erest of the workers. The trade unions have grown big
in all countries because of the protection, they offer and the insurance
they provide against low wages, long hours, and poverty. The socialist
parties have grown great because they express the highest social
aspirations of the workers and their antagonism toward the present
regime. Moreover, they offer an opportunity to put forward, in the most
authoritative places, the demands of the workers for political, social,
and economic reform. The whole is a struggle for democracy, both
political and industrial, that is by no means founded merely on whim or
caprice. It has gradually become a religion, an imperative religion, of
millions of workingmen and women. Chiefly because of their economic
subjection, they are striving in the most heroic manner to make their
voice heard in those places where the rules of the game of life are
decided. Thus, every phase of the labor movement has arisen in response
to actual material needs.

And, if the labor movement has arisen in response to actual material
needs, it is now a very great and material actuality. The workingmen of
the world are, as we have seen, uniting at a pace so rapid as to be
almost unbelievable. There are to-day not only great national
organizations of labor in nearly every country, but these national
movements are bound closely together into one unified international
power. The great world-wide movement of labor, which Marx and Engels
prophesied would come, is now here. And, if they were living to-day,
they could not but be astonished at the real and mighty manifestation of
their early dreams. To be sure, Engels lived long enough to be jubilant
over the massing of labor's forces, but Marx saw little of it, and even
the German socialists, who started out so brilliantly, were at the time
of his death fighting desperately for existence under the anti-socialist
law. Indeed, in 1883, the year of his death, the labor movement was
still torn by quarrels and dissensions over problems of tactics, and in
America, France, and Austria the terrorists were more active than at
any time in their history. It was still a question whether the German
movement could survive, while in the other countries the socialists were
still little more than sects. That was just thirty years ago, while
to-day, as we have seen, over ten millions of workingmen, scattered
throughout the entire world, fight every one of their battles on the
lines laid d