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which they would be rewarded for all the wants and sufferings and pains of this world, and now most people have lost confidence in such empty promises. They demand an amelioration: not words, not promises, but facts. They do not want to expect, with resignation, what may come after death: they demand a change of their unfortunate situation while living on earth.
The interests of all workers are the same! This is best shown by the fact that in many strikes working shopkeepers are in favour of the wage-labourers. Low wages are unfavourable to the farmer as well as to the mechanic, for when wages are low the struggle for economical independence is more difficult; large capital increases at the expense of small property. If the working people would only learn to comprehend the solidarity of their interests!
As it is with the increase of wages, so it is with the decrease of working hours. Eight hours' work a day is judged sufficient by physicians. A person who has worked properly eight hours a day ought to have done his duty, and has a right to request some hours for recreation, for instruction, and for his family. Those who are the loudest in complaining of the laziness of the working men would soon make wry faces if they were compelled to work only six hours a day. This decreasing of the working hours will better the condition of the whole of the working class, Everybody can easily see that. Even in the country it could be done, although there such a shortening will meet with the greatest objections, but it will be done. What a great benefit will be achieved by this measure alone! Whole armies of paupers, tramps, &c., will find useful employment. They will disappear, and with them a great deal of mischief and crime.
Now if the wage-labourers of the cities and manufacturing places will be ready to lead the van in the struggle for the interest of labour, the rest of the whole working-class have no right to put themselves in the position of idle, indifferent, or even grudging and hostile spectators. On the contrary, it is the duty of the whole working-class to participate in this struggle, for this war is carried on in the interest of all workers, and the wage-labourers who have taken up the gauntlet are the Pioneers for the human race.
But in order to carry on this war successfully, the workers must be organised. Singly and isolated they are powerless; if all would unite for the same purpose, they would be a formidable power which nothing could resist. You may easily break many single matches, but you may try in vain to break a whole bundle of them tied together.
With regard to this, the Socialists have the gratification of seeing that their endeavours have not been fruitless. In Germany Socialism already forms a respectable power, which has puzzled even the great Bismarck. They have been able to eject twenty-four (now more than thirty) representatives into the German Parliament, who, by their untiring activity, by the speeches they have delivered, have opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people in Germany. And who would venture to pretend that those men strove for something that was bad, that they betrayed the interests
