Part 952

"Hermann Schulze was born at Delitzsch, in Prussian Saxony, August 29th, 1808. He studied jurisprudence at Leipzig and Halle, and afterwards occupied judicial posts under the Government, becoming District Judge at Delitzsch in 1841, a position which he held until 1850. In 1848, he was elected to the Prussian National Assembly, and the following year he became a member of the Second Chamber, in which he sat as Schulze-Delitzsch, a name which has since adhered to him. Being a member of the Progressist party, he proved a thorn in the Government's flesh, and he was made District Judge at Wreschen, but he returned later to the Prussian Diet, and became also a member of the North German and German Reichstags. {2947} For more than thirty years Schulze headed the co·operative movement in Germany, but his self-sacrifice impoverished him, and although his motto as a social reformer had always been 'Self-help,' as opposed to Lassalle's 'State-help,' he was compelled in his declining years to accept a gift of £7,000 from his friends. Schulze died honoured if not famous on April 29th, 1883. Schulze-Delitzsch is the father of the co-operative movement in Germany. He had watched the development of this movement in England, and as early as 1848 he had lifted up his voice in espousal of co-operative principles in his own country. Though a Radical, Schulze was no Socialist, and he believed co-operation to be a powerful weapon wherewith to withstand the steady advance of Socialistic doctrines in Germany. Besides carrying on agitation by means of platform-speaking, he published various works on the subject, the chief of which are: 'Die arbeitenden Klassen und das Associationswesen in Deutschland, als Programm zu einem deutschen Congress,' (Leipzig, 1858); 'Kapitel zu einem deutschen Arbeitercatechismus,' (Leipzig, 1863); 'Die Abschaffung des geschäftlichen Risico durch Herrn Lassalle,' (Berlin, 1865); 'Die Entwickelung des Genossenschaften in einzelnen Gewerbszweigen,' (Leipzig, 1873). Schulze advocated the application of the co-operative principle to other organisations than the English stores, and especially to loan, raw material, and industrial associations. He made a practical beginning at his own home and the adjacent town of Eilenburg, where in 1849 he established two co-operative associations of shoemakers and joiners, the object of which was the purchase and supply to members of raw material at cost price. In 1850 he formed a Loan Association (Vorschussverein) at Delitzsch on the principle of monthly payments, and in the following year a similar association on a larger scale at Eilenburg. For a long time Schulze had the field of agitation to himself, and the consequence was that the more intelligent sections of the working classes took to his proposals readily. Another reason for his success, however, was the fact that the movement was practical and entirely unpolitical. It was a movement from which the Socialistic element was absent, and one in which, therefore, the moneyed classes could safely co-operate. Schulze, in fact, sought to introduce reforms social rather than Socialistic. The fault of his scheme as a regenerative agency was that it did not affect the masses of the people, and thus the roots of the social question were not touched. Schulze could only look for any considerable support to small tradesmen and artisans, to those who were really able to help themselves if' shown the way. But his motto of 'Self-help' was an unmeaning gospel to the vast class of people who were not in this happy position. … The movement neared a turning point in 1858. In that year Schulze identified himself with the capitalist party at a Congress of German economists, held at Gotha, and he soon began to lose favour with the popular classes. The high-water mark was reached in 1860, at which time the co-operative associations had a membership of 200,000, and the business done amounted to 40,000,000 thalers or about £6,000,000; the capital raised by contribution or loan approaching a third of this sum. In the year 1864 no fewer than 800 Loan and Credit Associations had been established, while in 1861 the number of Raw Material and Productive Associations was 172, and that of Co-operative Stores 66. Possibly the movement might have continued to prosper, even though Schulze was suspected of sympathy with the capitalists, had no rival appeared on the scene. But a rival did appear, and he was none other than Lassalle."

