But how shall the State be enabled to make this intervention? The answer must be immediately evident to you all: it will be possible only through universal and direct suffrage. When the legislative bodies of Germany are based on universal and direct suffrage, then, and only then, will you be able to prevail upon the State to undertake this duty.

Then this demand will be brought forward in the legislative bodies; then the limits and the forms and the means of this intervention will be discussed by reason and science; and then—be assured of this!—those men who understand your situation and are devoted to your cause, armed with the glittering steel of science, will stand at your side and protect your interests; then you, the propertyless class of society, will have only yourselves and your own unwise choices to blame if the representatives of your class remain in a minority.

The universal and direct franchise is, as now appears, not merely your political principle—it is your social principle, the fundamental principle of all social advancement. It is the only means for improving the material condition of the working class. But how can they accomplish the introduction of the universal and direct franchise? For an answer, look to England! The great agitation of the English people against the corn laws lasted for more than five years, but then they had to go—abolished by the Tory ministry itself.

Organize yourselves as a general workingmen's union for the purpose of a lawful and peaceable, but untiring, unceasing agitation for the introduction of universal and direct suffrage in all German states. From the moment when this union includes even one hundred thousand German workingmen, it will be a force with which everybody must reckon. Send abroad this call into every workshop, every village, every cottage. Let the city workingmen pass on their higher standard of judgment and education to the country workers. Debate, discuss, everywhere, daily, untiringly, incessantly, as was done in that great English agitation against the corn laws, in peaceable public assemblies as well as in private meetings, the necessity of the universal and direct franchise. The more the echo of your voice resounds in the ears of millions, the more irresistible its force will be.

Establish financial committees, to which every member of the German workingmen's union must contribute, and to which your plans for organization can be submitted.

With these contributions establish funds which, in spite of the smallness of the individual amounts, would form a tremendous financial power for the purpose of agitation. A weekly contribution of only one silver groschen each from one hundred thousand members of the union would produce over one hundred and sixty thousand thalers yearly. Establish newspapers which would daily bring forward this demand and prove that it is founded upon social conditions; send out by the same means pamphlets for the same purpose; employ with the resources of this union agents to carry this same view into every corner of the land, to arouse with the same call the heart of every workingman, of every cotter and plowman; indemnify from the resources of this union all those workingmen who suffer injury and persecution on account of their activity in this cause.

Repeat daily, unceasingly, this same call. The more it is repeated, the more it will spread and the mightier will become its power. The whole art of practical success consists in concentrating all efforts at all times upon one point, and that the most important one, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Look you neither to the right nor to the left; be deaf to everything which does not mean universal and direct suffrage, to everything which is not connected with it, or able to lead to it.

If you have really spread this call, as you can do within a few years, through the 89 to 96 per cent. of the total population which, as I have shown you, constitutes the poor and propertyless classes of society, then your will can no longer be resisted—depend upon that! Quarrels and feuds may exist about political rights between the government and the capitalist. You may even be denied political powers and therefore universal suffrage, because of the luke-warmness with which political rights are regarded; but universal suffrage, which 89 to 96 per cent. of the population regard as a life question, and therefore spread with the warmth of life through the whole national body—depend upon it, Gentlemen, there is no power which can resist it.

This is the banner which you must raise. This is the standard under which you will conquer. There is no other for you.

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