To the Readers of and Contributors to the Gesellschaftsspiegel

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This address to the readers of and contributors to the Elberfeld journal Gesellschaftsspiegel was written by Engels and Hess. Engels took a part in preparing the publication of the journal, in drawing up its programme, and, as is seen from his letter to Marx of January 20, 1845, in compiling the prospectus published in the first issue in the form of this editorial address. As Engels wrote in one of his reports, "Rapid Progress of Communism in Germany", published in The New Moral World, it was initially proposed that he should be one of the editors. The prospectus reflected Engels' intention that the journal would expose the evils of the capitalist system and defend the interests of the workers by criticising half-measures and advocating a radical transformation of the social system. Indeed, the concrete plan worked out by Engels for investigating the condition of the workers corresponded in many respects with the tasks he had set himself in writing The Condition of the Working-Class in England. But at the same time, not a few abstract philanthropic sentiments in the spirit of "true socialism", coming from Hess, had found a place in the prospectus. Dissatisfaction with the position adopted by Hess was apparently one of the causes of Engels' refusal to become one of the editors. In the third of the mentioned reports in The New Moral World, written in early April 1845, he named Hess alone as the publisher of the Gesellschaftsspiegel. Under the editorship of Hess the journal very soon departed from the line envisaged by Engels in the prospectus and became a mouthpiece of the reformist and sentimental ideas of "true socialism".

The noble striving to hasten to the aid of suffering humanity, which, to the credit of the 19th century, manifests itself everywhere at the present time, has not yet in Germany a central press organ giving publicity on the one hand to the evils which must be remedied, and on the other to the proposed or already implemented measures for their redress, and casting light on their success or failure. We hereby submit to the public the first issue of such an organ, and hope that every friend of humanity will feel prompted to support the Gesellschaftsspiegel with appropriate reports.

In order to discover and apply the means for the radical and permanent elimination of the various and moreover artificially concealed evils in our social life, it is necessary first of all to find out what these evils are. For this reason the Gesellschaftsspiegel will cite before its' forum all the maladies of the social body; it will publish general descriptions, monographs, statistical items, and individual typical cases serving to set the social relations of all the classes in their true light and to help the associations which are being formed to eliminate the social evils; it will stand exclusively on the ground of fact, and carry only facts and arguments based directly on facts, arguments the conclusions from which are also obvious facts.

The condition of the working classes will be first and foremost the object of our attention, for their condition is the most glaring of all evils in present-day civilised society. Descriptions, statistical data, individual striking facts from all parts of Germany, especially from those in which unusual distress prevails, will be welcome. Also reports on the numerical relation of the needy classes, the propertyless classes in general, to the propertied; on the growth of pauperism, and so on.

We shall include in the range of our survey the spiritual, intellectual and moral condition of the workers as well as their physical condition, and shall readily accept reports on the state of their health insofar as it is determined by the social conditions, and on the state of education and morality of the proletarians. Statistics on crime and prostitution, especially when accompanied by comparison of different periods of time, localities or living conditions, will also be given close attention.

The most fruitful fields for the purposes of the Gesellschaftsspiegel in this respect are:

1) The large towns, which cannot exist without a numerous propertyless class crowded together in a small area. Besides the usual consequences which the absence of property entails everywhere, we shall have to consider here the effect which this centralisation of the population has on the physical, intellectual, and moral condition of the working classes. Descriptions, statistical, medical, and other reports along with individual facts casting light on the "disreputable areas", mostly shrouded in darkness, ofvour towns, large and small, will be welcome.

2) The industrial and factory districts, whose existence also requires a numerous propertyless class. In this respect we wish to draw the attention of our contributors particularly to the following points:

(a) The nature of work in itself: individual kinds of work which owing to their character or to the unsuitable way in which they are carried out or to the excessively long working hours are injurious to health; child and woman labour in factories and its consequences; neglect of working and non-working children and wives of proletarians, breaking up of the family, supplanting of adult male labour by women and children, accidents caused by machinery, and so on.

