Amidst breathless suspense the Chancellor rose to speak. “Up to a certain point justice compels me to say that both the honourable members who have just spoken are quite right in what they have advanced. A good deal might be said on the side of the morality of these savings, but equally much may be advanced as to the demoralising effects they have exercised in the form of accumulated capital. Let us, however, above all things, never suffer a longing look at the past to divert our gaze from the great times in which we live. (Hear, hear.) We must settle this question as Socialists who know what they are about, and without any admixture of sentiment. And in view of this I say that to hand over 5,000 million marks to a fractional eight millions of the population would be a building up of the new social equality on a foundation of inequality. (Applause.) This inequality would inevitably soon make itself felt throughout all the various branches of consumption, and thus upset all our carefully conceived plans for harmonising production and consumption. These fundholders to-day ask for a return of their savings: with precisely the same right others might come to-morrow—those, for instance, who had sunk their savings in machinery and tools, in business stock, in houses or land—and demand that their capital be refunded. (Signs of approval.) How are we then to set bounds to a possible reaction against the social order of things now established? Whatever pleasures those persons who had put by their little savings had promised themselves as the fruits of their thrift, and their abstinence, they would now reap a hundred times greater reward in the consciousness of knowing that all alike will now share those great benefits which we are about inaugurating. But if you take from us these five milliards, reducing by this amount the capital which ought to work solely in the interests of the public at large, then my colleagues in the ministry, and myself, will be no longer in a position to accept the responsibility of carrying out those socialistic measures which it was our aim to see accomplished.” (Loud and long-continued applause.)
A great number of members had signified their intention of speaking. But the President said it was his duty to remind the House that, reckoning the time spent on committee meetings, and that which the law allowed to each member for reading and preparation, the maximum eight hours had, as a matter of fact, already been reached, and that under these circumstances the debate could not be continued before the next day. (Cries of “vote, vote.”) A resolution to apply the closure was proposed and passed. Upon the vote being taken, the House, with only a few dissentients, passed to the order of the day, and the sitting was over.
There were loud cries of indignation from the gallery, and these spread to the street outside. The police, however, soon managed to clear the space about the House, and they arrested various noisy persons, amongst whom were a good many women. It is said that several members who had voted against the bank monies being refunded to the owners were shamefully insulted in the streets. The police are stated to have made merciless use of their new weapons, the so-called “killers,” a weapon on the English pattern which has just been introduced.
Within our four walls we had an abundant display of resentment and ill-feeling. Agnes rejected all endeavours to tranquillise her, and it was in vain that my wife sought to comfort her with the thought of the opulent dowry which the Government meant all newly married couples to receive.
“I won’t have anything given to me,” she cried pettishly; “all I want is the wages of my own labour; such government is worse than robbery.”
I much fear that to-day’s events are not at all calculated to strengthen Agnes’ hold on socialistic principles. My father-in-law has likewise savings in the bank, and we dare not venture to tell the old gentleman that his bank book is mere waste paper. He is far from being a miser. It was only the other day he mentioned that he let interest and compound interest accumulate; we should find at his death that he had been really grateful for all our tender care of him. In very deed one requires to be as firmly grounded as I am in socialistic principles to stand such reverses without in the least losing heart.
CHAPTER VI.
ASSIGNMENT OF WORK.
The union between Franz and Agnes is suddenly put off indefinitely. The police have to-day distributed the orders relating to the occupations of the people, which orders are based partly upon the registration lately made, and partly upon the plan organised by the Government for regulating production and consumption.
True, Franz is to remain a compositor, but, unfortunately, he can’t stay in Berlin, but is sent to Leipsig. Berlin requires now hardly one-twentieth part of the number of compositors it formerly employed. None but absolutely reliable Socialists are allowed on the Onward. Now Franz, through some unguarded expressions in Palace Square over that unfortunate savings bank business, is regarded with some suspicion. Franz will have it, too, that politics have had something to do with the assignment of labour; and he says, for instance, that in Berlin the Younkers have been completely scattered as a party. One had to go as a paperhanger to Inowrazlaw because there was a scarcity of paperhangers there, whereas in Berlin there are too many. Franz quite lost all patience, and said it seemed to him that the old law against the Socialists, with its expatriation, had come to life again. Well, we must excuse a little haste in an engaged young man who sees himself suddenly, and for an indefinite period, cut off from the girl of his heart.
I tried to offer Franz a little comfort by remarking that in the very next house a married couple had been separated by the action of this law. The wife goes to Oppeln in the capacity of nurse, the husband to Magdeburg as a bookkeeper. This set my wife going, and she wanted to know how anyone dared to separate husband and wife? It was infamous, and so on. The good soul entirely forgot that in our new community marriage is a purely private relationship, as Bebel lucidly explained in his book on woman. The marriage knot can at any time, and without the intervention of any official whatever, be tied and again untied. The Government is hence not at all in a position to know who is married, and who is not. In the registries of names we find therefore, as might be logically expected, that all persons are entered in their Christian names, and the maiden names of their mothers. In a well-considered organisation of production and consumption, the living together of married couples is clearly only practicable where the scale of occupation allows of such an arrangement; not vice versâ. It would never do to make the organisation of labour in any way dependent upon a private relationship which might be dissolved at any moment.