Part 25 (1/2)
This general want also drives women and girls in increasing numbers into the arms of prost.i.tution. Demoralization and crime are heaped up, and a.s.sume the most manifold forms. The only thing that prospers is the jails, penitentiaries and so-called houses of correction, no longer able to accommodate the ma.s.s that is sent to them. The crimes of all sorts and their increase are intimately connected with the economic state of society--a fact, however, that the latter will not have. Like the ostrich, it sticks its head in the sand, to avoid having to admit the incriminating state of things, and it lies to the point of deceiving itself into the belief that the fault lies with the laziness of the workingmen, with their love of pleasure, and with their irreligiousness.
This is a self-deception of the most dangerous, or a hypocrisy of the most repulsive, sort. The more unfavorable the state of society is for the majority, all the more numerous and serious are the crimes committed. The struggle for existence a.s.sumes its rudest and most violent aspect: it transfers man into conditions where each sees a mortal enemy in the other. The social bonds become looser every day.[161]
The ruling cla.s.ses, who do not probe matters to the bottom, or do not like to, seek to meet the evil after their own fas.h.i.+on. If poverty and want, and, as a result therefrom, demoralization and crime increase, the source of the evil is not searched after, so that it may be stopped; no; the products of the conditions are punished. The more gigantic the evils grow, and the numbers of evil-doers multiply in proportion, proportionately severe penalties and persecutions are deemed necessary.
It is sought to drive out the devil with Beelzebub. Prof. Haeckel also considers it proper to proceed against criminals with the severest punishments possible, and that capital punishment, in particular, be stringently applied.[162] By this stand the Professor places himself in sweet accord with the re-actionists of all shades, who otherwise are mortally opposed to him. Haeckel is of the opinion that incorrigible scape-graces must be uprooted like weeds that take from plants light, air and s.p.a.ce. Had Haeckel turned his mind slightly toward social, instead of engaging it wholly with natural science, he would know that these criminals could, in most instances, be transformed into useful members of human society, provided society offered them the requisite conditions of existence. He would also find that the annihilation of individual criminals or the rendering of them harmless, prevents as little the commission of fresh crimes in society, as the removal of weeds on a field would prevent their returning if the roots and seeds are not likewise destroyed. Absolutely to prevent the forming of harmful organisms in Nature is a feat man never will be able to achieve but _to so improve his own social system, a system produced by himself, that it may afford favorable conditions of life for all, and furnish to each equal freedom to unfold, to the end that they no longer need suffer hunger, or be driven to satisfy their desire for property, or their ambition at the expense of others--that is possible_. Let the cause of the crimes be studied, and let that be removed; then will the crimes themselves be wiped out.[163]
Those who would remove crimes by removing the causes thereof, cannot, as a matter of course, sympathize with a plan of brutal suppression. They cannot prevent society from protecting itself after its own fas.h.i.+on against the criminals, whom it cannot allow a free hand; but we demand all the more urgently the radical reformation of society, i. e., the removal of the causes of crime.
The connection between social conditions, on the one hand, and evildoing and crimes, on the other, has been frequently established by statisticians and sociologists. One of the misdemeanors nearest at hand--one that, all Christian charitable tenets to the contrary notwithstanding, modern society regards as a misdemeanor--is begging, especially during hard times. On that subject, the statistics of the Kingdom of Saxony inform us that, in the measure in which the last industrial crisis increased--a crisis that began in Germany in 1890, and whose end is not yet in sight--the number of persons also increased who were punished for begging. In 1889, there were 8,566 persons punished for this crime in the Kingdom of Saxony; in 1890, there were 8,815; in 1891, there were 10,075; and in 1892 the figures rose to 13,120--quite an increase. Ma.s.s-impoverishment on one side, swelling affluence on the other--such is the sign-manual of our age. In Austria, in 1873, there was one pauper to every 724 persons; in 1882, to every 622 persons.
Crimes and misdemeanors show similar tendency. In Austria-Hungary, in 1874, there were 308,605 persons sentenced in the criminal courts; in 1892, their number was 600,000. In the German Empire, in 1882, there were 329,968 persons sentenced for crimes and misdemeanors under the laws of the land; that is to say, to every 10,000 inhabitants of twelve years and over there were 103.2 criminals; in 1892, the number of criminals was 422,327, or 143.3--an increase of 39 per cent. Among the persons punished, there were, for crimes and misdemeanors against property:--
To Every 10,000 Inhabitants, 12 Years of Age Year. Total. and Over.
1882 169,334 53.0 1891 196,437 55.8
We think these figures speak volumes. They show how the deterioration of social conditions intensify and promote poverty, want, misdemeanors and crimes.
