he is becoming systematised. He
cannot rise, he is forced to be content and do his job. His health is
insured by groups of employers sharing the responsibility. If workers
get hurt too much or sick too much, the insurance syndicate begins to
lose money; hence safety devices are considered and sanitoria built to
prevent illness; and this German social insurance speeds individual
initiative to top speed. It makes the German worker a splendid
animal--and there is the danger.

"You know it's human nature to complain--progress is built upon
discomfort, contentment means stagnation. I could see the workers fixed
in their contented groove under the studied philanthropy of his
employers and ending as in the dumb-driven-cattle age of the Feudal
Barons."

"It strikes me," I said, "that the Socialist is of that type of Irishman
that's never happy unless there's a chance of a fight. You might at
least admit that many employers have hearts like other human beings.
There are many that recognise that profits are not everything."

"No doubt," he said, "but they're not in Germany. Prior to the war the
workers were moving close to a war with employers--the rise of Labor has
been steady and sure the world over. Why in your own country, Australia,
Labor already controls the Governments. It was coming to that in Europe.
The worker was climbing, climbing, all the time--organising,
organising--but against the increasing demand for labor the employers
had a powerful weapon in the invention of labor-saving machinery.

"Every day saw more and more of the work of the world taken up by
machinery. Did a labor union demand increased wages, then a machine was
devised to do the work with less assistance. In a return issued by the
U.S. Government, it was estimated that 4,500,000 factory machine workers
of that country were turning out products in quantities equal to the
hand labor of 45,000,000 men. That meant that 90 per cent. of the work
in factories was being done by machinery; that one man, with the help of
machines could produce ten times more than he needs. It was more acute
in Germany. In other words, to satisfy the wants of one man for one day,
a factory worker with a machine requires only one hour instead of the
ten he formerly worked. For whom was he doing the work of the remaining
nine hours? Why, for rulers, soldiers, and other parasites, who do not
work but have to live.

"When I was a worker in Essen I saw the set lives of the worke