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.‘ 

a “Address of English to French Workmen”, The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 112, 
December 5, 1863.— Ed. 

> In the German original the name of the General Council is given in brackets 
in English and French after the German equivalent.— Ed. 

© K. Marx, “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association”. 
“Provisional Rules of the Association” .— Ed. 

Appendices 323 

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,’ 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 representa- 
tives 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**% 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 coun- 
tries. 

Mazzini’s name was in high repute at the time among the 
English workers, notably since Garibaldi’s triumphant visit to 
London.*”’ 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 

324 Appendices 

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 princi- 
ples. 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?8 

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, pre- 
dicted that if the exports and imports of England were to rise 50 
per cent, English pauperism would sink to zero.*” Alas! On April 
7th, 1864, Mr. Gladstone” the British Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, 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 

a Status de l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs votés a la séance du 
5 septembre au Congrés de Genéve. In: Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Statuts et 
Réglements, London, 1866.— Ed. 

b “Mr. Gladstone” does not occur in the original English text.— Ed. 

© The original English text has “Parliamentary audience”.— Ed. 

4 In the original English text this passage from Gladstone’s address is given in 
direct speech.— Ed. 

Appendices 325 

in a sudden fit of terror. When the garotte panic*” 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,?*" 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.* 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”. 

* 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 Kari Marx.] 

a Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the operation of the acts (16 & 17 
Vict. c. 99 and 20 & 21 Vict. c. 3) relating to transportation and penal servitude, Vols. I-II, 
London, 1863.— Ed. 

b The English original has “by the medical officer of the Privy Council”.— Ed. 

© Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council (1863), - 
London, 1864. Pp. 13-15 of this report are cited below.— Ed. 

326 Appendices 

’ 

“Moreover,” we quote from the report, “as regards the examined families of 
the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than 
the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more than one-third were with 
less than the estimated sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties 
(Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Somersetshire) insufficiency of nitrogenous food was 
the average local diet.” “It must be remembered,” adds the official report, “that 
privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that, as a rule, great poorness of 
diet will only come when other privations have preceded it.” ... “Even cleanliness 
will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful 
endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of 
hunger. These are painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the 
poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of idleness; in all cases it 
is the poverty of working populations. Indeed, the work which obtains the scanty 
pittance of food is for the most part excessively prolonged.” 

Further, the report brings out the strange, and rather unex- 
pected 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.* 

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

“the average condition of the British labourer has improved in a degree we 
know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any 
7»b 
age”’. 

* 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: 

“The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe 
are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the 
veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We should 
be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and 
parliaments appointed periodically commissions of inquiry into economic condi- 
tions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the 
truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from 
partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory inspectors, her 
medical reporters on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the 
exploitation of women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic 
cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap 
over eyes and ears as a make-believe that these are no monsters.” [ Note by Eichhoff.] 

4 In Eichhoff’s pamphlet mistakenly: “1863”.— Ed. 
6 Here and further the quotations are from Gladstone’s speech in the House of 
Commons of April 16, 1863 (see The Times, No. 24535, April 17, 1863).— Ed. 

Appendices 327 

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

“The public health of a country means the health of its masses, and the masses 
will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base, they be at least moderately 
prosperous.” 

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

“From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; 
in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 
20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating 
augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “is entirely confined to 
classes of property!” 402 

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 . 

the potters as a class, both men and women, represent a much degenerated 
population, both physically and mentally, that the unhealthy child is an unhealthy 
parent in his turn, that the future was fraught with the gradual extinction. of the 
race, and that the degenerescence of the population of Staffordshire would be even 
greater were it not for the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and the ~ 
intermarriages with more healthy races.> 

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, 

4 The reference is to the Sixth Report..., pp. 25-27, cited above.— Ed. 

6 Cf. Children’s Employment Commission (1862). First Report of the Commissioners, 
London, 1863, p. 24.— Ed. 

© Report Addressed to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home 
Department..., London, 1862.— Ed. 

328 . Appendices 

teach us that the persons with yearly incomes, valued* 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 com- 
merce 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 develop- 
ment 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 
1861. 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 

* The English original has “valued by the tax-gatherer”.— Ed. 

Appendices 329 

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* 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. 

4 In the English original this is followed by the phrase: “partly owed to the 
diplomacy of the English Government, acting then as now in fraternal solidarity 
with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg”, which was omitted by Eichhoff.— Ed. 

