[Rezension zu Herman Schoolmeesters: La mission de l’État; l’ordre économique, la réglementation du travail]

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Herman Schoolmeesters (1909)

Schullern’s German review of La mission de l’État; l’ordre économique, la réglementation du travail examines Schoolmeesters’s account of legitimate state intervention. Prompted by proposed working-hour limits in the future Limburg coal mines, the pamphlet moves from the state’s mission and public welfare to legal justice and the regulation of adult labour.

Schullern presents a theory in which association must secure benefits with minimal effort, while state provision must serve the general good, reduce public sacrifices, and distribute benefits and burdens proportionally. He marks his exposition as an attempt at faithful translation, not an endorsement. The practical consequence is Schoolmeesters’s rejection of the eight-hour law. The review isolates the stringent demand for knowledge underlying this restriction of legislative action:

Ein charakteristischer Satz: Kein offizieller „Versuch“ ist berechtigt: Der Staat muß wissen, bevor er handelt; wenn er nicht weiß, muß er „laisser faire“ . . . .

English translation: A characteristic sentence: No official "experiment" is justified: the State must know before it acts; if it does not know, it must "laisser faire" . . . .

This formulation makes uncertainty a reason for nonintervention and denies official experimentation a legitimate role. Schullern’s closing assessment shifts from reporting the argument to judging its intellectual position:

Die vorliegende Broschüre erscheint mir — wenn ich sie überhaupt richtig verstehe, sie ist durchaus keine leichte Lektüre — wie ein erratischer Block in unserer modernen Litteratur.

English translation: The present brochure appears to me — if I understand it correctly at all, it is by no means easy reading — like an erratic block in our modern literature.

The metaphor of an erratic block presents the pamphlet as anomalous within contemporary literature. Yet Schullern qualifies his judgment by acknowledging its difficulty and the possibility of misunderstanding. The review thus combines careful exposition of a restrictive theory of state action with a pointed, cautiously framed expression of intellectual distance.