Europe of To-day 619 normal working day corresponding with the needs of society^ and the prohibition of work on Sunday; (5) prohibition of child labor and all forms of labor by women which are dangerous to health or morality; (6) laws for the protec- tion of the life and health of workmen, sanitary control of workmen's houses, inspection of mines, factories, work- shops, and domestic industries by officials chosen by the workmen themselves, and an effective system of enforce- ment of the same; (7) regulation of prison labor. A more vigorous denunciation of the present social organization is to be found in the Erfurt programme of October, 1891. The economic development of industrial society tends inevitably to the ruin of small industries, which are based upon the workman's private ownership of the means of production. It separates him from these means of produc- tion and converts him into a destitute member of the pro- letariat, whilst a comparatively small number of capitalists and great landowners obtain a monopoly of the means of production. Hand in hand with this growing monopoly goes the destruction of these scattered small industries by industries of colossal growth, the development of the tool into the machine, and a gigantic increase in the productiveness of human labor. But all the advantages of this revolution are monopolized by the capitalist and great landowners To the proletariat and to the rapidly sinking middle classes, the small tradesmen of the towns and the peasants, it brings an increasing uncertainty of existence, increasing misery, oppression, servitude, degradation, and exploitation. Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the con- trast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of every industrial country. 504. Ex- tract frorr, the Erfurt programmt> of the socialists (October, 1891). Criticism of the existing capitalistic organization of society.
