GHDI logo

Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg, Address to his Employees (c. 1889)

page 4 of 5    print version    return to list previous document      next document


If I were to create extensive consumer cooperatives, the middle class of craftsmen and retailers in our town would be nothing short of annihilated, and you would suffer direct harm, for many of your children and relatives could be active as independent business persons – perhaps even yourselves, on account of increasing age and growing savings. [ . . . ] For this reason, I have always preferred granting additional allowances in case of rising food prices instead of founding consumer cooperatives, which would accomplish the same for you, only without a personal burden on my part. Nevertheless, I am definitely not giving you over blindly to the capriciousness of the commercial handicraft enterprise; and if the latter ever abused its position towards to you, I would not hesitate for a moment to introduce the consumer cooperative, a necessary evil in that case. [ . . . ]

An essential weapon used by scientific and pseudo-Christian socialism to support Social Democracy is the legend of a fourth estate that supposedly has to protect itself against “capital” in general. No one acknowledges more readily than I that the paid laborer ought to be protected against exploitation, which is, after all, possible. [ . . . ] This tendency, however, to degrade you to a fourth estate constitutes an outright insult to the entire working population. Today workers are absolutely equal to any other category of citizen before the law, and I will never accept that the worker is cut from any other cloth, or has a lesser worth, than the Kommerzienrat* or the minister. Of course, I’ll be the last one to deny that there is a lot of poverty and misery among workers, as I am trying every day to alleviate such problems wherever they appear in your midst. This is not characteristic of the so-called fourth estate, however; for many farmers and artisans, even some members of the so-called educated classes, fare much worse than most factory workers. This is precisely because capital, by way of its increase in Germany during the last decades, has been able to provide much better for factory workers than in the past. [ . . . ] What is completely incomprehensible to me is how the learned gentlemen are actually fabricating the fourth estate. There are numerous intermediate stages between me and the lowest day laborer: the director, the works manager, the works engineer, the master, the foreman – and I would really like to know where the third estate ends and the fourth estate begins in this scheme! No, my friends, we all belong to the same estate; it is the old, honorable estate of the hammer mill, and I have always and everywhere proudly professed my commitment to this estate.
[ . . . ]



* Kommerzienrat was an honorary title given to distinguished businessmen and financiers – trans.

first page < previous   |   next > last page