6 The English original says: “turned into ‘political blacks’”.— Ed. 

330 Appendices 

After a thirty years’ struggle, fought with most admirable 
perseverance, the English working classes, improving a momen- 
taneous split between the landlords and money-lords, succeeded in 
carrying the Ten Hours’ Bill.“ 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’’.* 
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, 

* Translator’s note: It is common usage in England to describe workers as hands, 
while sheep and oxen are counted by heads.4 [Note by Eichhoff.] 

4 In Eichhoff’s German text the words “hands” and “heads” are given in 
brackets after their German equivalents.— Ed. 

Appendices 331 

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 com- 
plimentary 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 perpetua- 
tion 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.** 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 

332 Appendices 

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.’ 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 Govern- 
ments; 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 

These follow in the final, essentially unchanged, wording as 
sanctioned by the Geneva Congress (1866): 

Considering, 

That the emancipation of the working classes must be con- 
quered 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; 

Appendices 333 

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 *”’; 

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

1. This Association is established to afford a central medium of 
‘communication and cooperation between Working Men’s Societies 
existing in different countries, and aiming at the same end, viz., 
the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation of the 
working classes. 

2. The name of the Society shall be: “The International 
Working Men’s Association”. 

3. The General Council shall consist of working men belonging 
to the different countries represented in the International 
Association. It shall from its own members elect the officers 
necessary for the transaction of business, such as a president, a 

334 Appendices 

treasurer, a general secretary, corresponding secretaries for the 
different countries, &c. The Congress appoints annually the seat 
of the General Council, elects a number of members, with power 
to add to their numbers, and appoints time and place for the 
meeting of the’ next Congress. The delegates assemble at the 
appointed time and place without any special invitation. The 
General Council may, in case of need, change the place, but has 
no power to postpone the time of meeting. 

4, On its annual meetings, the General Congress shall receive a 
public account of the transactions of the General Council. In cases 
of urgency, it may convoke the General Congress before the 
regular yearly term. 

5. The General Council shall form an international agency 
between the different cooperating associations, so that the working 
men in one country be constantly informed of the movements of 
their class in every other country; that the inquiry into the social 
state of the different countries of Europe be made simultaneously, 
and under a common direction; that the questions of general 
interest mooted in one society be ventilated by all; and that, when 
immediate practical steps should be needed, as, for instance, in 
case of international quarrels, the action of the associated societies 
be simultaneous and uniform. Whenever it seems opportune, the 
General Council shall take the initiative of proposals to be laid 
before the different national or local societies. To facilitate the 
communications, the General Council shall publish periodical 
reports. . 

6. Since the success of the working men’s movement in each 
country cannot be secured but by the power of union and 
combination, while, on the other hand, the usefulness of the 
International General Council must greatly depend on the 
circumstances whether it has to deal with a few national centres of 
working men’s associations, or with a great number of small and 
. disconnected local . societies; the members of the International 
Association shall use their utmost efforts to combine the discon- 
nected working men’s societies of their respective countries into 
national bodies, represented by central national organs. It is 
self-understood, however, that the appliance of this rule will 
depend upon the peculiar laws of each country, and that, apart 
from legal obstacles, no independent local society shall be 
precluded from directly corresponding with the General Council. 

7. The various branches and sections shall, at their places of 
abode, and as far as their influence may extend, take the initiative 
not only in all matters tending to the general progressive 

oes) 
Oo 
Cr 

Appendices 

improvement of public life but also in the foundation of 
productive associations and other institutions useful to the working 
class. The General Council shall encourage them in every possible 
manner. 

8. Each member of the International Association, on removing 
his domicile from one country to another, will receive the fraternal 
support of the Associated Working Men. 

9. Everybody who acknowledges and defends the principles of 
the International Working Men’s Association is eligible to become 
a member. Every branch is responsible for the integrity of the 
members it admits. 

10. Every section or branch has the right to appoint its own 
corresponding secretary. 

11. While united in a perpetual bond of fraternal cooperation, 
the working men’s societies, joining the International Association, 
will preserve their existent organisations intact. 

12. Everything not provided for in the present Rules will be 
supplied by special Regulations subject to the revision of every 
Congress. 

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.*” 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 thosen as the place of the Congress. 

336 Appendices 

6. THE GENEVA CONGRESS, 3rd TO 8th SEPTEMBER 1866410 

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 abcut 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.* The discussion chiefly concerned the “Instructions 

* 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 Mens Association under the editorship of Joh. Phil. Becker 
by the publishing house of the Association at Pré-l’Evéque 33 in Geneva. [Note by 
Eichhoff.] 

