umpkin the city is an Eldorado and a lordly pleasure-house. In truth,
he is much better off in it than in the stagnant life of the country.
In the city he sees comfort on every hand, with possibilities of
enjoyment of every kind, and if he does not soon get a share of the
good things going he grows discontented and turns Socialist. In the
city, too, he learns to think and compare, he perceives the
distinction of classes and notices that certain classes have open to
them careers from which he is excluded. Then there is the apparently
inevitable antagonism between labour and capital, between the employer
and employed, which drives the worker to Social Democracy, as offering
the prospect of his becoming his own master and enjoying the whole
fruits of his labour. He may not know Matthew Arnold's "Sick King in
Bokhara," but he would endorse Arnold's lines:--
"And these all, for a lord
Eat not the fruit of their own hands;
Which is the heaviest of all plagues
To that man's mind, who understands."
But whatever its causes, Social Democracy is one of the most curious
and anomalous societies extant. In a country which worships order, it
calls for absolute disorder. A revolutionary movement, it anxiously
avoids revolution. It is a magnificent organization for no apparent
practical, direct, or immediate purpose. Proclaiming the protection of
the law and enjoying the blessing of efficient government, it yet
refuses to vote the budget to pay for them. It supports a large
parliamentary party without any clear or consistent parliamentary
policy in internal or external affairs, unless to be "agin the
Government" is a policy. And lastly, if some of its economic demands
are justifiable, and have in several respects been satisfied by modern
legislation, its fundamental doctrine, the basis of the entire
edifice, is a wild hallucination, sickening to common sense, and
completely out of harmony with the progressive economic development of
all nations, including its own.
In conclusion, it may be added that the social side of the Social
Democracy is perhaps too often unrecognized or ignored by the foreign
observer. Life for the poorer classes in Germany is apt to be more
monotonous and dull than for the poorer classes of any country which
nature has blessed with more fertility, more sunshine, more diversity
of hill and dale, and where people are more mutually sociable and
accommodating. Social Democracy offers somethi
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