ing
economic development of the United States is admitted, the forecast,
though cautiously advanced, that Germany may take the lead in the
accomplishment of the pending Social Revolution, is justified neither by
her economic nor her social development, least of all by her geographic
location.

As to her economic development, Germany has made rapid and long strides
during the last twenty years; so rapid and so long that the progress has
caused the Socialists of Germany, in more instances than one, to
realize--and to say so--that, what with her own progress, and with
outside circumstances, Germany was distancing England economically. This
is true. But the same reason that argues, and correctly argues, the
economic scepter off the hands of England places it, not in those of
Germany, but in the hands of the United States.

As to her social development, Germany is almost half a revolutionary
cycle behind. Her own bourgeois revolution was but half achieved.
Without entering upon a long list of specifications, it is enough to
indicate the fact that Germany is still quite extensively feudal in
order to suggest to the mind robust feudal boulders, left untouched by
the capitalist revolution, and strewing, aye, obstructing the path of
the Socialist Movement in that country. The social phenomenon has been
seen of an oppressed class skipping an intermediary stage of vassalage,
and entering, at one bound, upon one higher up. It happened, for
instance, with our negroes here in America. Without first stepping off
at serfdom, they leaped from chattel slavery to wage slavery. What
happened once may happen again. But in the instance cited and all the
others that we can call to mind, it happened through outside
intervention. Can Germany perform the same feat alone, unaided? Do
events point in that direction? Or do they rather point in the direction
that the work, now being realized there as demanding immediate
attention, and alone possible and practicable, is the completion of the
capitalist revolution, first of all?

But even discounting both these objections--granting that both in point
of economic and of social development Germany were ripe for the
Socialist Revolution--her geographic location prevents her leadership.
No one single State of the forty-four of the Union, not even the Empire
State of New York, however ripe herself, could lead in the overthrow of
capitalist rule in America unless the bulk of her sister States were
thems