The International Workingmen's Association

1. Foundation of the Association

The immediate motive for the foundation of the International Working Men's Association was the latest Polish insurrection. The London workers sent a deputation to Lord Palmerston with an appeal in which they called on him to intervene on behalf of Poland. At the same time, they issued an address to the workmen of Paris, calling on them to take joint action. The Parisians responded by sending delegates to London. To welcome them, a public meeting gathered at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, on September 28, 1864, at which Britons, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles and Italians were represented in large numbers.

This meeting gave birth to the International Working Men's Association. Apart from the political purpose for which the meeting was called, it also raised the subject of general social conditions. It revealed that workmen of all nations had the same grievances, that they were subjected to the same basic evils in all countries. It showed that the interests of all of them coincided. It elected a provisional Central Council, later renamed the General Council which made its seat in London and was composed of various nationalities. The Council was provisionally entrusted with the central administration of the future Association, the publication of the Inaugural Address (a kind of programme), and the drafting of the Provisional Rules.

Unanimity and enthusiasm reigned at the meeting. Each nation was represented by men who did it honour. As a result, the. English workers, who had fought the ruling classes independently of, and uninfluenced by, the political and social movements of the rest of Europe since 1824, when the legislature was compelled to grant them the right of association[395], now came out of their national isolation for the first time and agreed with the workmen of all nations on the necessity for joint action. Hence the enthusiasm: the gathering was aware that it was ringing in a new era in the workers' movement.

2. Difficulties in the Initial Period of the Association

New movements are not created overnight even if they are called upon to fill a pressing need of the times. To begin with, it is essential to steer clear of reefs on which new organisations have foundered so often before or which have, at the very least, diverted them from their original and true goal, for representatives of declining forms of the movement join the new one to make it a vehicle of the old. This was the case here, too. The Italian members of the provisional Central Council were followers of Mazzini. They laid before the Central Council a draft of the Inaugural Address and the Provisional Rules[396] drawn up by Mazzini himself. In his address, Mazzini repeated his old political programme garnished with a bit of socialist phraseology. He thundered against the class struggle. His Rules were formulated in a strictly centralised manner fit for secret political societies. From the start they would have destroyed the very basis of an international working men's association which was not conceived to create a movement but only to unite and weld together the already existing and dispersed class movement of various countries.

Mazzini's name was in high repute at the time among the English workers, notably since Garibaldi's triumphant visit to London[397]. Mazzini was therefore fairly confident that he would be able to take charge of the International Working Men's Association. But he had reckoned without his host. Karl Marx, who had been elected to the provisional Central Council at the meeting in St. Martin's Hall, submitted his drafts of the Inaugural Address and Provisional Rules in opposition to Mazzini's. Both of his drafts were unanimously adopted and published, and the Provisional Rules later won final acceptance at the Geneva Congress in 1866.

It was therefore a German who gave the International Working Men's Association its definite tendency and organisational principles. And we might also note that the Central Council in London has repeatedly been confirmed in its functions.

3. The Inaugural Address of Karl Marx[398]

In the closest possible translation of the English original, the Address reads as follows:

Working Men,

It is a great fact that the misery of the working classes has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivalled in the annals of history for the development of its industry and the growth of its commerce. In 1850, a moderate organ of the British bourgeoisie, seemingly of more than average information, predicted that if the exports and imports of England were to rise 50 per cent, English pauperism would sink to zero[399]. Alas! On April 7th, 1864, Mr. Gladstone,' the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, delighted his audience' by the statement that the total import and export trade of England had grown in 1863 to £443,955,000, which amounted to about three times the trade of the comparatively recent epoch of 1843. With all that, he was compelled to refer to the social misery. He had to speak of those who were on the border of starvation, of wages that had not increased by a single penny, of human life that was in nine cases out of ten but a daily struggle for existence. He did not speak of the people of Ireland, gradually replaced by machinery in the north, and by sheep-walks in the south, though even the sheep in that unhappy country are decreasing, it is true, not at so rapid a rate as the men. He did not repeat what then had been just betrayed by the highest representatives of the upper ten thousand in a sudden fit of terror. When the garotte panic[400] had reached a certain height, the House of Lords caused an inquiry to be made into, and a report to be published upon, transportation and penal servitude. Out came the murder in the bulky Blue Book of 1863[401], and proved it was, by official facts and figures, that the worst of the convicted criminals, the penal serfs of England and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far better than the agricultural labourers of England and Scotland. But this was not all. When, consequent upon the Civil War in America, the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire were thrown upon the streets, the same House of Lords sent to the manufacturing districts a physician commissioned to investigate into the smallest possible amount of carbon and nitrogen, to be administered in the cheapest and plainest form, which might just suffice to avert starvation diseases. Dr. Smith, the medical commissioner of Parliament, ascertained that 28,000 grains of carbon, and 1,330 grains of nitrogen were the weekly allowance that would just about be enough to keep an average adult over the level of starvation diseases, and he found furthermore that this quantity pretty nearly agreed with the scanty nourishment to which the pressure of extreme distress had actually reduced the poor cotton operatives. [We need hardly remind the reader that, apart from the elements of water and certain inorganic substances, carbon and nitrogen form the raw materials of human food. However, to nourish the human system, those simple chemical constituents must be supplied in the form of vegetable or animal substances. Potatoes, for instance, contain only carbon, while bread contains carbonaceous and nitrogenous substances in a due proportion. – Note by Karl Marx.]

But that is not all. The same learned Doctor was later on again deputed by the government to inquire into the nourishment of the poorer part of the working class. The results of his researches are contained in the "Sixth Report on Public Health", published by order of Parliament in the course of the present year (1864). What did the Doctor discover? That the silk weavers, the needle women, the kid glovers, the stocking weavers, and other workers, received, on an average, not even the distress pittance of the cotton operatives, not even the amount of carbon and nitrogen "just sufficient to avert starvation diseases".

Further, the report brings out the strange, and rather unexpected fact that of the four divisions of the United Kingdom, those of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the agricultural population of England, the richest division, is considerably the worst fed, but that even the agricultural labourers of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Somersetshire, fare better than great numbers of skilled indoor operatives of the East End of London.

Translator's note. In the Preface to his recently published book, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Von Karl Marx. Hamburg 1867, Marx observes most correctly:

Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that

Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the official Public Health Report:

Dazzled by the "Progress of the Nation" statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy:

If you want to know with how many victims of broken health, tainted morals, and mental ruin, that "Intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property" was, and is being, produced by the classes of labour, look to the picture hung up in the last "Public Health Report" of the workshops of tailors, printers, and dressmakers! Compare the "Report of the Children's Employment Commission" of 1863, where it is stated, for instance, that

Glance at Mr. Tremenheere's Blue Book on the "Grievances Complained of by the journeymen Bakers"! And who has not shuddered at the seemingly paradoxical statement made by the inspectors of factories, and illustrated by the Registrar General, that the Lancashire operatives, while put upon the distress pittance of food, were actually improving in health during this time, because of their temporary exclusion by the cotton famine from the cotton factory, and that the mortality of the children was decreasing, because their mothers were now at last allowed to give them, instead of Godfrey's cordial, their own breasts.

Again reverse the medal! The Income and Property Tax Returns laid before the House of Commons on July 20, 1864, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes, valued a at £50,000 and upwards, had, from April 5th, 1862, to April 5th, 1863, been joined by a dozen and one, their number having increased in that single year from 67 to 80. The same returns disclose the fact that about 3,000 persons divide amongst themselves a yearly income of about £25,000,000 sterling, rather more than the total revenue doled out annually to the whole mass of the agricultural labourers of England and Wales. Open the census of 1861, and you will find that the number of the landed proprietors of England and Wales had decreased from 16,934 in 1851, to 15,066 in 1861, so that the concentration of land had grown in 10 years 11 per cent. If the concentration of the soil of the country in a few hands proceeds at the same rate, the land question will become singularly simplified, as it had become in the Roman Empire, when Nero grinned at the discovery that half the Province of Africa was owned by six gentlemen.

