CONSER VA TIVE SOCIALISTS. 
91 
a great net-work of iron roads is one of the most complicated 
of industrial enterprises. It requires special knowledge, not 
only for the maintenance of the line, but also for the choice 
and construction of the rolling-stock. It needs administrative 
capacity to organize the staff of officials, and get them to work 
together, as well as sound commercial judgment to regulate 
the scale of charges. In a word, all those qualities must be 
combined which go to make up at once the manufacturer and 
the merchant Consequently, if the State is to undertake this i 
duty, which is one of the most difficult to be found in the 
whole sphere of industry, it might, ã fortiori, be intrusted with 
the working of the mines of Saarbrück or of the Harz Mountains, 1 
the cultivation of lands, as in the case of the State farms, and, ■ 
in fact, the production of all the principle articles of commerce, ; 
whether in the shape of raw materials or manufactured goods. 
There is no reason for stopping short anywhere in this direction. 
1 he only logical conclusion is, that we should place every 
industry under the direct control of the State, which is, in fact, 
the ideal of the extreme Socialist. 
Latterly, Prince Bismarck’s socialistic tendencies have become 
still more marked, and he now chooses his advisers in economic 
matters from the extreme left of the Katheder-socialisten 
(“ Socialists of the Chair”). In the spring of 1877, during his 
solitude at Varzin, it is said that he employed himself in pro 
foundly studying social questions. One cannot help admiring 
the resolution of this statesman, who, in the midst of the painful 
preoccupations of a foreign policy so full of difficulties, devotes 
months and years to the search of means for the amelioration 
of the condition of the labouring classes. I know no more 
decisive proof of the actual importance of the problem. Be 
sides his private secretary, Herr Lothar Bücher, the Chancellor 
has several times consulted Herr Adolf Wagner, Professor in 
the University of Berlin, whose theory of property is funda 
mentally the same as that of Rodbertus and Dr. Schæffle, 
former minister in Austria, whose recent work, the “ Quintes 
sence of Socialism,” places him in the ranks of Socialists. We 
all know that, as a result of his meditations and conversations, 
i'rince Bismarck presented to the Prussian Parliament a pro-