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[ . . . ] Among the economic factors which have done much to promote the rise and the swift and large-scale spread of Social Democracy in this country, apart from the unhealthily precipitate development of our industry with its resultant crises, over-production and unemployment, the rapid increase in population (particularly in the industrial regions) is certainly among the foremost. Admittedly economic causes are by no means the only, indeed, they are today not even the most important, in leading to the rise and development of the Social Democratic movement. As everywhere in the life of mankind, here too the moral factors, which seek and find a basis for themselves in the economic ones, are really what is decisive. Merely demonstrating – however convincingly and cogently – that the economic demands of Social Democracy are impossible of fulfilment and in the last analysis Utopian, in itself achieves little. If Christianity with its reconciling power has, alas, become unfamiliar, indeed odious and contemptible to wide circles in this country, if moral convictions, if the most commonplace religious beliefs have been undermined, and their place taken by the doctrine of materialism, then no-one can stop a man from making demands of this earthly life which it can never satisfy. In the glaring disparity between these delusive hopes and the existing naked reality there is ignited that implacable hatred of things as they are which, inter alia, imagines that only by violent and bloody upheaval can matters be improved. In these states of mind lies the key point of our Social Democrats’ agitation and its consequences. Could one but dispel the idea of human happiness which during the last decade our Social Democrats have been sedulously building into their imaginings, reveal to them the secret of contentment and arouse in them hopes of a new kind, then our Social Democratic crisis would be largely resolved, that is to say, an atmosphere would have been created in which the economic reforms and measures of support to which our working class are fully entitled could be successfully carried out. Without that atmosphere, the creation of which, admittedly, requires above all a sincere goodwill and a genuine willingness to make sacrifices on the part of the propertied classes, both unfortunately often still lacking, even the best-intentioned efforts to render economic assistance will usually only meet with stubborn ingratitude. Ought not the question of colonies, and/or the organising and management of German emigration, to have an important effect in this direction too? Would this not, indeed, be inevitable? Did not our Social Democracy become what it is precisely in the period when, with the beginning of our economic crisis, the existing overpopulation began to make itself pronouncedly felt? I am, however, not thinking of emigration merely as a kind of safety-valve. For one thing, I place a much higher value on the psychological impression which a well-run, large-scale and successful emigration would soon have on the imagination – whose great importance in all spheres of thought and effort is usually vastly underrated – of wide circles of our people. Emigration along these lines would evoke new, not unattainable, hopes, if not perhaps among the fanatics, then at least among the majority of those who have, rather, been led astray and who really feel oppressed, and this in itself would set a limit to creeping discontent.* [ . . . ]
* Whether, and to what extent, if German emigration were to be organised, the Reich Government would have to subsidise the impecunious for purposes of resettlement, is something which of course does not require further examination here. We would, however, with certain reservations, decidedly answer this question in the affirmative, if only to ensure that every paterfamilias who was in straitened circumstances, whose earnings were insufficient and whose means were not enough to enable him to emigrate is able to say to himself: “I can better my lot.” Where this perception exists half the work is already done, or at least the main sting of the oppression from which people suffer has been removed. [Footnote from Friedrich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien? / Does Germany Need Colonies? Eine politische-ökonomische Betrachtung von D[r. Theol.] Friedrich Fabri, 3rd ed. Gotha, 1883.]
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