We have dwelt so long upon these facts, "so astonishing to be almost incredible", because England heads the Europe of commerce and industry. It will be remembered that not long ago one of the refugee sons of Louis Philippe publicly congratulated the English agricultural labourer on the superiority of his lot over that of his less florid comrade on the other side of the Channel. Indeed, with local colours changed, and on a scale somewhat contracted, the English facts reproduce themselves in all the industrious and progressive countries of the Continent' In all of them there has taken place, since 1848, an unheard-of development of industry, and an undreamed-of expansion of imports and exports. In all of them the augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property was truly intoxicating. In all of them, as in England, a minority of the working classes got their real wages somewhat advanced; while in most cases, given the universally rising prices, the monetary rise of wages denoted no more a real access of comforts than the inmate of the metropolitan poor-house or orphan asylum, for instance, was in the least benefited by his first necessaries rising in price according to official estimates from £7 7s. 4d. in 1852 to £9 15s. 8d. in 1864. Everywhere the great mass of the working classes were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate, at least, that those above them were rising in the social scale. In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable to every, unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those, whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science to industrial and agricultural production, no aids and contrivances of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all these things put together will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but that, on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms. Death of starvation rose almost to the rank of a social institution, during this intoxicating epoch of economical progress, in the metropolis of the British Empire, That epoch is marked in the annals of the world by the quickened return, the widening compass, and the deadlier effects of the social pest called a commercial and industrial crisis.

After the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, all party organisations and party journals of the working classes were, on the Continent, crushed by the iron hand of force, the most advanced sons of labour fled in despair to the Transatlantic Republic, and the short-lived dreams of emancipation vanished before an epoch of industrial fever, moral marasme, and political reaction. The defeat of the Continental working classes a soon spread its contagious effects on this side of the Channel. While the rout of their Continental brethren unmanned the English working classes, and broke their faith in their own cause, it restored to the landlord and the money-lord their somewhat shaken confidence. They insolently withdrew concessions already advertised. The discoveries of new goldlands led to an immense exodus, leaving an irreparable void in the ranks of the British proletariat. Others of its formerly active members were caught by the temporary bribe of greater work and wages, and turned into loyal subjects. All the efforts made at keeping up, or remodelling, the Chartist movement, failed signally; the press organs of the working class died one by one of the apathy of the masses, and, in point of fact, never before seemed the English working class so thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity. If, then, there had been no solidarity of action between the British and the Continental working classes, there was, at all events, a solidarity of defeat.

And yet this period has not been without its compensating features. We shall here only point to two great facts.

After a thirty years' struggle, fought with most admirable perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momentaneous split between the landlords and money-lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours' Bill[403]. The immense physical, moral, and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, half-yearly chronicled in the reports of the inspectors of factories, are now acknowledged on all sides. Most of the Continental governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less modified forms, and the English Parliament itself is every year compelled to enlarge its sphere of action. But besides its practical import, there was something else to exalt the marvellous success of this working men's measure. Through their most notorious men of science, such as Dr. Ure, Professor Senior, and other sages of that stamp, the British bourgeoisie had predicted, and to their heart's content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampire like, could but live by sucking blood, and children's blood, too. In olden times, child murder was a mysterious rite of the religion of Moloch, but it was practised on some very solemn occasions only, once a year perhaps, and then Moloch had no exclusive bias for the children of the poor. This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the laws of supply and demand which form the political economy of the bourgeoisie, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten Hours' Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the bourgeoisie succumbed to the political economy of the working class.

But there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labour over the political economy of property. We speak of the cooperative movement, especially the cooperative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold "hands".

Translator's note: It is common usage in England to describe workers as hands, while sheep and oxen are counted by heads. [Note by Eichhoff.]

The value of these great social experiments cannot be over-rated. By deed, instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labour need not be monopolised as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart. In England, the seeds of the cooperative system were sown by Robert Owen; the same working men's experiments, tried on the Continent, were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed, in 1848.

The experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that, however excellent in principle, and however useful in practice, cooperative labour, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic bourgeois spouters, and even keen political economists, have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very cooperative labour system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the Utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatising it as the sacrilege of the Socialist. To save the industrious masses, cooperative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered by national means. Yet, the lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour. Remember the sneer with which, last session, Lord Palmerston put down the advocates of the Irish Tenants' Right Bill. The House of Commons, cried he, is a house of landed proprietors[404]. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy, and France there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the political reorganisation of the working men's party.

One element of success they possess-numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united in an alliance and led towards a known goal. Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts. This thought prompted the working men of different countries assembled on September 28, 1864, in public meeting at St. Martin's Hall, to found the International Working Men's Association.

Another conviction swayed that meeting.

If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission if the foreign policy of governments pursues criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance by the working classes of England that saved the West of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic[405]. The shameless approval, mock sympathy, or idiotic indifference, with which the upper classes of Europe have witnessed the mountain fortress of the Caucasus falling a prey to, and heroic Poland being assassinated by, Russia; the unresisted encroachments of that barbarous power, whose head is at St. Petersburg, and whose hands are in every Cabinet of Europe, have taught the working classes the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective Governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations.

The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes.

Proletarians of all countries, Unite!

4. The Rules of the Association[406]

Considering,

That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule;

That the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopoliser of the means of labour, that is the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence;

That the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;

That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries;

That the emancipation of labour is neither a local, nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries;

That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrious countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors, and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements;

For these reasons: –

The first International Working Men's Congress declares that this International Association and all societies and individuals adhering to it will acknowledge truth, justice, and morality, as the basis of their conduct towards each other, and towards all men, without regard to colour, creed or nationality;

This Congress considers it the duty of a man to claim the rights of a man and citizen, not only for himself, but for every man who does his duty. No rights without duties, no duties without rights[407];

And in this spirit they have drawn up the following Rules of the International Association: –

5. The Preliminary Conference in London, September 1865[408]

The Central Council (later named the General Council) elected at the meeting in St. Martin's Hall had decided to hold the first Congress of the International Working Men's Association in Brussels at the beginning of September 1865. Later, it found this decision to be ill-advised, because, on the one hand, there had not been time enough for the Association to sink deeper roots, while on the other, the Belgian Government, which bows to orders from Paris in matters of internal policy, renewed the law that permits it to expel foreigners at will[409]. Instead of a general Congress in Brussels, the Central Council therefore convened a preliminary conference in London. Only delegates of the few leading committees from the Continent could take part in it.

The London Conference determined what questions would be discussed at the next general Congress in September 1866. Geneva was chosen as the place of the Congress.

6. The Geneva Congress, 3rd to 8th September 1866[410]

Sixty delegates were present, of whom 45 were members of 25 sections of the International Working Men's Association and 15 were members of 11 affiliated societies.

At the beginning of the debates, there ensued a heated discussion about the right of participating in the Congress. Many, individual members of the Association had come from France who, though they could not present credentials from any section, wished to be admitted as delegates of the Paris sections and to participate in the proceedings of the Congress. They referred to the French legislation which forbade them to have a regular organisation. Some members supported their demand. In their opinion, the organisation of the Congress had been neither complete nor final, and they should not therefore be too strict or scrupulous and should rather admit to the proceedings any individual member who subscribed to the principles of the Association. The British delegates maintained, however, that they had come as representatives of branches and societies each of which had many thousands of members and that on these grounds they demanded the representative system to be applied at the Congress; admission of individuals who represented no organised body would impair the rule of equality in voting and prejudice the rights of the British delegates. The Congress decided that the right of participating in the debates and in the voting should be granted exclusively to delegates who were able to present regular credentials.

After the credentials had been checked, the Congress proceeded to elect the Presidium and the Bureau, and a member of the London General Council, watchmaker Jung, was elected to the chair. He conducted the ensuing debates most skilfully. The hot-blooded Frenchmen, who would rather hear themselves speak, than others, made It rather difficult to run the proceedings, but the president's tact, calm and dignity, supported by the firm and sensible attitude of the English and German workers, prevailed over every threatening disturbance.

It would take us too far to present even a brief summary of the debates here.

