ripple, who is pushed into a corner, and is not given
enough to eat? There is none. But if he has as little as 100 or 200
marks of his own, the people will think twice before they oppress him.
We have been in a position to observe this in the case of the military
invalids. Although only five or six dollars are paid every month, this
actual cash amounts to something in the household where the poor are
boarded, and the thrifty housewife is careful not to offend or to lose
the boarder who pays cash.

I, therefore, assure you that we felt the need of insisting by this
law on a treatment of the poor which should be worthy of humanity.
Next year I shall be able fully to satisfy Mr. Richter in regard to
the amount and the extent of attention which the State will give to a
better and more adequate care of all the unemployed. This will come as
a natural consequence, whether or no the present bill is passed. Today
this bill is a test, as it were. We are sounding to see how deep the
waters are, financially, into which we are asking the State and the
country to enter. You cannot guard yourselves against such problems by
delivering elegant and sonorous speeches, in which you recommend the
improvement of our laws of liability, without in the least indicating
how this can be done. In this way you cannot settle these questions,
for you are acting like the ostrich, who hides his head lest he see
his danger. The Government has seen its duty and is facing, calmly and
without fear, the dangers which we heard described here a few days ago
most eloquently and of which we were given convincing proofs.

We should, however, also remove, as much as possible, the causes which
are used to excite the people, and which alone render them susceptible
to criminal doctrines. It is immaterial to me whether or no you will
call this Socialism. If you call it Socialism, you must have the
remarkable wish of placing the Imperial Government, in so far as this
bill of the allied governments is concerned, in the range of the very
critique which Mr. von Puttkamer passed here on the endeavors of the
Socialists. It would then almost seem that with this bill only a very
small distance separated us from the murderous band of Hasselmann, the
incendiary writings of Most, and the revolutionary conspiracies of the
Congress of Wyden; and that even this distance would soon disappear.
Well, gentlemen, this is, of course, the very opposite of true. Those
who fight with such