_W. H. Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle, chapter 7._

The co-operative societies in Germany on the Schulze-Delitzsch plan have been regularly organized into an association. "The number of societies in this association increased from 171 in 1859, to 771 in 1864, and was 3,822 in 1885. At the last named date they were distributed thus: loan and credit societies, 1,965; co-operative societies in various branches of trade, 1,146; co-operative store societies, 678; building societies, 33. At the end of 1884 the membership was 1,500,000. Of their own capital, in shares and reserve funds, they possessed 300,000,000 marks; and of borrowed capital 500,000,000 marks."

_Science, September 9, 1887._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1859-1887. The "Social Palace" of M. Godin at Guise.

"The Familistère founded at Guise (Aisne), France, by the late M. Jean Baptiste Andre Godin, has a world-wide reputation. The Social Palace itself, a marvel of ingenious philanthropy, which realizes successfully some of the characteristic ideas of Fourier, … entitles M. Godin to a high place among the social reformers of the 19th century. He was the son of a worker in iron, and even before his apprenticeship had conceived the idea that he was destined to set a great example to the industrial world. … The business carried on in the great foundries at Guise is the manufacture of cast-iron wares for the kitchen and general house use, and of heating apparatus of various kinds. M. Godin was the first man in France to use cast iron in making stoves, in place of sheet iron; this was but one example of his inventive powers. He began in 1840, with 20 workmen, the manufacture which employed in 1883 over 1,400 at Guise and 300 in the branch establishment at Laeken, in Belgium. From the beginning there was an organization for mutual aid among the workmen, assisted by the proprietor. The Familistère was opened in 1860; but it was not until 1877, owing to the obstacles presented by the French law to the plan which he had in mind, that M. Godin introduced participation by the workmen in the profits of his gigantic establishment. … In 1880 the establishment became a joint-stock company with limited liability, and the system of profit sharing was begun which still [1889] obtains there. M. Godin's main idea was gradually to transfer the ownership of the business and of the associated Familistère into the hands of his workmen. … No workman is admitted to participation [in the profit-sharing] who is not the owner already of a share. But the facility of purchase is great: and the interest on his stock adds materially to the income of the average workman. M. Godin was gradually disposing of his capital to the workmen up to his death [in 1888], and this process will go on until Madame Godin simply retains the direction of the business. But when this shall have happened, the oldest workmen shall, in like manner, release their shares to the younger, in order to keep the ownership of the establishment in the hands of the actual workers from generation to generation. In this way a true cooperative productive house will be formed within ten or a dozen years. M. Godin's capital in 1880 was 4,600,000 francs; the whole capital of the house in 1883 had risen to 6,000,000 francs, and of this sum 2,753,500 francs were held by various employees in October, 1887. {2948} The organization of the workmen as participators forms quite a hierarchy," at the head of which stand the "associates." "The 'associates' must own at least 500 francs' worth of stock; they must be engaged in work, and have their home in the Familistère: they elect new members themselves. … They will furnish Madame Godin's successor from their ranks."