Appendices 337 

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 in 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 in 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 

4 K. Marx, “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council. 
The Different Questions” .— Ed. 

13* 

338 Appendices 

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 suit local conditions: 

1. Industry, name of. 

2. Age and sex of the employed. 

3. Number of the employed. 

4. Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or 
piece work; (c) scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average. 

5. (a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with 
small employers and in homework, if the business be carried on in 
those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork. 

6. Mealtimes and treatment. 

7. Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventila- 
tion, want of sunlight, use of gaslight, cleanliness, etc. 

8. Nature of occupation. 

9. Effect of employment upon the physical condition. 

10. Moral condition. Education. 

11. State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less 
uniformly distributed over the year, whether commodities are 
subject to great price fluctuations, whether exposed to foreign 
competition, whether destined for home consumption or for 
export, etc.?”! 

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,*’” 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, in 
trades and branches specified by law, with the tendency being to 
gradually suppress all nightwork. This proposal, however, referred 

Appendices 339 

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 an 
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 eat, 
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 from 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. 

340 Appendices 

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 from 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: 

First, mental education. 

Second, bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, 
and by military exercise. 

Third, technological training, which imparts the general principles 
of all processes of production, and simultaneously initiates the 
child and young person in the practical use and handling of the 
elementary instruments of all trades. 

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 

4a The English original says: “all persons from [9] and to 17 years (inclu- 
sively)” .— Ed. 

Appendices 34] 

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, 1867415 

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. Eugene 
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 dele- 

4 Rapports lus au Congrés ouvrier réuni du 2 au 8 septembre 1867 a Lausanne, 
Chaux-de-Fonds, 1867.— Ed. 

— 342 Appendices 

gates 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*'* in Geneva (9 to 12 September), in 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 *: 

“Considering that the pressure of war weighs more heavily on the working class 
than on any other class of society, because it is not only robbed by it of its means of 
subsistence but is also the class that is made to shed most blood in it; 

“Considering that the pressure of so-called armed peace weighs as heavily on 
the working man as that of war by consuming the best energies of the people in 
unproductive and destructive labour; 

“Finally, considering that any radical remedy of this evil necessitates altering the 
prevailing social conditions which repose on the exploitation of one part of society 
by another, 

“The Congress of the International Working Men’s Association declares its 
complete and emphatic allegiance to the Peace League constituted in Geneva on 
the 7th of September, and to its efforts in the interest and for the maintenance of 
peace, and demands not only that’war be abolished but also that standing armies be 
disbanded, and that a universal and free alliance of the peoples be constituted in 
their place on the basis of reciprocity and justice, but with the proviso that the 
working classes be emancipated from their unfree and oppressed condition and 
social discrimination, and that an end be put to the mutual struggle of classes 
through the rectification of the obtaining contradictions.” 

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 Associa- 
tion,” and its example was followed by the dailies and weeklies of 
all England. After The Times had set the tone, the other papers, 
too, no longer considered it beneath their dignity to devote not 

a Adresse collective au Congres de la paix a Genéve, de la part des Travailleurs réunis 
en Congres a Lausanne.— Fd. 

5 «The International Working Men’s Congress (From a Correspondent). 
Lausanne”, The Times, Nos. 25909, 25911, 25912, 25913, September 6, 9, 10, 11, 
1867.— Ed. 

Appendices 343 

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 from 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,*” 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 
governimentally recognised body sanctioned by Act of Parliament 
in 1825” and necessitated by the daily 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 

4 In the German original the English terms “Trades’ Unions” and “Strikes” are 
given in brackets after their German equivalents.— Ed. 
_ » An Act to repeal the Laws relating to the combinations of Workmen, and to 
make other Provisions in leu thereof.— Ed. 

© The German original has the English and French terms “Strikes” and 
“Gréves” in brackets after their German equivalent.— Ed. 

d The German original has the English terms “breach of the peace” and “restraint 
of trade” in brackets after their German equivalents.— Ed. 

344 Appendices 

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 Misére de la Philosophie. Réponse a la Philosophie de la Misére 
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+": 

“That this conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International 
Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all 
countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the 
advisability of becoming affiliated to that body, believing that it is essential to the 
progress and prosperity of the entice working community.” P 

The London Trades’ Council,“7? 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 

* K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy. Answer to the “Philosophy of Poverty” by 
M. Proudhon.— Ed. 

b Report of the Conference of Trades’ Delegates of the United Kingdom..., Sheffield, 
1866.— Ed. 