Detailed reports on the proceedings of all congresses of the Association are contained in the journal Der Vorbote. Politische und sociale Zeitschrift, which has been published since 1866 as the central organ of the German-speaking section of the International Working Men 's Association under the editorship of Joh. Phil. Becker by the publishing house of the Association at Pré-l'Évêque 33 in Geneva. [Note by Eichhoff.]

The discussion chiefly concerned the "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council", whose provisions were in substance endorsed by the Congress. The most important points were the following:

§ 1 of these Instructions concerns the organisation of the International Association. The Rules, set forth above, which had, stood the test of two years' practice, were recommended for final adoption, London was proposed as the seat of the General Council for the next year, and the proposal to elect the General Council and a General Secretary, with a weekly, salary of £2 as the only paid officer of the Association was laid before the Congress.

The Congress sanctioned the Provisional Rules, decided that London should remain the seat of the General Council, confirmed the provisional General Council in London in its functions for the administrative year of 1866 to 1867, and fixed the opening of the next congress ill Lausanne on the first Monday of September 1867.

§ 2 of the Instructions concerns the international aid which the Association could give the workmen of all countries in their struggle against capital. This question, it points out, embraces the whole activity of the Association, which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by, the working classes in different countries. In one case the Association could already claim credit for having successfully counteracted the intrigues of capitalists always ready to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman in the event of strikes. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades ill the army of emancipation. As one more international combination of efforts it was proposed to carry out a "statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves". To make it successful, the most relevant questions were listed in the scheme that is given below. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. It was therefore proposed that all branches of the Association should immediately commence the work, and that the Congress should invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that all reports and evidence should be forwarded to the General Council which should elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix, and that this report together with its appendix should be published after having received the sanction of the Congress.

The proposed general scheme of inquiry contains the following items, which may of course be modified to stilt local conditions:

These proposals of the General Council were adopted by the Congress unanimously, and the workers' statistical inquiry into and assessment of their own condition have been proceeding steadily, since.

§ 3 of the Instructions concerns the limitation of the working day. This, it says, is a preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation are bound to founder. It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action. For this reason the Congress should declare itself in favour of a legal limitation of the working day to eight hours. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States[412], the vote of the Congress would raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world. Nightwork is to be permitted in but exceptional cases, ill trades and branches specified by law, with the tendency being to gradually suppress all nightwork. This proposal, however, referred only to adult persons 18 years of age and older, male or female, though the latter should be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious effects.

The Congress acceded to these proposals with a majority of 50 to 10 votes. The minority, consisted of those French delegates who were content to have a legal limitation of the working day to 10 hours.

§ 4 of the Instructions attacks the social evil of "juvenile and children's labour (both sexes) " at its very root.

The tendency, of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes cooperate in the great work of social production Is admitted to be a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it has been distorted into all abomination. In a rational state of society, every child of the age of 9 years should begin to become a productive labourer so that no able-bodied adult person should have to be exempted from the general law of nature, which says: work in order to be able to cat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.

For the present, however, the Congress is concerned only, with the working population. Here it distinguishes three classes of children and juvenile persons of both sexes, each of which is to be treated differently; the first class to range from 9 to 12, the second from 13 to 15, and the third front 16 to 17 years of age. It was proposed that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework should be legally, restricted to two, that of the second class to four, and that of the third to six working hours, and that for the third class there should be legally provided a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.

It was said to be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years, but the Congress dealt here only with the indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and compels parents by the necessity of obtaining a livelihood to sell their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is therefore the duty of society to care for their well-being.

If the bourgeoisie and aristocracy neglected their duties toward their offspring, it was their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child was also condemned to suffer from their prejudices.

The case of the working class stood quite different. The working man was no free agent. In regrettably too many cases, he was even too ignorant to understand the true interests of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. The more enlightened part of the working class, however, fully understood that the future of its class, and therefore of mankind, altogether depend upon the formation of the rising working generation. The workers knew perfectly well that above all else the children and the juvenile workers were to be saved front the crushing effects of the present system of labour. This could be done only by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there existed no other method of doing so, than through general laws enforced by the power of the state. If the working class supported the government in enforcing such laws, it would not thereby in the least fortify governmental power. On the contrary, it would transform that power, now used against it, into its own agency. By a general act it would achieve what it would vainly have attempted by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.

Proceeding from this standpoint, the Congress declared that no parent and no employer should be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.

Three things were to be understood by education:

A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training should correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological schools should be partly met by, the sale of their products.

The combination of paid productive labour, mental education, bodily exercise and polytechnic training, would raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle class.

It was self-understood that the employment of all persons up to 17 years inclusively in nightwork and all health injuring trades should be strictly prohibited by law.

The Congress agreed unanimously with these explanations, and added a resolution to the effect that the technical training of juvenile persons should be of a practical as well as of a theoretical nature so that not factory overseers and foremen but working men should be trained at the projected technological schools.

7. The Lausanne Congress, 2nd to 8th September, 1867 [413]

Sixty-four delegates came to this Congress, among whom the German element was represented by 25 members.

All opening ceremonies were dispensed with, and the Congress proceeded at once to elect the Presidium and the Bureau. Eugène Dupont, member of the General Council and delegate of the French section in London, was elected to the chair, and coped smartly with his none too simple duties. He was fortified in his task by the magnificent behaviour of the assembly. No unfriendly words had to be smoothed over, no improper pronouncements had to be rebutted, no tactless motions had to be registered. This time, too, the difficulty of conducting the discussion in three languages (English, German, and French) was happily overcome, as it had been at the first congress.

The most important at this Congress were the reports of the individual sections and affiliated societies on the actual successes and the growth of the Association. It would take us too far afield if we were to reproduce the content of these most interesting reports if only in outline, and we may dispense with it here all the more because the present expansion of the Association will be taken up In a later section. The official proceedings of the Congress of 1867 have been published in French by Chaux-de-Fonds, Imprimerie de la Voix de l'Avenir.

Indicative of the spirit of the Congress was the following:

Gaspare Stampa from Milan, delegate of the Central Council of Italian working men's associations, which embraces 600 workers' societies and has its seat in Naples, announced at the sitting of the 4th of September that Garibaldi would be passing through Lausanne on his way to the Peace Congress In Geneva; he moved that the Congress should appoint a deputation to go to Villeneuve to greet Garibaldi on behalf of the Congress, and to invite him to visit the Congress in his capacity as honorary president of the above-mentioned Italian working men's associations. Other delegates opposed this motion. However popular Garibaldi may be, a Congress representing the working class could not pay homage to any single individual. If, however, Garibaldi wished to assume his seat at the Congress as honorary president of the Italian working men's associations, he would be as heartily received as any other delegate. Having done with Stampa's motion, the Congress passed on to the agenda.

The nearly simultaneous holding of the international Peace Congress[414] in Geneva (9 to 12 September), lit which many members of the Working Men's Congress intended to take part in a private capacity, compelled the latter to define its position in relation to the Peace League in Geneva. This was done in the following heartily applauded resolution:

The Geneva Working Men's Congress of 1866 had been an object of lively debate in the French press, especially that of Paris and Lyons. The big London papers, however, had passed it over in dead silence. Not so the Congress in Lausanne a year later. The Times had its own correspondent there. Furthermore, it published editorial articles about the International Working Men's Association, and its example was followed by the dailies and weeklies of all England. After The 'rimes had set the tone, the other papers, too, no longer considered it beneath their dignity to devote not only notices but even long editorials to the labour question. All of them discussed the Working Men's Congress. It was only natural that many papers treated the subject in a superior and ironic vein. For every undertaking has its funny side apart front the sublime, and how could the Working Men's Congress with its loquacious Frenchmen be completely free of it? But for all that, the English press has on the whole treated the Congress very decently. Even The Manchester Examiner, which is in fact the organ of John Bright and the Manchester School[415], portrayed it in a pertinent editorial as an important and epoch-making event. Where it was compared with its. step-brother, the Peace Congress, the comparison was always in favour of the elder brother. In the Working Men's Congress they discerned a threatening and fateful tragedy, whereas nothing but farce and burlesque was seen in the other.