_N. P. Gilman, Profit Sharing, pages 173-177._

In April, 1859, M. Godin began to realize the most important of his ideas of social reform, namely, "the substitution for our present isolated dwellings of homes and dwellings combined into Social Palaces, where, to use M. Godin's expressive words, 'the equivalents of riches,' that is the most essential advantages which wealth bestows on our common life, may be brought within reach of the mass of the population. In April, 1859, he laid the foundation of the east wing of such a palace, the Familistère of Guise. It was covered in in September of the same year, completed in 1860, and fully occupied in the year following. In 1862 the central building was commenced. It was completed in 1864 and occupied in 1865. The offices in front of the east wing were built at the same time as that wing—in 1860. The other appendages of the palace were added in the following order—the nursery and babies' school in 1866; the schools and theatre in 1869; and the baths and wash-houses in 1870. The west wing was begun in 1877, finished in 1879, and fully occupied in 1880. Till its completion the inhabitants of the Familistère numbered about 900 persons; at present [1880] it accommodates 1,200. Its population therefore already assumes the proportion of a considerable village; while its style of construction would easily allow of the addition of quadrangles, communicating with the north-eastern and north-western angles of the central building, by which the number of occupants might be raised to 1,800 or 2,000, without in any way interfering with the enjoyments of the present inmates, supposing circumstances made it desirable to increase their numbers to this extent. … Of the moral effect upon the population of the free and yet social life which a unitary dwelling makes possible, M. Godin wrote in 1874:—'For the edification of those who believe that the working classes are undisciplined or undisciplinable, I must say that there has not been in the Familistère since its foundation a single police case, and yet the palace contains 900 persons; meetings in it are frequent and numerous; and the most active intercourse and relations exist among all the inhabitants.' And this is not the consequence of any strict control exercised over the inmates. On the contrary, the whole life of the Familistère is one of carefully-guarded individual liberty, which is prevented from degenerating into license simply by the influence of public opinion among its inhabitants, who, administering their own internal affairs as a united body, exercise a disciplinary action upon each other. There are no gates, beyond doors turning on a central pivot and never fastened, introduced in winter for the sake of warmth; no porter to mark the time of entrance or egress of anyone. Every set of apartments is accessible to its occupants at any hour of the day or night, with the same facility as if it opened out of a well-lighted street, since all the halls of the Familistère are lighted during the whole night. And as there are ten different entrances, each freely communicating with the whole building, it would be less easy for one inmate to spy the movements of another than it is for the neighbours in an ordinary street to keep an outlook on each other's actions. … But one factor, and I conceive a very important factor, in this effort, must not be lost sight of, namely that the Social Palace at Guise is not a home provided for the poor, by a benevolence which houses its own fine clay in its isolated dwelling over against the abodes where those of coarser clay are clustered together. It is a home for M. Godin and members of his family, the heads of departments and other persons connected with him, whose means rise considerably above those of the workers, no less than for the workers in the foundry—a mansion of which it is the glory that all the rooms on every floor originally differ only by a few inches of height, and such slight differences in the height and width of doors and windows as require careful observation to detect, and that all participate alike, according to the quarter of the sky to which they look, in air and light. So that the difference of accommodation is [practically reduced to the number of square feet which the means of the inmate enables him to occupy, and the internal arrangement of the space at his disposal."

_E. V. Neale, Associated Homes._

ALSO IN: _E. Howland, The Social Palace at Guise, and The Familistère at Guise (Harper's Monthly Magazine, April, 1872, and November, 1885)._

_M. Godin, Social Solutions._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1860-1870. Nihilism in Russia.

