It is self-evident what attitude this workingmen's party is to take toward the German Progressive party.
It must feel and organize itself everywhere as an independent party completely separate from the latter, although the Progressive party is to be supported on points and questions in which the interest of the two parties is a common one; it must turn its back decidedly upon the Progressive party and oppose it whenever it departs from that interest, and thus force the Progressive party either to develop progressively and to rise above its own level or to sink deeper and deeper into the mire of insignificance and weakness in which it already stands knee deep; these must be the straightforward tactics of the German workingmen's party with reference to the Progressive party.
So much as to what you must do from a political point of view.
Now for the social question which you raise, a question which rightly interests you to a still greater extent.
I have read in the papers, not without a sad smile, that part of the program for your Congress consists in debates concerning freedom of choosing places of residence and of employment for the workingman.
What, Gentlemen, are you going to debate about the right of choosing places of residence, the right of settling down anywhere without being specially taxed!
I can answer you on this point with nothing better than Schiller's epigram:
Jahre lang schon bedien' ich mich meiner Nase zum Riechen: Aber
hab' ich an sie auch ein erweisliches Recht?
(Year after year I have used the nose God gave me to smell with:
But can I legally prove any such right to its use?)
And is not the situation the same as to freedom of employment?