8. The International Working Men's Association,
The Trades Unions, and the Strikes

With the foundation of the International Working Men's Association a new era began for the English Trades Unions. Previously, they were exclusively engrossed in the struggle over wages and the working time and were bound down by the narrow-mindedness of the medieval guilds system.

The trades unions are not only a wholly lawful but also a governmentally recognised body sanctioned by Act of Parliament in 1825b and necessitated by, the dally conflicts between labour and capital. Their purpose is to stand up for the interests of workmen against masters and capitalists. Their ultima ratio is the strike, whose legality is enshrined in the aforementioned Act of Parliament on the condition that any direct breach of the peace is avoided and no forcible restraint of trade is attempted Under the protection of this Act, the trades unions have spread in all factory districts of England and have, by virtue of their numbers, organisation and funds, grown into a powerful body which confronts, and commands the respect of, the employers, and makes its influence felt in many different ways. They have survived all the periods of political reaction, all the counter-schemes of the masters and capitalists, all the shortages and commercial crises of the past decades, and have the same importance for the organisation of the working class as the establishment of communes in the Middle Ages had for the middle classes of bourgeois society, as Karl Marx has, indeed, demonstrated as early as 1847 in his work against Proudhon, entitled Misère de la Philosophie. Réponse à la Philosophie de la Misère par Mons. Proudhon (Paris 1847).

It has now been brought home to these trades unions that, on the one hand, without knowing it, they are a means of organising the working class, and that alongside their immediate and current aims they must not forget the general aim of winning the complete political and social emancipation of the working class. On the other hand, it has equally been brought home to them that no ultimate success was possible without international combination and that by its very nature the workers' movement cut across state and national borders.

That is why – the following resolution was framed and adopted at the big conference of delegates from the trades unions of the United Kingdom at Sheffield in 1866 [416]:

The London Trades' Council[417], Which is the central body, of England's trades unions, had by then concluded an agreement with the General Council of the International Working Men's Association in London. The Secretary of the Trades' Council, Mr. Odger, was and still is also a member of the General Council of the International Association. Only from then on did the activities of the trades unions in England gain a universal character, which became evident very soon when they took a direct part for the first time in the political movement. How successful they were is common knowledge. After the fall of the Russell-Gladstone cabinet in June 1866 it had seemed that the parliamentary reform would be indefinitely postponed. The Tory leaders declared to the loud acclaim of the majority that no reform was necessary. At this point, the workers took charge of the movement. Mass meetings on a large scale were called in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, and other cities, in which the trades unions took part in their own capacity. The Trades' Council gave its support to the Reform League[418], the governing body of the movement. Within a few months, victory was achieved, and the Tory government was forced to initiate the parliamentary reform.[419]

In England as well as on the Continent the years 1866 to 1868 were especially plentiful in strikes on the part of the workers arid in factory lock-outs on the part of the capitalists. The common reason for this was the crisis of 1866[420] and its aftermaths. The crisis paralysed speculation. Large enterprises came to a standstill, and those entrepreneurs who, owing to the changed situation oil the money market, were unable to meet the financial commitments they had made at the time when speculation was at its highest, were forced into bankruptcy. The stagnation of all trading enterprises had reached a point where it was surpassed only by the extraordinary glut of gold in the banks of England and France. Arid the gold had piled tip in the banks because it could no longer find any use for business purposes. This led to a general stoppage of commerce and a general decline of prices. Victuals alone, notably bread, the workers' most vital necessity, had gone up in price owing to the crop failures of 1866 and 1867. And precisely during this general shortage came the calamity of universal crisis, which made itself felt to the workmen through the reduction of the working time and the lowering of wages by the employers. Hence the many strikes and lock-outs. It so happened, furthermore, that the laws against working men's coalitions had only just been lifted in France and other countries of the Continent. Unquestionably, too, the resolutions of the working men's congresses in Geneva and Lausanne had had a moral effect, made still stronger by the workmen's awareness everywhere that they could rely on the powerful backing of the International Association.

But that part of the European bourgeois press which denounced the International Working Men's Association for inciting these conflicts was mistaken. Nowhere did the Association initiate any strikes, and confined itself merely to intervening where the character of the local conflicts justified its doing so and required it to take action.

Specifically, it intervened in three important cases, where it also used the opportunity to make successful propaganda for its principles.

First, a few general remarks about the tactics of the Association during the English workers' strikes, in which its cooperation had been required. An account of this is given lit the "Third Annual Report" which the London General Council placed before the Congress in Lausanne, and which says:

Indeed, this was how the manoeuvres of the English capitalists were frustrated during the strikes relative to workshop and factory lock-outs of railway excavators, conductors and engine drivers, zinc workers, wire-workers, wood-cutters, and so on. In a few cases, such as the strike of the London basket-makers, the capitalists had secretly smuggled in labourers from Belgium and Holland. Following an appeal of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, however, the latter made common cause with the English workers.

Still greater services were rendered to a certain group of workers by the Association's administrative committee lit Paris. In Roubaix, the ribbon manufacturers introduced arbitrary, penal regulations in their factories which naturally mainly amounted to deductions from wages. The inescapable result of this system of fines was the dismissal of the workers who protested against it, the lock-out leading to a revolt and to an armed intervention by the authorities[422]. Here, however, the Central Council of the International Association in Paris stepped in and proved that the manufacturers had made themselves guilty of breaking the law with their regulations by, playing legislator, judge and gendarme off their own bat. As a result, the French government was compelled to declare that any, private factory regulations, insofar as they were not purely administrative, but imposed fines, were unlawful and constituted an unmitigated usurpation.

The decisive and most important cases of intervention by the International Working Men's Association, however, were the following three:

1. Closure of the Paris Bronze Workshops in February 1867

The great, fundamental importance of this conflict was the following:

Trade unions had only just been legally allowed in France. The bronze-workers, a body of approximately 5,000 persons, were the first to take advantage of this and to form a union on the English model at the beginning of 1866. Naturally, from the start, this association was a thorn in the side of the masters, and they decided to destroy it at the first opportunity. This opportunity came in February 1867, when the union found itself compelled to intervene on behalf of its members and to require five of the masters to comply with its directions. Instantly, the capitalists formed a coalition, which demanded of their workers that they either resign front the union or leave the workshops. This culminated in a lock-out of some 1,500 bronze-workers by 87 employers.

In this case, therefore, the existence of this important factor of the movement in France hung in the balance.

At the beginning of the lock-out, the union of bronze-workers had a fund of 35,000 francs. It decided to pay each of the dismissed workers 20 francs weekly, and to obtain a loan from the English trades unions for this purpose through the good offices of the International Association against a monthly repayment of 5,000 francs.

The workers won thanks to the moral and pecuniary support of the London General Council, which obtained the desired contributions from the English trades unions, arid also thanks to the intervention of the Paris Central Council of the International Association which persuaded the other trade unions lit France to render the bronze-workers vigorous support.

Besides the social significance of the French workers' coming out victorious with the help of their English brethren, the case has its international importance, of which the Courrier français of March 24, 1867 says the following:

2. The Geneva Strike in the Spring of 1868

A thorough description of this strike is given in the following little brochure: Die internationale Arbeiterassociation und die Arbeitseinstellung in Genf im Fruhjahr 1868. Von Joh. Phil. Becker. Deutsche Verlagshalle, 33, 1868. The workers who read this book are most strongly to both the brochure of the stout-hearted Joh. Phil. Becker, the proceeds front which are exclusively intended for covering the costs incurred ill supporting the strike, and the monthly journal Vorbote. Joh. Phil. Becker is himself a worker in origin arid has fought for the working class with sword, word arid pen all his life long with the utmost self-sacrifice arid devotion. A veteran of the labour movement, he is as energetic as lie is original ill his thinking, and deserves the recognition of the entire working class in contrast to the present-day petits grands hommes of "satiated virtue arid solvent morality'' who are pushing themselves forward everywhere ill labour circles. He is the life and soul of the international labour movement ill Switzerland and has, indeed, also enlisted all the German elements who so fat. adhered to the Association in Germany itself. [Note by Eichhoff.]

