appendices 673 


regulations, pay wages in goods instead of money—we shall 
especially fight this infamous truck system* wherever and in 
whatever forms or disguises it occurs—if workers are forced to 
work in unhealthy premises or to live in unsatisfactory lodgings 
belonging to the factory-owner—in a word, whenever any act of 
injustice is committed by the capitalists against the workers, we ask 
everybody who is in a position to do so to inform us on this score 
as soon and as exactly as possible. We want to make known to the 
public in the most exact and shameful details each and every 
violation of the laws that have been issued to protect the poor 
from the rich. Only in this way can the laws, which have so far 
existed mostly on paper, be made really effective. 

(c) Neglect of the workers by society in general when, as a result of 
competition, the introduction of more efficient machinery, the em- 
ployment of women and children, the fluctuations of trade and 
foreign competition the workers are deprived of employment, or 
when due to illness, injury or old age they are unable to work, as 
well as all deteriorations in the workers’ living conditions due to 
lowering of wages. 

Besides the propertyless, we shall also describe the propertied class 
in its outer and inner conditions. We shall have to prove with facts 
that free competition between private businessmen without organisation of 
labour and commerce impoverishes the middle class, concentrating 
property in the hands of a few and thus indirectly restoring 
the monopoly; that the parcelling out of landed property ruins the 
small landowner and indirectly restores big landed property; that 
the competitive struggle, in which we are all being involved, 
undermines the foundations of society and demoralises the whole of society 
by brutal self-interest. 

The Gesellschaftsspiegel will not confine itself to describing mate- 
rial misery, or spiritual and moral misery only when it goes hand 
in hand with the former; on the contrary, it will describe misery in 
all its forms, and therefore also the misery of the higher classes; 
and in this description it will not confine itself to statistical articles 
and accounts of real facts taken from life; it will open its columns 
to fiction in prose and in verse, but only to such as depicts life 
truly. Descriptions based on life will be no less welcome than 
descriptions taken from life. 

Let those to whom such a pitiless exposure of the condition of our 
industrial as well as agricultural and other population—a condi- 
tion which has so far been for the most part hypocritically glossed 


4 The words “truck system” are in English in the original.— Ed. 


674 Appendices 


over or concealed—those to whom so frank a presentation of our 
entire social condition as the one the Gesellschaftsspiegel intends to 
give causes too great head and heartache for them to be 
favourably disposed to our undertaking, let them reflect that in 
the long run the courage required to look an evil in the face and 
the calm derived from a clear knowledge of things have a more 
beneficial effect on mind and heart than the cowardly idealising 
sentimentality which seeks consolation from disconsolate reality in 
the falsehood of its ideal, which neither exists nor can exist because it 
is based on illusions! Such idealising sentimentality indeed displays 
hypocritical sympathy for the sufferings of humanity when these 
eventually develop into a political scandal—as we saw all the 
newspapers and journals overflowing with so-called socialism in 
connection with the Silesian disturbances**’/—but as soon as the 
disturbances are over, it quietly lets the poor go on starving. 

Finally, the Gesellschaftsspiegel will carry reports on the efforts 
being made to remedy the social evils and the disorders of society, 
that is, on the one hand, the work of the associations now being 
formed,**8 and on the other, the coercive measures which hold some 
evils in check, but only to produce others. These include the 
pernicious effects of the degrading sentences which place a criminal 
for ever outside the pale of society, of intercourse with hardened 
criminals in ordinary prisons and of solitary confinement in 
Pennsylvania-type prisons, the numerous murders resulting from 
the laws against poaching; the state and operation of the poor laws 
and the sanitary police; the typical crimes, and so on. 

In appealing to all who are in a position to send us reports on 
the above-mentioned and similar points to be laid before the 
forum of the Gesellschaftsspiegel, in particular to priests, school- 
teachers, doctors and officials, for friendly co-operation in the 
interest of the cause, we guarantee that whenever it is desired 
names will be kept secret and we shall hold our correspondents 
responsible only for the correctness of the facts of which they inform us. 
The editorial board assumes the responsibility for publication.