© ‘The German original has the English term “Trades’ Council” in brackets after its 
German equivalent.— Ed. 

Appendices 345 

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,’ the governing body of the movement. 
Within a few months, victory was achieved, and the Tory 
government was forced to initiate the parliamentary reform.’ 

In England as well as on the Continent the years 1866 to 1868 
were especially plentiful in strikes on the part of the workers and 
in factory lock-outs on the part of the capitalists.* The common 
reason for this was the crisis of 1866*°° and its aftermaths. The crisis 
paralysed speculation. Large enterprises came to a standstill, and 
those entrepreneurs who, owing to the changed - situ- 
wion on 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. And the gold had piled up 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 

* Lock-out—-termporary closure of whole factories and all workshops of any 
industrial branch, the capitalists’ instrument of forcing workers to accept low wages. 
| Note by Eichhoff.] 

346 Appendices 

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 in the “Third Annual 
Report” * which the London General Council placed before the 
Congress in Lausanne, and which says: 

“It used to be a standard threat with British capitalists, not only in London, but 
also in the provinces, when their workmen would not tamely submit to their 
arbitrary dictation, that they would supplant them by an importation of foreigners. 
The possibility of such importations taking place was in most cases sufficient to 
deter the British workmen from insisting on their demands. The action taken by 
the General Council has had the effect of putting a stop to these threats being 
made publicly. Where anything of the kind is contemplated it has to be done in 
secret, and the slightest information obtained by the workmen suffices to frustrate 
the plans of the capitalists. As a rule, when a strike or a lock-out occurs concerning 
any of the affiliated trades, the Continental correspondents of the Association are 
at once instructed to warn the workmen in their respective localities not to enter 
into any engagements with the agents of the capitalists of the place where the 
dispute is. However, this action is not confined to affiliated trades. The same action 
is taken on behalf of other trades upon application being received.” 

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 in Paris. In 

4 “Third Annual Report of the International Working Men’s Association”. In 
the original, the English title is followed by its German translation in brackets.— 
Ed. 

Appendices 347 

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.**” Here, however, the Central Council of the Interna- 
tional 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 from 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 

348 Appendices 

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 contribu- 
tions from the English trades unions, and also thanks to the 
intervention of the Paris Central Council of the International 
Association which persuaded the other trade unions in 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 francais of March 
24, 1867 says the following?: 

“M. Thiers said that no new policy is conceivable in international relations. Yet a 
noteworthy and in no way isolated fact has just taken place which, coming from the 
people, serves notice of something that is really new. 

“We cannot tell if the bitter, hundreds of years old and almost inhuman hatred 
between the English and the French is still rooted in the bosom of a part of the two 
nations. But the fact that the English proletariat offers alliance and pecuniary 
assistance to the Paris bronze-workers to support them in a question of 
employment and wages is a symptom of a new policy which the old parties do not 
and cannot comprehend.” 

2. The Geneva Strike in the Spring of 1868* 

While the case of the Paris bronze-workers concerned the 
existence of trade unions in France, the case here concerned the 

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

4 V. Huriot, “M. Thiers a dit qu’en matiére de relations internationales, il n'y 
avait point de politique nouvelle...”, Le Courrier frangais, No. 12, March 24, 
1867.— Ed. ; 

5 Little great men.— Ed. 

© Heinrich Heine, Neue Gedichte: Romanzen 7, Anno 1829.— Ed. 

Appendices 349 

existence of the International Working Men’s Association on the 
Continent.” 

The conflict between the International Working Men’s Associa- 
tion 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 

350 . Appendices 

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 Rhone, 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 dis- 
persed 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 Associa- 
tion 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 Genéve set the tone and was 
most vigorously backed by the Neue Ziircher Zeitung, the Neue freie 
Presse? of Vienna, and other organs of the sradical, 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 Associa- 
tion 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 

2 Offices.— Ed. 
b See Neue freie Presse, Nos, 1286 (supplement), 1288, 1291, March 29 and 31, and 
April 3, 1868.— Ed. 

Appendices 351 

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 Internation- 
al 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, tarriers, saddlers, upholsterers, file-cutters, curriers, 
and others. During these few days the Association won many 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 acknowledgements are due to the Geneva 
working men and their unions for their spirit of self-sacrifice. It 

352 Appendices 

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 acti- 
ve, however, were the General Council of the International Associa- 
tion 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 posters 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. 

