Prince Bismarck is beginning to take his long promised "
steps " for the advantage of the proletariat. The first is only a Bill, now before the Federal Council, for making insurance against accident compulsory on all masons, miners, factory hands, and some smaller classes of labourers. Half the premiums are always to be paid by the employer, or if the wages are less than 750 marks a year—say, 15s. a week —two-thirds. In this ease, too, the poor-rate will pay e remaining third, the workman paying, directly, nothing. The fund thus raised will provide sick allowance during the period of disability up to two-thirds of the wages, and a pension for the widow and each child. The Prince, in a statement of "objects and reasons" for the law, in the North-German, Gazette, and in several short speeches, made at a reception of the new Economic Council, has made farther promises to advance on the same line until all Germans are insured against sickness and old age, if not against periods of loss of work. He sees no difficulty in any extension of insurance. Note carefully that the Chancellor told the workmen on the Economic Council that he should go much farther, but he was made " timid " by the personal abuse he received in Parliament. Note also that the military journals of Germany, which are very strictly controlled, are trying once more to represent a great war as imminent.
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