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VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
derful example of manly courage and eloquence in a
youth that the history of the world has given us.
Precocious as a child, proud and haughty as a youth,
gifted with a critical, penetrating, and brilliant mind,
and moved by an ambition that knew no bounds, Lassalle,
with all his powerful passion and dramatic talents,
When a
could not have been other than a great figure.
man possesses qualities that call forth the wonder of
Heine, Humboldt, Bismarck, and Brandes, when Bakounin
calls him a "giant," and even George Meredith turns
to him as a personality almost unequaled in fiction and
makes a novel out of his career, the plain ordinary world
may gain some conception of this "father of the German
labor movement." This is no place to deal with certain
deplorable and contradictory phases of his life nor even
with some of his mad dreams that led Bismarck, after
saying that "he was one of the most intellectual and
gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse,
. . .
"
to add "and it
was perhaps a matter of doubt
to him whether the German Empire would close with
the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Lassalle dynasty." (14)
Such was the proud, unruly, ambitious spirit of the man,
who, in
1862, came actively to voice the claims of labor.
Setting out to regenerate society and appealing directly
to the working classes, Lassalle lashed them with scorn.
"You German workingmen are curious people," he said.
"French and English workingmen have to be shown
how their miserable condition may be improved but you
;
have first to be shown that you are in a miserable condition.
So long as you have a piece of bad sausage and
a glass of beer, you do not notice that you want anything.
That is a result of your accursed absence of
needs. What, you will say, is this, then, a virtue Yes,
in the eyes of the Christian preacher of morality
it is cer-