The basis of our social state is the capitalist system of production. On it modern society rests. All social, all political inst.i.tutions are results and fruits of that system. It is the ground from which the whole social and political superstructure, together with its bright and dark sides, have sprung up. It influences and dominates the thoughts and feelings and actions of the people who live under it. Capital is the leading power in the State and in Society: the capitalist is the ruler of the propertyless, whose labor-power he buys for his use, and at a price, that, like all other merchandise, is governed by supply and demand and oscillates now above, then below the cost of reproduction.
But the capitalist does not buy labor-power out of ”sweet charity,” in order to do a favor to the workingmen, although he often so pretends. He buys it for the purpose of obtaining surplus wealth from the labor of the workingmen, which he then pockets under the name of profit, interest, house and ground rent. This surplus wealth, squeezed out of the workingmen, and which in so far as the capitalist does not squander it in dissipation, crystallizes in his hands into more capital, puts him in a condition to steadily enlarge his plant, improve the process of production, and occupy increased labor forces. That, at the same time, enables him to step up before his weaker compet.i.tors, like a mailed knight before an unarmed pedestrian, and to destroy them. This unequal struggle between large and small capital spreads amain, and, as the cheapest labor-power, next to that of children and lads, woman plays therein a _role_ of increasing importance. The result is the ever sharper division of a smaller minority of mighty capitalists and a ma.s.s of capital-less male and female lack-alls whose only resource is the daily sale of their labor-power. The middle cla.s.s arrives hereby at a plight that grows ever graver. One field of industry after another, where small production still predominated, is seized and occupied to capitalist ends. The compet.i.tion of capitalists among themselves compels them to explore ever newer fields of exploitation. Capital goes about ”like a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour.” The smaller and weaker establishments are destroyed; if their owners fail to save themselves upon some new field--a feat that becomes ever harder and less possible--then they sink down into the cla.s.s of the wage earners, or of Catilinarians. All efforts to prevent the downfall of handicraft and of the middle cla.s.s by means of inst.i.tutions and laws, borrowed from the lumber-room of the musty past, prove utterly ineffective. They may enable one or another to deceive himself on his actual condition; but soon the illusion vanishes under the heavy weight of facts. The process of absorption of the small by the large takes its course with all the power and pitilessness of a law of Nature, and the process is sensible to the feeling and the sight of all.
In the period between 1875-1882, the number of small industries decreased in Prussia by 39,655,[164] although the population increased in this period by about two million heads. The number of workmen employed in small industries sank, during that time, from 57.6 per cent., to 54.9 per cent. The industrial statistics for 1895 will furnish much more drastic figures. The development of large production stands in close relation to the development of steam machine and steam horse-power. And what is the picture presented by these? Prussia had:--
1878. 1893.
Stationary steam boilers 32,411 53,024 + 63.6 per cent.
Stationary steam engines 29,895 53,092 + 77.6 per cent.
Movable machines 5,536 15,725 + 184 per cent.
The Kingdom of Saxony had:--
1861. 1891.
Stationary steam engines 1,003 8,075 + 700 per cent.
Horse-power 15,633 160,772 + 922 per cent.
In 1861, a steam engine in Saxony had, on an average, a 15.5 horse-power; in 1891, it had 19. All Germany had in 1878 about three million horse-power in operation in industry; in 1894, about five million. Austria had in 1873 in round figures 336,000 horse-power; in 1888, about 2,150,000. Steam power spreads daily, and stronger steam machines drive out weaker ones--large production drives out small. The fact is shown emphatically in the industries in which steam has become the general power, the brewery industry, for instance. In the German brewery tax department, exclusive of Bavaria, Wuertemburg, Baden and Alsace-Lorraine, there were:--
Breweries Industrially Year. in Operation. Operated. Output.
1873 13,561 10,927 19,654,900 hl.
1891-2 8,460 7,571 33,171,100 hl.
------ ------ ---------- 5,101 3,356 13,516,200 hl.
Decrease Decrease Increase = 38 per cent. = 31.1 per cent. = 68.8 per cent.
The breweries in general, this table shows, had decreased during this period 38 per cent., the industrially operated ones 31.1 per cent.; the output, however, had increased 68.8 per cent. The giant concerns increased at the expense of the middle and small ones. The identical development is going on _in all countries of civilization, in all industries capitalistically operated_. Let us now take up the brandy distilleries. In all the eight provinces of Prussia, there were in operation:--[165]
Consumed in Distillery, Year. Distilleries. Brandy (Double Quintal).