CAMPAIGN A GAINST GERMAN ORGANIZED LABOR 4 39
occurred just before. Bodelschwingh had been seriously affected by it. A hall which he needed for the reception of the Kaiser could be made ready only with great difficulty and with con- siderable use of "voluntaries."' Allusion was made to the sub- ject during the visit of the monarch, and the latter got the idea that the members of the labor organizations were merely the restless, lazy, dissatisfied sort of people, while the voluntaries, that is, the unorganized laborers who in the case of a strike took the vacated places, were the portion of the labor class that especially deserved encouragement.' This was the occasion of the Kaiser's speech in Bielefeld, in which he called upon the people to sup- port his program, which he indicated as follows: "Protection of the national labor of all productive classes, encouragement of a healthy middle class, ruthless suppression of all revolution, and the severest punishment to anyone who has the audacity to hinder a fellow-man in the performance of free labor whenever the latter wishes to labor." Herewith was the new struggle against the labor organizations opened. In itself the proposition with reference to the "severest punishment for hindering a fellow-man from free labor " could be turned against the employers who by black list or boycott excluded the leaders of the labor movement from all possibility of getting work in the future. But the whole context in which the sentence stands, the inter- pretation that it received by the official newspapers, and the further steps of the administration, clearly showed that the sentence was directed solely against the laborers who in case of a disturbance would attempt to restrain others from labor, and to add them to the number of strikers. The "good" elements of the laboring class, the "contented," " uncritical," "peaceful" people, who are not to be incited to commotion — the "volun- taries," as they were called from this time — were to be protected against the agitation of the labor organizations. It was supposed
' The term Arbeitrwillige has been rendered as above in this paper. The plain English of it is, of course, " scab."
' During the past summer Pastor von Bodelschwingh sent a letter to the editor of Hilfe, Pfarrer Naumann, in which he himself makes the above explanation, at the same time declaring that he is an opponent of the " House of Correction Scheme."