While the case of the Paris bronze-workers concerned the existence of trade unions in France, the case here concerned the existence of the International Working Men's Association on the Continent. [423]

The conflict between the International Working Men's Association and a part of the employers in Geneva broke out and ran its course in the following way.

Ever since August 1867 there were signs of deep dissatisfaction over their condition among the Geneva building workers. A general meeting of the building workers, held on January 19, 1868, moved to elect a joint committee, which would enter into negotiations with the employers and by amicable agreement secure a reduction of the working time from 12 to 10 hours and a wage increase of 20 per cent. A memorandum was drawn up and forwarded to all the masters. Instead of deferring to the workers, the employers formed a counter-coalition and called a general meeting of building masters for the 18th of March, their provisional committee turning down the repeated proposals of the workers' committee to have amicable talks between delegates of the two sides before the general meeting was to take place.

This attitude of the masters' provisional committee showed the workers what they should expect from the coming general meeting of masters. Their committee declared that it had failed in its task of negotiating an understanding with the masters' committee, and in the evening of the 14th of March it requested the Geneva Central Committee of the International Working Men's Association to take the matter in hand and to mediate an agreement.

It was the duty of the Association to comply with this request. It appointed a commission of three Geneva citizens, whose private attempts at mediation, however, also failed to yield results. On the 20th of March, therefore, after the general meeting of the 18th had finally constituted an employers' association, the commission issued a public invitation to the "Messieurs les building contractors', to come to a meeting on the 23rd of March. On the very next day a public reply appeared in the newspapers which let the commission of the International Association know in the name of the general meeting of the 18th of March that the masters' general meeting had decided, with only three votes against, to have no negotiations with it whatsoever.

In the morning of the 23rd of March, the commission formed by the International Association made this state of affairs known in wall posters, serving notice that if no favourable result was achieved by the evening of that day and all prospects of an amicable understanding with the employers vanished, it would beat the drums and call a general meeting of all the sections of the International Association. At six in the evening the signal was given, and members of the Association thronged from all sides to the Rue du Rhône, where the union had its premises. The bourgeoisie was panic-stricken. Shops and houses were locked up, the cash-boxes were placed in safety, and the employees of some of the comptoirs were issued arms and ammunition. In the meantime, the Association, 5,000 men strong, marched in model order to the shooting-range, where the announced general meeting discussed the gravity of the situation and unanimously assured the building workers of the support of the International Association. After this had taken place, it was not the International Association but the governing bodies of the trade unions which, to their members' thunderous cheers and enthusiastic assurances of support, declared a strike of block-cutters, bricklayers, plasterers and house-painters in Geneva. Thereupon, the gathering dispersed quietly – By nine in the evening Geneva had already, resumed its usual appearance.

Word of the strike, which had been unavoidable, was sent to the General Council of the International Association in London and the administrative councils in Brussels, Paris, and Lyons on the 25th of March; they, were approached for urgent support because the Geneva section of the Association had been unprepared for the strike, whose magnitude exceeded its capacities.

In the meantime, the masters lost no time either to invite workers for themselves, mainly from Ticino and Piedmont. But these were brought to the premises of the International Association the moment they arrived, and were there informed of the state of affairs and won over to the side of the strikers.

It goes without saying that during this time the International Association was subjected to the most savage attacks and the most venomous accusations. The journal de Genève set the tone and was most vigorously backed by the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, the Neue freie Presse of Vienna, and other organs of the radical, liberal and conservative bourgeoisie. As a result of the energetic behaviour of the Geneva Central Council, the cause of the strike faded completely into the background, while the International Association was pushed to the forefront of the movement.

On the 28th of March, the masters' association put up wall notices dated the 26th of March, in which the masters promised to consider the workers' grievances in all fairness, warned them against the despotism and menace of the International Working Men's Association, which they said was maintained on foreign money and had instigated the strike, reminded them of the previous friendly mutual understanding, and called on them to return to work in good faith as individuals; the masters would be glad to improve the workers' lot and would for the time being grant them an 11-hour working day. Should they, however, contrary to expectations, fail to comply with this, the masters would be compelled, for their part, also to close down workshops in those branches of the building trade which had not yet joined in the strike.

All attempts to come to an understanding foundered because the masters did not wish to deal with delegates of the International Association, and since no individual workers reported to work, the threatened factory lock-out was carried into effect on the 30th of March, and the workshops of joiners, carpenters and tinners were closed down. – The moral effect which this closure had on the Geneva workers is best illustrated by the fact that a number of unions which had previously stood aloof from the International Association, formed sections and asked it for admission. Thus the coach-makers, farriers, saddlers, upholsterers, file-cutters, curriers, and others. During these few days the Association won marry more than a thousand new members.

Workmen employed in the jewellery trade, such as goldsmiths, watchmakers, bowl-makers, and engravers, who with only few exceptions are all citizens of Geneva, held a meeting attended by more than 2,000 persons on the 30th of March, and resolved as one man to apply all moral and material means to help bring the cause of the building workers to victory. In reference to the International Association, the assembly declared itself quite firmly against the false and malicious statement that the Geneva workers were being subjected to tyrannical pressure by a foreign society.

If until then the International Association had applied itself diligently to settling the conflict, it was now, since all attempts at reaching an understanding had failed, a matter of obtaining means for a longer duration of the strike. The Geneva Central Committee of the International Association had to support some 3,000 workers and their families, which was a burden the Geneva workers could not conceivably cope with on their own.

But contributions were already pouring in from all sides. First of all, most appreciative acknowledgments are due to the Geneva working men and their unions for their spirit of self-sacrifice. It may be said without exaggeration that the employed workers of Geneva shared their bread with those who were out of work. And not just each and everyone gave willingly part of his wage; the unions' savings banks and relief funds contributed sums ranging from 500 to 5,000 francs. The unions of other Swiss cities and the German workers' societies in Switzerland were not found wanting either. Contributions arrived from Germany, – Hanover (Workers' Union), Hamburg (Workers' Educational Society), Schwerin (building workers), Rostock, Kaukehmen, Solingen, Mannheim (Tailors' Union), Esslingen (Workers' Educational Society), Munich (Workers' Educational Society), and other towns. Especially active, however, were the General Council of the International Association in London and its administrative committees in Brussels and Paris. At the beginning of April the General Council was already able, despite the formal difficulties that it had had to overcome in order to obtain larger sums, to promise the Geneva Central Committee at least 40,000 francs monthly from England alone until the victorious culmination of the strike, partly as a loan and partly as a grant. And by the good offices of the Brussels and Paris administrative committees considerable contributions came from unions in those two cities, e.g. 2,000 francs from the printers, 1,500 francs from the tinners of Paris, and so on.

The masters saw then that their plan of starving out the workers had failed. But since they had vowed that they would not deal with the Central Council of the International Association, this was done on their behalf by M. Camperio, President of the State Council and Chief of the justice and Police Department of Geneva. He notified the Central Committee of the Association on the 8th of April to send delegates of all building trades to his office with a view to reaching an understanding. An agreement came about already on the third day of the negotiations. The masters conceded the workers a reduction of the working time by 1 and in some cases 2 hours, and a wage increase of 10 per cent.

In the evening of the same day (11th of April) M. Camperio let it be known in wall notices that the conflict between the workmen and the employers had been settled through his mediation, that the strike was to be considered over, and that work would be resumed on Monday (13th of April).

The International Working Men's Association, too, lost no time in announcing the happy end of the strike in wall poster.", and, while thanking the workmen for their brave conduct during the weeks of the struggle, it called on them to forget all that had happened and go to work on Monday in good cheer.

For the International Working Men's Association the conflict resulted in a mass adherence of workmen in Switzerland.

3. The Blood, Conflict Between the Belgian Government and the Miners of Charleroi (March 1868)

Belgium is a paradise for the bourgeoisie. Its Constitution the ideal of a model bourgeois state. Its government is the agent of the bourgeoisie, representative of the domination of capital. Nothing is more natural there than that the least collision between the interests of capital and labour should precipitate a conflict which culminates in a bloody solution by powder and lead.[424]

The more resolutely the International Working Men's Association concerns itself there with the cause of the oppressed and persecuted, the more necessary it appears to present an exhaustive account of the causes of the labour disturbances in the coal basin of Charleroi.

