THE INDUSTRIAL GROUP 797 



doctrine. Membership in his class, therefore, signifies for the wage- 

 earner exactly what for others membership in a noble rank, in a 

 community, a city, or a state has implied. With pride, he proclaims, 

 Proletarius sum. 



This dissolution of all quantitative or individual distinction in 

 the mass, now viewed and, therefore, now valued only qualitatively, 

 is parallel with and affects in the same manner the development of 

 modern technique in other directions. Only he who has familiarized 

 himself with their peculiarities will be in a position to understand the 

 important features of the proletarian movement, and above all to 

 comprehend the above-mentioned communistic tendency. 



The increasing differentiation and integration of separate econo- 

 mies, their absorption into an indissoluble whole, on the one hand, 

 and on the other, the progressive specialization and organization of 

 labor in the modern " great industries " constitute what has been 

 called the socialization of the process of production. This socializa- 

 tion has brought it about that a particular commodity appears no 

 longer as the product of individual labor but as the joint product of 

 common labor. Formerly the cobbler who made a pair of boots 

 regarded himself as the fashioner of this particular article. The 

 laborer in a modern shoe factory, who pursues only a single task in the 

 general process, has lost this personal relation to the particular pro- 

 duct. To-day the actual process is collective for individual articles, 

 and, therefore, to the task laborer engaged in it, the conception of a 

 collective organization of general production is no more strange. In 

 the same way, however, and at the same time, the idea occurs to the 

 laborer in the great city, of a common, of a communistic consumption. 

 This idea is made more and more familiar to him by the character of 

 his own home surroundings. 



The separate dwelling, which satisfies man's original instinct for 

 privacy, loses for the poor man in his congested tenement more and 

 more of its charm. Instead, he feels a growing liking for public 

 places where he can satisfy more completely his material and imma- 

 terial needs. Workingmen's clubs, public reading-rooms, concert- 

 halls, and beer-gardens become a new home for the masses in great 

 cities. The aggregated advantages of the public institutions, the 

 public gardens and parks and museums, with their uninterrupted 

 series of pleasures and delights, rise in the estimation of the laborers 

 as the charm of their private or family life diminishes. The family 

 itself dissolves under the influence of the excessively long day or 

 night work away from home, through woman's labor, and the early 

 employment of children. The result is that the proletariat is invol- 

 untarily led to transfer the weight of its interest from the individual 

 to the social life. 



Now, however, to gain a full understanding of the modern social 



