clude
stringent laws for the prevention of the excessive exploitation of
female and child labor, and of children of school age. In this the
interests of the working class coincides with the interests of the
State, of humanity, in general, and of civilization. When we see the
State compelled to lower the minimum requirements for military
service--as happened several times during the last decades, the last
time in 1893, when the army was to be further increased--and we see such
lowering of the minimum requirements resorted to for the reason that, as
a result of degenerating effects of our economic system, the number of
young men unfit for military service becomes ever larger,--when we see
that, then, forsooth, all are interested in protective measures. The
ultimate aim must be to remove the ills, that progress--such as
machinery, improved means of production and the whole modern system of
labor--has called forth, while at the same time causing the enormous
advantages, that such progress is instinct with for man, and the still
greater advantages it is capable of, to accrue in full measure to all
the members of society, by means of a corresponding organization of
human labor.[129]

It is an absurdity and a crying wrong that the improvements and
conquests of civilization--the collective product of all--accrue to the
benefit of those alone who, in virtue of their material power, are able
to appropriate them to themselves, while, on the other hand, thousands
of diligent workingmen are assailed with fear and worry when they learn
that human genius has made yet another invention able to multiply many
fold the product of manual labor, and thereby opening to them the
prospect of being thrown as useless and superfluous upon the sidewalks.
Thus, that which should be greeted with universal joy becomes an object
of hostility, that in former years occasioned the storming of many a
factory and the demolition of many a new machine. A similar hostile
feeling exists to-day between man and woman as workers. This feeling
also is unnatural. The point, consequently, is to seek to establish a
social condition in which the _full equality of all without distinction
of sex shall be the norm of conduct_.

_The feat is feasible--the moment all the means of production become
the property of society; when collective labor, by the application of
all technical and scientific advantages and aids in the process of
production, reaches the highest degree