Among the national industries of various countries, coal and iron stand at the head of the list. The two industries form an organic whole. No ironworks and no furnace can operate without coal, and for the collieries, too, the furnaces and therefore, makes itself instantly felt in the other, and a metallurgical crisis, which recurs periodically like all crises, has an immediate and direct bearing on the price of coal.

The country that nature has favoured the most in respect of coal and iron is England. There, both coal and iron lie fairly close to the surface and can be extracted with little effort. France, on the other hand, is the most disinherited, for it produces practically no coal of its own and its ironworks are dependent on English or Prussian coal. But though for France importation of foreign coal is an economic necessity, it subjects coal-producing Belgium to highly disagreeable competition because England and Prussia (with a waterway along the Rhine and its tributaries) are in a more favourable position as regards transport, and because transportation costs have a bearing on the local price of coal.

The general price of coal in each country, on the other hand, depends on the wages that are paid for working it. Indeed, the international relevance of this factor strikes the eve owing to the difference in tile amount of labour time consumed in different countries to produce the same quantity of coal. Wages, too, are as different as the working time and in England they are at least 26 2/3 per cent higher than on the Continent.

[According to estimates by Richard Whiting. to deter mine how much worse off the workers were in France than then. colleagues in England, lie assumed that, considering the difference in the price of the most important necessities in the two countries, the worker got just as far with 5 francs ill France its he did with 5 shillings (that is, 6 francs) in England. This made a difference of 16 2/3 per cent by reason of just the price discrepancies. Having in this simple way identified francs and shillings as equal values for both countries, Whiting found in addition that wages in France were at least 10 per cent lower than those in England. while wages in France, Belgium, and Rhenish Prussia were approximately the same. – Note In Eichhoff.]

The implications for colliery workers of different countries are the following:

Whenever an iron and steel crisis or some other unfavourable commercial factor depresses the price of coal, the mine-owners try, to lower wages. Knowing, however, that wages are already so low that any further reduction is a hardship that may, in certain circumstances, such as a time of shortages, drive the worker to desperation, they are compelled to look for a plausible excuse.

As a rule, there are only two such excuses, one applicable only to England, and the other only to the Continent.

The plausible excuse of the English mine-owner is the low wages on the Continent.

The plausible excuse of the continental mine-owner is the low price and competition of English coal.

To what social straits the Belgian coalminers have been reduced in these circumstances is vividly described in the following article' i ii the Demokratisches Wochenblatt:

[Demokratisches Wochenblatt, organ of the German People's Party, Leipzig, printed and published by, C. W. Vollrath. Its editor-in-chief is Wilhelm Liebknecht. – Note by Eichhoff.]

In February 1867 there had already been disturbances among the miners of Marchienne, which could only be quelled by armed force. The cause was the prevailing shortages, notably the high price of bread due to the crop failure of 1866. Calling on the English workers for contributions to support the families of the unfortunate victims of the massacre, the General Council of the International Association issued the following appeal at the beginning of March 1867":

Despite their own sad plight, Britain's miners and iron-workers responded willingly and warmly to the appeal that was addressed to them. That was the reason why the influence of the International Association on the labouring population of Belgium kept rising steadily, until events occurred in the district of Charleroi in March 1868 which laid the way open for it all over Belgium and decided its social superiority.

The reason for this year's labour disturbances was the following.

There had been a considerable over-production of coal. In Belgium coal consumption had declined, partly due to the general Monetary and financial crisis of 1866 which occasioned an iron and steel crisis, affecting mainly the iron-works and blast-furnace industry of France and Belgium, and partly' because of the competition of Prussian against Belgian coal. the Belgian mine-owners had, in fact, formed a coalition to push up the price of their coal. But then the owners of the iron-works and furnaces found it more profitable to bring their coal from abroad. And to protect themselves against price increases they, concluded contracts for several years in advance. For the mine-owners it was now a question of making good the damage they had brought down on themselves by their greed, and, above all, a question of reducing production. It might be mentioned in passing that a large proportion of the Belgian coalmines are run by public companies which have great assets and distributed enormous dividends among their shareholders in the previous few years. The owners and directors of the mines now decided to reduce the working week to four days, which meant a loss of 33 1/3 per cent of their regular wage for the workers. When this, tool failed to restore the balance between supply and demand, the coal-masters decided to reduce the price of coal. But to avoid having to lower the dividends of their shareholders, they reduced by another 10 per cent the wages that were already down to 66 2/3 per cent of normal. Yet at this very time the price of the most indispensable victuals was higher than ever owing to the two crop failures of 1866 and 1867. The half-starved coalminers, already painfully affected by, their days of involuntary idleness, remonstrated against the wage cut, which doomed them to hunger. The strike became universal and spread throughout the district of Charleroi. Hunger and misery drove the wretches to rebellion and pillage, for otherwise the women would surely not have in a manner of speaking pin themselves at the head of the crowds of workers, marching in front and holding poles to which they had nailed some miserable rags.

Now the capitalists let the government and military forces intervene and most deliberately provoked bloody conflicts in which many workers were killed, wounded or thrown behind bars. The first clash occurred on the 25th of March in the vicinity of Charleroi. The workers were about to comply with the well-meaning entreaties of an officer who pleaded with them to disperse, when a stone was flung and hit the major in command, giving the latter air excuse to open fire. Seven killed and 13 wounded was the outcome of that first collision, followed by others with the gendarmerie and cavalry. In Arsimont, gendarmes and the public prosecutor came to the scene even before any acts of violence had occurred, making arrests among workers, who had only just announced a strike. Directly in the wake of the police came the soldiers, who pounced without ado on the lot of workers returning home from the mine.

In modern history only the scenes of carriage and bloodshed during the Negro uprising in Jamaica[426] can compare with these atrocities. Here, as in Jamaica, the capitalists celebrated bloody orgies. Here, as in Jamaica, they hoped to break what was left of the workers' spirit of resistance and self-esteem by acts of extreme brutality. The cheerful, insolent and humorous tone affected by them as they revelled in their terreur branche may be seen, among others, from the following passage in their organ, Indépendance belge, of the 1st of April 1868:

In the midst of the stupefaction to which these brutalities reduced the afflicted part of the workers, the Brussels Central Committee of the International Association for Belgium raised its voice in the press, called public meetings, stigmatised the industrialists and their accomplice, the government, galvanised the Belgian working class to joint resistance, supplied the persecuted with legal counsel and defence lawyers, and declared the cause of the Charleroi coalminers the common cause of the International Working Men's Association. The General Council in London, like the two committees in Paris and Geneva, supported the committee at Brussels.[427]

After having suppressed the coalminers' movement in the district of Charleroi by force of arms, the employers did nothing at all to conciliate the unemployed and starving workers. They were perfectly happy to be able to close down their mines for some time. The government, too, did nothing. The workers, who received no support from any quarter but the International Working Men's Association, which was already badly taxed by the simultaneous events in Geneva and whose aid committees were only being organised, were on the edge of death from starvation. But at this time the townsmen of Charleroi, who saw the daily increasing misery, began to have misgivings. The Liberal association of Charleroi threatened the government that if no work was immediately provided to the jobless workers, it would dissolve its election committee and leave the field free for the Catholics. The threat had the desired effect. It was fear of losing votes in the next elections, not the crying distress of the starving workers, that drove the liberal government to initiating considerable public works in May 1868.

In the meantime, the proceedings against the men arrested in March are following their course. Whatever the outcome may be, whether the judges convict or acquit them, the government will have suffered, a setback. The workers know that they can expect nothing but powder and lead or imprisonment from the government. They cannot expect the government to redress their legitimate grievances or to protect and help them against the abuses of their employers. The government has itself opened their eyes to where help can come from and to whom they must turn: not the government but rather the International Working Men's Association.

9. The Political Activity of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association

Faithful to the programme in which it called on working men to lay the ground for their social emancipation by seizing political power, the General Council did not in the least allow its social activity prevent it from taking political action in propitious circumstances. The most important steps in this field were the following.