Appendices 353 

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

3. The Bloody Conflict Between the Belgian Government 
and the Miners of Charlerot (March 1868) 

Belgium is a paradise for the bourgeoisie. Its Constitution is 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.* 

The more resolutely the International Working Men’s Associa- 
tion 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 ironworks are the 
most important consumer. Any upheaval in one of the industries, 
therefore, makes itself instantly felt in the other, and a metallurgi- 
cal 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 he 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 transporta- 
tion 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 eye owing to the 
difference in the amount of labour time consumed in different 
countries to produce the same quantity of coal. Wages, too, are as 

354 Appendices 

different as the working time, and in England they are at least 26°/s 
per cent higher than on the Continent.* 

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 pogush 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* 
in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt**: 

“A sadder plight than that of the Belgian coalminer is hardly conceivable. 
Reduced to the condition of an industrial machine, he has been stripped of all 
social rights and duties. He is nothing more than a chattel which figures in the 
mine-owner’s inventory alongside horses, donkeys, implements, and other working 
material. That is a fact. A mining company considers itself richer when it has a greater 
number of workers in its hands. When tt establishes a workers’ town for ‘humanitarian 
reasons’ the direct gain is at most 2 to 3 per cent. But the indirect gain is immeasurably 
greater, for the company acquires an additional number of workers utterly dependent 
on the mine for their subsistence, thus ensuring the operation of the mine under any 
circumstances. It would be more appropriate to call the coalminer a serf or slave 

* According to estimates by Richard Whiting. To determine how much worse off 
the workers were in France than their colleagues in England, he 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 in France as he did with 5 
shillings (that is, 6 francs) in England. This made a difference of 162/3 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 by 
Eichhoff.] 

** 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.] 

a “Die Lage der belgischen Kohlenarbeiter”, Demokratisches Wochenblatt, Nos. 20 
and 21, May 16 and 23, 1868.— Ed. 

Appendices 355 

rather than a free man, which is a title that bourgeois economists so generously 
apply to him. 

“Among all the labouring classes the Belgian coalminers wear the badge of 
slavery more distinctly than the others. Ignorance, brutishness, physical and moral 
degradation—those are the sad effects of the unrestricted domination of capital in 
an industry that is in itself probably more demeaning to man than any other. To be 
sure, the bourgeoisie indulges itself in ascribing the coalminer’s misery to his own 
ingrained faults and vices, his lack of foresight, frivolity and dissipation. Wisely, it 
avoids tracing the case to its sources, lest it reveal the causes and circumstances that 
inevitably produce a condition which cannot find succour in vain pity but which it 
is in the general interest to remedy, and as quickly as possible. 

“Among the specific reasons that make the coalminer a machine of flesh and 
bone, the main one is the nature and condition of the work itself, and then also the 
extraordinary length of working time. And it is an economic law of the present 
social system that working hours tend to increase in much the same proportion as 
the labour continuously tends to grow harder. 

“The coalminer’s labour is purely physical; it calls for no mental effort at all. 
His brain is almost completely idle. Deprived of any stimulus, his mental aptitudes 
remain in an elementary, inert, dormant state. Consequently, his mentality is 
narrow-minded to the extreme. Just as his activity is purely physical, so his needs 
and tastes are also of a purely physical and brutish nature. The coalminer’s 
intellectual and moral degradation is not at all surprising if you look at the nature 
of his trade. Considering the ruinous effects of the physical exertion that disfigures 
his body, it is indeed quite impossible for his habits and morals not to conflict with 
reason. 

“The coalminer’s worth is measured exclusively by his muscles; intelligence 
counts for nothing, for it is not needed. It takes neither skill nor talent nor 
education to work in a mine; physical strength alone is enough. A brief description 
of the various operations in a coalmine will show the reader that under the present 
economic system it is impossible for the miner to improve himself either physically or 
mentally or morally. 

