alist measure, introduced by a
Socialist Representative, and backed by the Socialist Party--before the
Republicans and Democrats realize the advisability of stealing our
thunder. In England the working-class political movement is stagnant
because the Liberal Party has out-generaled the Socialists by
voluntarily enacting great social reforms."[164]

In his anxiety to prepare a bill that capitalist legislators would
indorse and pass in the near future, Mr. Berger aroused great criticism
within the Party. The _New York Volkszeitung_ pointed out that in
limiting the benefit of the law to those who had been naturalized
citizens of the United States for sixteen years, he was requiring a
residence of twenty-one years in this country, a provision which
involved an excessively heavy discrimination against a very large
proportion of our foreign-born workers. Mr. Berger's project, moreover,
demanded that those convicted of felonies should also be excluded.
Socialists, as is well known, have always asserted that the larger part
of crimes and criminals were due to injustices of the existing social
order, for which the "criminals" were in no sense to blame. Mr. Berger's
secretary, Mr. W. J. Ghent, vigorously defended this clause, on the
typical "State Socialist" ground that the future Society would deal
_more severely_ with criminals than the present one.

Mr. Berger's bill was objected to by New York Socialists on the ground
that the old parties could be expected to give a more liberal bill in
the near future, and that it would then be difficult to explain the
narrower Socialist position. Mr. Ghent answered that nowhere had such a
liberal measure been enacted. To this the _Volkszeitung_ remarked that
there is a tremendous difference between a bill that owes its origin to
a capitalist government and one that comes from a Socialist
representative of the working class: "The former sets up a minimum while
the latter must demand the maximum." Finally, the _New York Local_ of
the Socialist Party resolved: "That we request the National Executive
Committee to resolve that Comrade Berger shall, before introducing any
bill, submit it to secure its approval by the National Executive
Committee."

Mr. Berger's maiden speech also summed up excellently the general policy
of Socialist "reformism."

"When the white man is sick or when he dies," he said, "the employer
usually loses nothing." Mr. Berger does not understand that, in modern
countri