[On September 18, 1867, armed Fenians attacked a police van in Manchester and freed two political prisoners (Fenian officers). A police sergeant was killed during the attack. Contrary to English law, which provides for periodical assizes to be held in all counties, the case was put before a special commission, an extraordinary, tribunal, at which the Fenians who are accused of basing taken part in the attack were charged with the murder of the police sergeant. Mr. Blackburn was named judge and contrived to prevail on the jury by all sorts of stratagems that each of the defendants proved to have taken part in the attempt to free the prisoners had thereby, incurred guilt for murder. Thereupon, Mr. Blackburn passed down five convictions and five death sentences. Of the convicted men two were reprieved and three were hanged. On June 2, 1868, the selfsame Mr Blackburn conducted the proceedings against Mr. Eyre, the ex-governor of Jamaica, and prevailed on the Grand Jury, with references to an alleged judgement of Lord Chief Justice Sir A. Cockburn. that Mr. Eve had not exceeded the administrative powers vested in him, thus saving Mr. Eve from being convicted. On June 8, Blackburn was by Lord Chief Justice Sir A. Cockburn in public session at Queen's Bench[430] of having falsified the facts, and pleaded commission of a legal mistake. – Note by Eichhoff.]

When the executions drew close in November 1867, the General Council sent a petition to the English government, warning it against the bloodshed. Besides, at the height of the panic created in London by the Manchester events, the Council held a public session in support of the rights of Ireland and the Irish. This was the first of the actions in favour of the unfortunate victims of that miscarriage of justice. The Times and the rest of the daily press reported the event. The mood among the London workers was so strongly altered thereby and the plan of the English aristocracy to exploit English national prejudices and split the working class with its strong Irish element into two hostile factions, was so effectively baulked that the organs of the English aristocracy, such as the Saturday Review, began denouncing the International Working Men's Association as being dangerous to the state.

10. Conflicts with Governments

1. Conflict with the French Government

It is commonly known that in France there exists a law that no Society of more than 20 persons may, be constituted without authorisation of the government. To judge front the wording of the law, most of the industrial and commercial companies in France are unlawful and exist oil sufferance only. For by decision of the Court of the authorisation is tacit if the society in question is public and is not dissolved by the government for some length of time. Whether authorised or not, one may assume that the government may at the very most dissolve societies to whose establishment it had tacitly acquiesced, but that it has no right to punish its members.

As for the organisation of the International Working Men's Association in France, the case is as follows. All branch societies in France exist merely as members of the English society, on whose General Council they are represented by Eugène Dupont. (In addition, there is in London a French group and a German one.) Though they act in common in certain cases, the French sections are not connected with one another, and have intercourse only with the General Council in London. Each of the societies forms a separate body with an executive committee at its head which corresponds with the General Council in London. The establishment of the society in France was initiated by the Paris Administrative Committee of the Paris group. The Committee bad notified the Interior Minister and the Prefect of the Paris police of its inauguration and existence as long ago as 1864. Since that date the Paris Committee, like the committees in the other cities of France, had functioned publicly. Open meetings of members of the Association were held from week to week, and reports about them were published in public newspapers. Indeed, in clear contrast to the secret societies of past decades, the society is by nature a public one, and the meetings of the General Council lit London are reported each week in London newspapers.

The first conflict between the International Working Men's Association and the French government occurred in September 1867, after the Congress at Lausanne. [Eichhoff is mistaken: the conflict occurred in 1866, after the congress Geneva.] A part of the documents of the Congress had been entrusted to the care of Jules Gottraux, one of the French delegates, who was to despatch them from France to England[432]. The moment he crossed the French border, the papers were seized[433]. The General Secretary of the London General Council' addressed himself in writing to the French Minister of the Interior" and demanded the return of the confiscated papers because they were British property. He received no reply. Thereupon, the General Council of the Association turned to Lord Stanley, the British Foreign Secretary. The latter instructed Lord Cowley, the British Ambassador in Paris, to demand that the papers be returned, and the French government Complied.

The second conflict occurred at about the same time. No printer in Paris had dared to print a memorandum which the Paris delegates had read out at the Geneva Congress and in which they, set forth their standpoint and defended their were, by the way, one-sidedly Proudhonistic, specifically French, and decidedly not accepted by the Association. For this reason, the Paris Committee bad the memorandum printed in Brussels. But it was seized on the border as it was being brought into France. On March 3, 1867, the Paris Central Committee of the Association wrote to Rouher, the Minister of State and the Emperor's alter ego, demanding the reasons for the seizure. [Eichhoff is mistaken: the letter was dated March the 9th] In his reply, addressed to the offices of the Par's Bureau of the Association at Rue de Gravilliers 44, Rouher invited a member of the Committee to an interview. The Committee appointed a delegate, who went to see the Minister. Rouher demanded altering and modifying a few objectionable places. The delegate refused to do so because any modifications would rob the document of its meaning. Thereupon, Rouher made the following characteristic pronouncement: "Still if you would introduce some words of gratitude to the Emperor, who has done so much for the working classes, one might see what could be done." The delegate replied that the Association did not deal in politics and that neither flattery nor defamation, whether of an individual or a political party, came within its competence. Thereupon Rouher broke off the conversation and left the seizure of the memorandum in force.

The French government imagined that it could use the International Working Men's Association as a tool. It was in for a disappointment. On the other hand, it was aware of the growing strength and increasing influence of the Society on the occasion of the strikes at Amiens, Roubaix and Paris. Finally, a few weeks after the above conversation, it became aware with the greatest displeasure of the Society's agitation against imperialist chauvinism. It decided to take action. Whence arose

The third conflict[434]. In the beginning of 1868, one night the Paris police raided the homes of the members of the Paris Central Committee. All letters and papers that they found there were confiscated. The police deduced therefrom that the registered members of the Paris group numbered. some 2,000. (Since then this number has risen considerably.) The charge preferred was participation in a secret society, but it was dropped after two months' investigation. Instead, charges of breaching police regulations were presented, namely, of forming a society of more than 20 persons in the absence of the government's authorisation.

On March 20, 1868, the case came before the penal court of the Seine department. Engraver Tolain, a co-defendant, spoke on behalf of the 15 defendants. The hearing yielded the following picture[435]:

Public prosecutor Lepelletier's speech began as follows:

Here defendant Tolain rose to his feet and placed before the court the following petition:

Upon submitting this petition, Tolain took the floor on behalf of the other defendants. His speech was a passionate protest against the lack of rights of the labouring classes. He described the dangers which the workman incurred when he endeavoured to clarify his social status by mutual instruction, by learning the relations that affect his most vital interests, and when he tried to secure improvements. Whatever he may do, whatever caution lie may exercise, however pure and harmless his intentions may be, he was always threatened, persecuted, and subject to prosecution. In the past 20 years countless industrial innovations had created new requirements and completely reconstructed the social economy. Deliberately or riot, the government itself had followed the movement and collaborated assiduously in this, reconstruction.

Thereupon Tolain described the establishment, organisation and activity of the General Council in London and the Paris Bureau. Having again declared that the government had granted them tacit authorisation, he said that they, on the other hand, had not applied for official authorisation out of principle because they would not concede to the government the power to permit or forbid rights that were the natural endowment of workers and all citizens. And lie concluded with the following significant declaration:

The sentence of the court read:

The convicted filed an appeal against this sentence. In the meantime, the Paris group acted precisely as Tolain had told the court. In place of the prosecuted 15, a new Bureau, consisting of nine members of the Association, was elected. Their election was announced in the newspapers.' In a signed appeal they called publicly on the Paris workmen to contribute funds in support of the strike in Geneva.

The case of the 15 was heard in the second instance on April 22, 1868.

The main points of the indictment were the Bureau's open refusal to abide by the imperial penal law banning societies of more than 20 persons; the political nature of the Society, which subjected all pillars of the existing order to criticism; the power of the Society, which no government could withstand if it were allowed to embrace all countries as it has been doing so far; by now, it was alleged, it has become a sort of universal intermediary for workers' strikes.