“Work in a mine is generally divided as follows: the ouvriers a veine cut the coal 
from the seam, the bouteurs take it to the gallery, and the chargeurs a la taille load it 
into carts or tubs. The seléneurs pull the tubs to the shafts where the coal is raised 
to the surface. The coupers de voies, the releveurs and the meneurs de terres dig shafts 
and galleries, and take out the earth and stones. All these jobs are done in the dim 
light of a little lamp, in an unhealthy, dust-laden atmosphere. To do his job, the 
coalminer must assume unnatural poses, either lying on his side or kneeling, 
crouching or bending laboriously, and often he can only crawl in order to move 
forward or backward. All this makes his condition worse, more painful, than that 
of an excavator or field labourer, whose jobs are also admittedly of an entirely 
manual nature, but at least performed in open air and daylight. 

“Is it any wonder, therefore, that the coalminer should be mentally and morally at 
so low a level? How can a man who labours daily for 15 to 18 hours ina murky, unaired 
hole, retain even a trace of the qualities that distinguish a human being from a beast? 
The best organised creature with the happiest spiritual aptitudes is bound to 
degenerate swiftly in such a regime, which seeks io destroy the individual’s abilities. 
Nowadays, one can no longer deny the influence of the body on the spirit, of the 
physical on the moral. The physical state of the individual is usually an indication of 
the mental. The report of the Mons Chamber of Commerce for 1844, an official 
paper, portrays the coalminer in the following terms: “These workers are pale of face 
in their young years, their frame is bent, they are bow-legged, and their walk is slow. 

356 Appendices 

Almost without exceptions, they bear the stamp of premature senility at the age of 40 
to 50. 

“Bidaut, a mining engineer, wrote in an official report in 1843: ‘It is quite 
indisputable that this occupation (that of the coalminer), which deprives one of 
sunlight, subjects one to inhaling gases other than plain air, makes the body assume 
unnatural postures, exposes one to constant dangers, and so on, is of a kind that 
removes man the farthest from the normal conditions of life and should therefore 
be an object of special regulations. For me this is beyond any doubt.’ 

“What was true in 1843 is still true in 1868. The physical and moral condition 
of the coalminer, even though it may not have deteriorated, has certainly not 
improved. Far from having been reduced, the working time has since been 
lengthened, and wages, even if we disregard the current decline of business, are 
still the same while the price of victuals has gone up. Though considerable 
improvements have been introduced in mining, the workers have derived no 
benefit therefrom. If, for example, the miner no longer goes down into the mine 
and up again by ladder, the time and energy saved thereby benefit the master 
because more work is done. The effect of all this is that the miner lacks mental 
flexibility, that he scorns schooling and education as being the pursuit of ‘idlers’, 
that he does not send his children to school, and indulges in the coarsest of 
pleasures and amusements. While the mine-owner has an interest in keeping the 
miner in this brutish state, he is helped by a profusion of lesser businesses which 
profit exclusively off the workers and would, therefore, cease to be profitable if the 
worker were sober, prudent, and provident. They set traps for the miner at every 
step to part him from his last penny. And how easy is it to seduce people who lack 
the least schooling and whose mental capacity is in hibernation! 

“This state of affairs cannot and must not continue. It is futile to appeal to the 
obligations of humanity; they are impotent against the laws of bourgeois economics. 
But the bourgeoisie is badly mistaken if it thinks it can reduce the workers to serfs 
and beasts without being itself affected by the moral consequences thereof. Suffice 
it to look at the bourgeoisie of the coal regions and factory towns. Whence the 
contempt for culture, for learning, and the lack of independent thinking outside 
the limits of its enterprises, and whence the crude lust for pleasure that 
distinguishes the bourgeois? It is quite the same as it was with the planters and 
slave-owners of the United States. There it was slavery and slave labour that caused 
the demoralisation. Here, too, similar effects would seem to justify the conclusion 
that the causes are the same. The lower the worker is pushed the lower his master 
sinks in his wake; he becomes morally corrupted as surely as the one whom he has 
ceased to regard as a human being. 

“The workers have themselves found a remedy against the evils they suffer 
from private industry and which retroactively cover the body of society with 
festering sores. This remedy is education and cooperation. Nothing but a reduction 
of working time can put the benefits of enlightenment and education within reach 
of the worker. Nothing but participation in the benefits of capital can deliver him 
from the misery to which he is now helplessly exposed. 

“The moral and material improvement of the worker is a question of social 
justice and of the public weal. There is no way to solve this question other than 
public education and the establishment of cooperative societies. It is up to the state to 
set these remedies in motion, to encourage and to support them. It will destroy 
itself if it looks on idly while the effects of the bourgeois economic system corrupt 
and erode society.” 

Appendices 357 

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*?: