inated radicalism, but literally
revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His
first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German
theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a
beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the
entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an
extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his
economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth,
both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is
shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy,
and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the
one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the
question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit
parents.

During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon
almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps
over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and
morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed
openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann
stands a colossal figure before the world.

When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the
land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists,
"workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty
in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner
amusement? That is too much!"

Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be
brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It
was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder
in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE!

Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this
drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that
wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty,
hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest
the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the
purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the
oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in
depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia.
Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for
bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half
covered wit