As in all other cases, the accused defended themselves on their own, without legal counsel. Referring to the lack of an official authorisation, they declared:

The Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence of the penal court and, besides, sentenced the appellants to paying the costs of the hearing. The grounds of the sentence were in substance the same as those of the sentence of the first instance; only the following phrase was new:

In the meantime legal proceedings were also instituted against the nine members of the new Bureau elected in March, and the latter appeared before the penal court on May 22, 1868.

The hearings of the case were similar to those of March the 20th.[437]

The defence was presented by co-defendant bookbinder Varlin. After this workman, too, had dismissed the legal arguments of the prosecution with a logic and insight that would have done credit to any jurist, he went on to portray the moral-political and social-economic side of the case, and here rose to such power of expression and conviction as could only have conic front someone who knew the rightness of the cause and its profound moral justice. He said:

The sentence of the court for each of the nine accused was 3 months in prison and a fine of 100 francs; the convicted filed an appeal, which was eventually dismissed.

Apart from its social significance, the French government's persecution of the International Working Men's Association has political implications, too. For the first time since the coup d'état of 1852[438] a society existing in France has dared to offer resistance under civil law to criminal prosecution and to claim civil rights for itself which the one who was elected by universal suffrage could not very well deny it through his organs without bringing his many years of flirting with the working class to a sudden end. It is safe to assume that the prosecution originated with Minister of State Rouher. But so great was his embarrassment over the imaginary need for action on political grounds that, while prosecuting the Paris Bureau, he has not dared to dissolve groups of the Association in Lyons, Rouen, Roubaix, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and so on.

The Paris newspaper Le Réveil, organ of Ledru Rollin's party, refers most approvingly to the behaviour of the members of the Paris Committee.' It contrasts the political insight and moral superiority of the working class to the intrigues and narrowmindedness of the ruling classes. It makes the following noteworthy observation:

2. Conflict with the Belgian Government

Spurred by the newspapers of the Belgian bourgeoisie, with Indépendance belge at their head, the Belgian government tried to portray the International Working Men's Association as the instigator of the disturbances in the district of Charleroi.' The court investigation of the Belgian workers arrested in March soon showed, however, that this charge was groundless and that from the outset it had been nothing but a deliberate and malicious lie.

Nevertheless, in May 1868, Jules Bara, the Belgian Minister of justice and Police, took advantage of the debate concerning the renewal of the law on the expulsion of foreigners[439] in the Belgian Chamber of Deputies viciously to attack the International Working Men's Association to make of its existence the principal pretext for the proposed renewal of the foreigners' law, and to go so far as to declare that he would not tolerate the convocation of the next general congress of the Association, which had at its congress in Lausanne appointed it for Brussels on September 7, 1868.

Thereupon, the administrative committees of the Brussels and all the other groups of the International Association in Belgium wrote a joint letter to M. le Ministre, dated May the 22nd, which was printed and made public.' The letter made clear to the Minister that he had absolutely no say in the matter, and that the Congress would be held in Brussels. The opening passages of this irreverent letter read:

Then, having firmly denied the Minister's insinuations that the movement of the Belgian workers was inspired and led front abroad, the letter went on to say:

Here the Minister was informed in detail of the aspirations of the International Working Men's Association, and advised to obtain further particulars from the documents of its Congresses. Then the transgressions of the government were put before him; he was reminded of the workers needlessly killed in the Charleroi district, who were dealt death instead of bread. It was recognised that strikes were an insufficient means of improving the working men's situation; but they were the only legitimate means labour still had to protest against the abuses of capital. In conclusion, the letter said:

At its meeting on June 16, 1868, the General Council of the International Association in London confirmed the decision of the Belgian Committee to hold the Congress in Brussels at the appointed time despite the announced opposition of the government.[440]

The administrative committees in France have also sent messages of agreement, declaring their determination to take part in the Congress at Brussels and to defy the consequences.

The Courrier français of Paris commented as follows on the simultaneous attacks on the International Working Men's Association in Switzerland, France, and Belgium:

11. Growth of the Association

In England, some fifty trades unions with their branch societies in the United Kingdom have joined the International Working Men's Association since the resolution of the Trades Union Congress at Sheffield in 1866. Among the new members are workmen's groups, such as the 30,000 railway excavators, which never before participated eit her in trades unions or in any other movements.

In Ireland, a section exists in Dublin.

In the United States of North America, the National Labour Congress which met in Chicago resolved on August 20, 1867' to establish relations with the International Association for joint action. Since then, the General Council at London has been corresponding with the General National Labour Union of the United States. It will be represented by a special delegate at this year's Congress in Brussels.

In France the groups that correspond directly and exclusively with London are great in number. Sections exist in Paris, Rouen, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lille, Roubaix, Argentan (Orne), Caen, Digne (Basses-Alpes), Fleurieux (sur Saône), Fuveau (Bouches-du-Rhône), Flers (Orne), Granville (Manche), Harcourt, Thierry (Calvados), Havre, Lisieux, Neuville (sur Saone), Nantes, Neufchâteau (Vosges), Orleans, Crets (Bouches-du-Rhône), Villefranche (Rhône), Vienne (Isère), and other places. It is noteworthy that several French rural communities have also adhered to the Association. In the French colonies, a group exists in Algiers and another in Guadeloupe.

In Belgium the main seats of the Association are in Brussels, Liège, Verviers, and Louvain. Mass adherence to the Association has been witnessed among coalminers and ironworkers this year.

In Holland two sections exist, in Rotterdam and in Amsterdam.

In Spain a section in Barcelona.

In Italy, the general association of labour with its main seat in Naples and Milan, consisting of 600 workmen's societies, has the same kind of cartel with the International Association as the trades unions in England and the National Labour Union in the United States. Besides, special groups of the International Association exist in Genoa and Bologna.

In Switzerland working men have been seeking admission en masse since the Geneva strike. The main groups are in the towns of the Basle and Berne cantons, where communities in the villages de la montagne des Bois have also adhered; Geneva, where the society in the city alone numbers more than 6,000 members, and the cantons Neufchâtel, Vaud, and Zurich. The Swiss Grütli Union [442] and the various German workers' educational societies in Switzerland are affiliated to the Association.

In Germany there are several groups. But most of these have declared that despite their sympathies they are unable to join officially owing to the absence of legal authorisation[443]. The connections with Germany are therefore still deficient. The special Central Bureau for Germany is the same as that for the German-speaking Swiss, and is located at Geneva under Joh. Phil. Becker at Pré-l'Evêque 33. In the General Council at London, Germany is represented by Karl Marx, Secretary for Germany, resident at 1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill, London N. W., and by George Eccarius, General Secretary of the Association.

The periodicals of the Association are:

Conclusion

The author has one more pleasant duty to perform before he takes leave of the German workers, to whom this book is dedicated.

Under the heading, "The Eight Hours Movement", the Köllnische Zeitung of July 19, 1868, carried the following heartening report:

That the Kölnische Zeitung, an organ of the German bourgeoisie, is not particularly delighted over the unexpected success of the eight hours movement in America, should surprise no one who, like that paper, believes in the "omnipotence" of the "unwritten" law of supply and demand.

The New-Yorker Handelszeitung, too, is right from the standpoint of "supply and demand – when it testily declares:

The immediate future will show if the eight hours movement is "without rhyme or reason" and if the American workers will notice that they "have been deceived" once the presidential elections are over.

For Europe that question is secondary compared to the great event that the legislature of the United States has sanctioned the eight hours movement.[444]

The consequences will not be long in coming. From the workshops and factories of the United States government the eight-hour principle will make its way forward and gain recognition as a moral and legitimate demand of the working class everywhere in America, England and the European continent – wherever to this day the belief in the "omnipotence" of supply and demand has raised the duration of the working day to the limits of human endurance and pressed down wages to the lowest limits of the worker's needs.

Now we are beginning to witness what Karl Marx, that painstaking explorer of and authority on social conditions, prophesied on July 25, 1867:

"As in the 18th century, the American War of Independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so in the 19th century, the American Civil War sounded it for the European working class." [Preface to the First Edition of Capital]