"For the origin of nihilism [which had its period of activity between 1860 and 1870] we must go back half a century to a little company of gifted young men, most of whom rose to great distinction, who used at that time to meet together at the house of a rich merchant in Moscow, for the discussion of philosophy, politics and religion. They were of the most various views. Some of them became Liberal leaders, and wanted Russia to follow the constitutional development of the West nations; others became founders of the new Slavophil party, contending that Russia should be no imitator, but develop her own native institutions in her own way; and there were at least two among them—Alexander Herzen and Michael Bakunin—who were to be prominent exponents of revolutionary socialism. But they all owned at this period one common master—Hegel. Their host was an ardent Hegelian, and his young friends threw themselves into the study of Hegel with the greatest zeal. Herzen himself tells us in his autobiography how assiduously they read everything that came from his pen, how they devoted nights and weeks to clearing up the meaning of single passages in his writings, and how greedily they devoured every new pamphlet that issued from the German press on any part of his system. From Hegel, Herzen and Bakunin were led, exactly like Marx and the German Young Hegelians, to Feuerbach, and from Feuerbach to socialism. Bakunin, when he retired from the army, rather than be the instrument of oppressing the Poles among whom he was stationed, went for some years to Germany, where he lived among the Young Hegelians and wrote for their organ, the 'Hallische Jahrbücher'; but before either he or Herzen ever had any personal intercommunication with the members of that school of thought, they had passed through precisely the same development. {2949} Herzen speaks of socialism almost in the very phrases of the Young Hegelians, as being the new 'terrestrial religion,' in which there was to be neither God nor heaven; as a new system of society which would dispense with an authoritative government, human or Divine, and which should be at once the completion of Christianity and the realization of the Revolution. 'Christianity,' he said, 'made the slave a son of man; the Revolution has emancipated him into a citizen. Socialism would make him a man.' This tendency of thought was strongly supported in the Russian mind by Haxthausen's discovery and laudation of the rural commune of Russia. The Russian State was the most arbitrary, oppressive, and corrupt in Europe, and the Russian Church was the most ignorant and superstitious; but here at last was a Russian institution which was regarded with envy even by wise men of the west, and was really a practical anticipation of that very social system which was the last work of European philosophy. It was with no small pride, therefore, that Alexander Herzen declared that the Muscovite peasant in his dirty sheepskin had solved the social problem of the nineteenth century, and that for Russia, with this great problem already solved, the Revolution was obviously a comparatively simple operation. You had but to remove the Czardom, the services, and the priesthood, and the great mass of the people would still remain organized in fifty thousand complete little self-governing communities living on their common land and ruling their common affairs as they had been doing long before the Czardom came into being. … All the wildest phases of nihilist opinion in the sixties were already raging in Russia in the forties. … Although the only political outbreak of Nicholas's reign, the Petracheffsky conspiracy of 1849, was little more than a petty street riot, a storm of serious revolt against the tyranny of the Czar was long gathering, which would have burst upon his head after the disasters to his army in the Crimea, had he survived them. He saw it thickening, however, and on his death-bed said to his son, the noble and unfortunate Alexander II., 'I fear you will find the burden too heavy.' The son found it eventually heavy enough, but in the meantime he wisely bent before the storm, relaxed the restraints the father had imposed, and gave pledges of the most liberal reforms in every department of State—judicial administration, local government, popular education, serf emancipation. … An independent press was not among the liberties conceded, but Russian opinion at this period found a most effective voice in a newspaper started in London by Alexander Herzen, called the 'Kolokol ' (Bell), which for a number of years made a great impression in Russia. … Herzen was the hero of the young. Herzenism, we are told, became the rage, and Herzenism appears to have meant, before all, a free handling of everything in Church or State which was previously thought too sacred to be touched. This iconoclastic spirit grew more and more characteristic of Russian society at this period, and presently, under its influence, Herzenism fell into the shade, and nihilism occupied the scene. We possess various accounts of the meaning and nature of nihilism, and they all agree substantially in their description of it. The word was first employed by Turgenieff in his novel 'Fathers and Sons,' where Arcadi Petrovitch surprises his father and uncle by describing his friend Bazaroff as a nihilist. 'A nihilist,' said Nicholas Petrovitch. 'This word must come from the Latin nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge, and consequently it signifies a man who recognises nothing.' 'Or rather who respects nothing,' said Paul Petrovitch. 'A man who looks at everything from a critical point of view,' said Arcadi. 'Does not that come to the same thing?' asked his uncle. 'No, not at all. A nihilist is a man who bows before no authority, who accepts no principle without examination, no matter what credit the principle has.' … 'Yes, before we had Hegelians; now we have nihilists. We shall see what you will do to exist in nothingness, in a vacuum, as if under an air pump.' Koscheleff, writing in 1874, gives a similar explanation of nihilism. 'Our disease is a disease of character, and the most dangerous possible. We suffer from a fatal unbelief in everything. We have ceased to believe in this or in that, not because we have studied the subject thoroughly and become convinced of the untenability of our views, but only because some author or another in Germany or England holds this or that doctrine to be unfounded. … Our nihilists are simply Radicals. Their loud speeches, their fault-finding, their strong assertions, are grounded on nothing.'"

_J. Rae, Contemporary Socialism, chapter 9._

See, also, NIHILISM.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1862-1864. Ferdinand Lassalle and the formation of the Social Democratic Party in Germany.