SECTION D THE INDUSTRIAL GROUP 



(Hall 14, September 22, 3 p.m.) 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WERNER SOMBART, University of Breslau. 



PROFESSOR RICHARD T. ELY, University of Wisconsin. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR THOMAS S. ADAMS, Madison, Wisconsin. 



THE INDUSTRIAL GROUP 



BY WERNER SOMBART 



(Translated from the German by W. H. Price, Harvard University} 



[Werner Sombart, Special Professor of Political Economy, University of Breslau, 

 since 1890. b. Ermslehen, Saxony, January 19,1863. Ph.D.; Recorder of 

 Chamber of Commerce of Bremen, 1888-90. Author of Socialism and Social 

 Movements of the Nineteenth Century; Modern Capital; and numerous other 

 works of note on political and social economy.] 



MY task is to sketch the historically peculiar circumstances of life 

 amid which the industrial proletariat lives. By the industrial 

 proletariat I mean the body of wage-earners in the service of modern 

 industrial capitalism. And I intend to point out the relation of 

 these conditions to modern progress in general. This problem 

 might be attacked in either of two ways, first by making promi- 

 nent those phenomena, such for instance as state interference, which 

 have a peculiar significance in the establishment of a definite social 

 ideal and which furnish encouragement, as well, for undertaking 

 definite reforms. This is the political point of view. 



A second method would be to correlate such of these phenomena 

 as we are able to recognize as the points of departure, the occasions, 

 or the conditions from which arise the movements of the laboring 

 class itself. This is the evolutionary point of view, from which can 

 be answered the question, What makes the social movement possible? 

 In the language of Hegel and Marx this sort of inquiry would be 

 called the dialectic method. And this is the method of inquiry 

 which will be adopted here. 



In order rightly to judge the conditions of existence of the modern 

 proletariat we must first of all understand what it has lost as com- 

 pared with other groups of people, what it no longer possesses of 

 the conditions of living of its own former generations. Hence I must 

 pay special attention to European conditions, which indeed are 

 necessary to an understanding of all social phenomena. My dis- 

 course cannot be more than an introduction to a big subject. 



Estrangement from nature is the most important feature of the 

 proletarian existence. The contact of the country lad with nature 



