CAMPAIGN A GAINST GERMAN ORGANIZED LABOR 4 5 3
equally energetic opposition by the National Liberals is not to be counted on at the second reading.
No more can full confidence be given to the party of the Ultramontanes, the so-called Center. This party has announced for the second reading a series of amendments which are pri- marily to give legal assurance of the right of organization in general. This is so far in the interest of labor. But the announce- ment followed that, after the right of organization is perfected, there must be discussion of laws against misuse of this right. This means that this party, which is so strong — indeed, at the present moment the most influential in Parliament — under the given circumstances will throw its influence for a "protection of the voluntaries " in excess of the provisions of general criminal law. Every such preferment of the voluntaries, however, would be a blow to the organized laborers.
Outside of Parliament opinion about the law is also very much divided. The capitalistic press greeted it, of course, with joy. The economic journals, however, and the scholars who pub- lished in them, have with one accord disapproved it. The Evangelical Social Congress has not yet had an opportunity to pass upon it. Its session occurred just a week before the appearance of the bill. Judging from the spirit which prevailed there, this body also would doubtless have unanimously disap - proved the scheme. At the session of the Verein fiir Social- politik, one of the largest organizations of scholars, officials, and certain business-men, the chairman. Professor Schmoller, sometime Rector of the University of Berlin, expressed dis- approval in very vigorous terms. Most indefatigable, however, of all the professors in opposition to the scheme had been the Munich economist Brentano. He, indeed, is the first scientific defender of the labor organizations in Germany. For twenty- nine years he has been tireless in the work of convincing scholars and politicians of the usefulness of labor organi- zations. In this case he was the first to open the discussion. Even before the publication of the law he annihilated the theo- retical basis upon which the bill claims to rest, in a pamphlet entitled " The Protection of the Voluntaries." Subsequently
