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that has reached or gone beyond a certain size. It was only by virtue of the assurance given of State officials, that they would be cared for in their old age. that such a high degree of unselfish devotion to duty was developed, which in pre-war times was one of the distinguishing [sic –h] characteristics of German officials.
Thus a whole class which had no personal property was saved from destitution by an intelligent system of provision, and found a place in the social structure of the national community.
The problem is now put before the State and nation, but this time in a much larger form. When the new industries sprang up and developed, millions of people left the countryside and the villages to take up employment in the big factories. The conditions under which this new class found itself forced to live were worse than miserable. The more or less mechanical transformation of the methods of work hitherto in vogue among the artisans and peasants did not fit in well with the habits or mentality of this new working-class. The way in which the peasants and artisans had formerly worked had nothing comparable to the intensive labour of the new factory worker. In the old trades time did not play a highly important role, but it became an essential element in the new industrial system. The formal taking over of the old working hours into the mammoth industrial enterprises had fatal results. The actual amount of work hitherto accomplished within a certain time was comparatively small, because the modern methods of intensive production were then unknown. Therefore, though in the older system a working day of fourteen or even fifteen hours was not unendurable, now it was beyond the possibilities of human endurance because in the new system every minute was utilized to the extreme. This absurd transference of the old working hours to the new industrial system proved fatal in two directions. First, it ruined the health of the workers; secondly, it destroyed their faith in a superior law of justice. Finally, on the one hand a miserable wage was received and, on the other, the employer held a much more lucrative position than before. Hence a striking difference between the ways of life on the one side and on the other.
In the open country there could be no social problem, because the master and the farm-hand were doing the same kind of work and doing it together. They ate their food in common, and sometimes even out of the same dish. But in this sphere also the new system introduced an entirely different set of conditions between masters and men.
The division created between employer and employees seems not to have extended to all branches of life. How far this Judaizing process has been allowed to take effect among our people is illustrated by the fact that manual labour not only receives practically no recognition but is even considered degrading. That is not a natural German attitude. It is due to the introduction of a foreign element into our lives, and that foreign element is the Jewish spirit, one of the effects of which has been to transform the high esteem in which our handicrafts once were held into a definite feeling that all physical labour is something base and unworthy.
Thus a new social class has grown up which stands in low esteem; and the day must come when we shall have to face the question of whether the nation will be able to make this class an integral part of the social community or whether the difference of status now existing will become a permanent gulf separating this class from the others.
One thing, however, is certain: This class does not include the worst elements of the community in its ranks. Rather the contrary is the truth: it includes the most energetic parts of the nation. The sophistication which is the result of a so-called civilization has not yet exercised its disintegrating and degenerating influence on this class. The broad masses of this new lower class, constituted by the manual labourers, have not yet fallen a prey to the morbid weakness of pacifism. These are still robust and, if necessary, they can be brutal.
While our bourgeoisie middle class paid no attention at all to this momentous problem and indifferently allowed events to take their course, the Jew seized upon the manifold possibilities which the situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand he organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate
