ror William I. and by his
chancellor; Bismarck, as indeed by the governing and well-to-do
classes generally, the progress of the movement was viewed with
frankly avowed apprehension. Most of the great projects of the
Imperial Government were opposed by the Social Democrats, and the
members of the party were understood to be enemies of the entire
existing order, and even of civilization itself. Two attempts in 1878
upon the life of the Emperor, made by men who were socialists, but
disavowed by the socialists as a body, afforded the authorities an
opportunity to enter upon a campaign of socialist repression, and from
1878 to 1890 anti-socialist legislation of the most thoroughgoing
character was regularly on the statute books and was in no slight
measure enforced. At the same time that effort was being made to stamp
out socialist propaganda a remarkable series of social reforms was
undertaken with the deliberate purpose not only of promoting the
public well-being, but of cutting the ground from under the
socialists' feet, or, as some one has observed, of "curing the Empire
of socialism by inoculation." The most important steps taken in this
direction comprised the inauguration of sickness insurance in 1883, of
accident insurance in 1884, and of old-age and invalidity insurance in
1889.

For a time the measures of the government seemed to accomplish (p. 232)
their purpose, and the official press loudly proclaimed that socialism
in Germany was extinct. In reality, however, socialism thrived on
persecution. In the hour of Bismarck's apparent triumph the socialist
propaganda was being pushed covertly in every corner of the Empire. A
party organ known as the _Social Democrat_ was published in
Switzerland, and every week thousands of copies found their way across
the border and were passed from hand to hand among determined readers
and converts. A compact organization was maintained, a treasury was
established and kept well filled, and with truth the Social Democrats
aver to-day that in no small measure they owe their superb
organization to the Bismarckian era of repression. At the elections of
1878 the party cast but 437,158 votes, but in 1884 its vote was
549,990 (9.7 per cent of the whole) and the contingent of
representatives returned to the Reichstag numbered twenty-four. In
1890 the socialist vote attained the enormous total of 1,427,298 (19.7
per cent of the whole), and the number of representatives was
increased t