I am not astonished that the most divergent views are held on this new subject, which touches our lives very intimately, and which no experience has as yet illuminated.  Because of this divergence of opinion I am also aware that we may be unable to pass an acceptable law at this session.  My own interest in this entire work would be very much lessened if I were to notice that the principle of a State contribution were to be definitely rejected, and that the legislative assembly of the country were to vote against State-contributions.  This would transfer the whole matter to the sphere of open commerce, if I may say so, and in that case it might be better to leave the insurance to private enterprise rather than to establish a State-institution without any compulsion.  I should certainly not have the courage to exercise compulsion, if the State did not at the same time make a contribution.

If compulsion is exercised, it is necessary for the law to establish a department of insurance.  This is cheaper and safer than any company.  You cannot expose the savings of the poor to possible insolvency, nor can you allow any part of the contributions to be used for the payment of dividends or interest on stocks and bonds.  The representative Mr. Bamberger based his opposition to the bill—­you remember his strong words—­largely on his sorrow at the impending ruin of the insurance companies.  He said they would be crushed and annihilated, and he added, that they were soliciting the gratitude of their fellow-citizens.  I always thought they were soliciting the money of their fellow-citizens.  If in addition they can get their gratitude, they are turning a very clever trick.  That they should be willing, like good souls, to sacrifice themselves in the interest of the workingmen, and establish their institutions of insurance without issuing any shares, I have never believed, and it would be difficult to convince me of it.  According to my feeling of right and wrong, we cannot force anybody to join private insurance companies which may become bankrupt even under good management, owing to fluctuations in the market, or to panics, and which have to arrange their premiums so that dividends are realized for those who are investing their capital, or at least interest on the invested money and the hope of dividends.  To this I cannot lend my assistance.  If the State is going to exercise compulsion, it must, I believe, undertake the insurance itself.  It may be the empire for all, or the individual State—­but, without this, no compulsion!

Nor have I the courage, as I have already said, to exercise any compulsion if I cannot offer something in return.  This contribution of a third is, as I said before, much smaller than it looks, because the associations will be greatly relieved of the old burdens which the State had imposed on them.  If this is communism, as the last speaker called it, and not socialism, I do not care one iota.  I shall call it again and again “practical Christianity legally demonstrated.”  If, however, it is communism, then communism has been extensively practised in the districts for a long while, and actually under State compulsion.