increase, however, does not equal the
full third which the State is to bear, but only the difference between
what at present the county associations are obliged to do for the
injured workingmen, and what these men will receive in future. You
see, it is purely a question of improving the lot of the laboring man.
This difference, therefore, is the only new charge on the State, with
which you have to reckon. And you will have to ask yourselves: "Is the
advantage gained worth this difference,--when we aim to procure for
the laborer who has been injured a better and more adequate support,
and relieve him of the necessity of having to fight for his right in
court, and when he will receive without delay the moderate stipend
which the State decrees?" I feel like answering the question with a
strong affirmative.

Our present poor laws keep the injured laboring man from starvation.
According to law, at least, nobody need starve. Whether in reality
this never happens I do not know. But this is not enough in order to
let the men look contentedly into the future and to their own old age.
The present bill intends to keep the sense of human dignity alive
which even the poorest German should enjoy, if I have my way. He
should feel that he is no mere eleemosynary, but that he possesses a
fund which is his very own. No one shall have the right to dispose of
it, or to take it from him, however poor he may be. This fund will
open for him many a door, which otherwise will remain closed to him
and it will secure for him better treatment in the house where he has
been received, because when he leaves he can take away with him
whatever contributions he has been making to the household expenses.

If you have ever personally investigated the conditions of the poor in
our large cities, or of the village paupers in the country, you have
been able to observe the wretched treatment which the poor
occasionally receive even in the best managed communities, especially
if they are physically weak or crippled. This happens in the houses of
their stepmothers, or relatives of any kind, yes also in those of
their nearest of kin. Knowing this, are you not obliged to confess
that every healthy laboring man, who sees such things, must say to
himself: "Is it not terrible that a man is thus degraded in the house
which he used to inhabit as master and that his neighbor's dog is not
worse off than he?" Such things do happen. What protection is there
for a poor c