(b) Dependence of the workers on their employers. In respect of this point we shall make it our duty to represent the interests of the defenceless working class against the power and especially against the unfortunately too frequent encroachments of the capitalists. We shall pitilessly hold up for public censure every single case of oppression of workers and shall be particularly grateful to our correspondents for most accurate reports on this subject giving names, places and dates. If in factories working hours are too long or night work is resorted to, if workers are obliged to clean machines in their spare time, if factory-owners are brutal or tyrannical towards their workers, lay down tyrannical working regulations, pay wages in goods instead of money—we shall especially fight this infamous truck system wherever and in whatever forms or disguises it occurs—if workers are forced to work in unhealthy premises or to live in unsatisfactory lodgings belonging to the factory-owner—in a word, whenever any act of injustice is committed by the capitalists against the workers, we ask everybody who is in a position to do so to inform us on this score as soon and as exactly as possible. We want to make known to the public in the most exact and shameful details each and every violation of the laws that have been issued to protect the poor from the rich. Only in this way can the laws, which have so far existed mostly on paper, be made really effective.

(c) Neglect of the workers by society in general when, as a result of competition, the introduction of more efficient machinery, the employment of women and children, the fluctuations of trade and foreign competition the workers are deprived of employment, or when due to illness, injury or old age they are unable to work, as well as all deteriorations in the workers' living conditions due to lowering of wages.

Besides the propertyless, we shall also describe the propertied class in its outer and inner conditions. We shall have to prove with facts that free competition between private businessmen without organisation of labour and commerce impoverishes the middle class, concentrating property in the hands of a few and thus indirectly restoring the monopoly; that the parcelling out of landed property ruins the small landowner and indirectly restores big landed property; that the competitive struggle, in which we are all being involved, undermines the foundations of society and demoralises the whole of society by brutal self-interest.

The Gesellschaftsspiegel will not confine itself to describing material misery, or spiritual and moral misery only when it goes hand in hand with the former; on the contrary, it will describe misery in all its forms, and therefore also the misery of the higher classes; and in this description it will not confine itself to statistical articles and accounts of real facts taken from life; it will open its columns to fiction in prose and in verse, but only to such as depicts life truly. Descriptions based on life will be no less welcome than descriptions taken from life.

Let those to whom such a pitiless exposure of the condition of our industrial as well as agricultural and other population—a condition which has so far been for the most part hypocritically glossed over or concealed—those to whom so frank a presentation of our entire social condition as the one the Gesellschaftsspiegel intends to give causes too great head and heartache for them to be favourably disposed to our undertaking, let them reflect that in the long run the courage required to look an evil in the face and the calm derived from a clear knowledge of things have a more beneficial effect on mind and heart than the cowardly idealising sentimentality which seeks consolation from disconsolate reality in the falsehood of its ideal, which neither exists nor can exist because it is based on illusions] Such idealising sentimentality indeed displays hypocritical sympathy for the sufferings of humanity when these eventually develop into a political scandal—as we saw all the newspapers and journals overflowing with so-called socialism in connection with the Silesian disturbances—but as soon as the disturbances are over, it quietly lets the poor go on starving.

Finally, the Gesellschaftsspiegel will carry reports on the efforts being made to remedy the social evils and the disorders of society, that is, on the one hand, the work of the associations now being formed and on the other, the coercive measures which hold some evils in check, but only to produce others. These include the pernicious effects of the degrading sentences which place a criminal for ever outside the pale of society, of intercourse with hardened criminals in ordinary prisons and of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania-type prisons, the numerous murders resulting from the laws against poaching; the state and operation of the poor laws and the sanitary police; the typical crimes, and so on.

In appealing to all who are in a position to send us reports on the above-mentioned and similar points to be laid before the forum of the Gesellschaftsspiegel, in particular to priests, schoolteachers, doctors and officials, for friendly co-operation in the interest of the cause, we guarantee that whenever it is desired names will be kept secret and we shall hold our correspondents responsible only for the correctness of the facts of which they inform us. The editorial board assumes the responsibility for publication.