The year 1867-68 will mark an epoch in the history of the 
Association. After a period of peaceable development it has 
assumed dimensions powerful enough to provoke the _ bitter 
denunciations of the ruling classes and the hostile demonstrations 
of governments.’ It has entered upon the phases of strife. 

The French Government took, of course, the lead in the 
reactionary proceedings against the working classes. Already last 
year we had to signalise some of its underhand manoeuvres. It 
meddled with our eorrespondence, seized our Statutes, and the 
Congress documents.”'? After many fruitless steps to get them 
back, they were at last given up only under the official pressure of 
Lord Stanley, the English Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

But the Empire has this year thrown off the mask and tried to 
directly annihilate the International Association by coups de police 
and judiciary prosecution. Begot by the struggle of classes, of 
which the days of June, 1848, are the grandest expression, it could 
not but assume alternately the attitudes of the official saviour of 
the Bourgeoisie and of the paternal protector of the Proletariat. 
The growing power of the International having manifested itself 
in the strikes of Roubaix, Amiens, Paris, Geneva, &c.,’* reduced 
our would-be patron to the necessity of turning our Society to his 
own account or of destroying it. In the beginning he was ready 
enough to strike a bargain on very moderate terms.“ The 
manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Geneva‘™ 

having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive 
demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this 
seizure.” M. Rouher then invited one of the members of the 
Committee’ to an interview, in the course of which he declared 
himself ready to authorise the ‘entry of the manifesto on the 
condition of some modifications being inserted.‘ On the refusal of 
the delegate of the Paris Executive, he added, 

“Still, if you would introduce some words of gratitude to the Emperor, who has 
done so much for the working classes, one might see what could be done.” 4 

M. Rouher’s, the sub-Emperor’s, insinuation was met by a blank 
rebuff. From that moment the Imperial Government looked out 
for a pretext to suppress the Association. Its anger was heightened 
by the anti-chauvinist agitation on the part of our French 
members after the German war. Soon after, when the Fenian 
panic had reached its climax, the General Council addressed to the 
English Government a petition demanding the commutation of 
the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying 
their hanging as an act of political revenge.’ At the same time it 
held public meetings in London for the defence of the rights of 
Ireland. The Empire, always anxious to deserve the good graces of 
the British Government, thought the moment propitious for laying 
hands upon the International. It caused nocturnal perquisitions to 
be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and 
announced with much noise” that it had discovered the centre of 
the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced 
as one of the principal organs. All its laborious researches, 
however, ended in nothing.’ The public prosecutor himself threw 
down his brief in disgust.’ The attempt at converting the 

francais, No. 112, May 1, 1868.— Ed. 

International Association into a secret society of conspirators 
having miserably broken down, the next best thing was to 
prosecute our Paris branch as a non-authorised society of more 
than 20 members.'” The French judges, trained by the Imperialist 
discipline, hastened, of course, to order the dissolution of the 
Association and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive.* The 
tribunal had the naiveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment 
that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible with” a 
working men’s association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, 
and morality as its leading principles.“ The consequences of these 
prosecutions made themselves felt in the departments, where 
paltry vexations on the part of the Prefects succeeded to the 
condemnations of Paris. This Governmental chicanery, however, 
so far from annihilating the Association, has given it a fresh 
impulse“ by forcing the Empire to drop its patronising airs to the 
working classes. 

In Belgium the International Association has made immense 
strides. The coal lords of the basin of Charleroi, having driven 
their miners to riots by incessant exactions, let loose upon those 
unarmed men the armed force which massacred many of them.‘ 
It was in [the] midst of the panic thus created that our Belgian 
branch took up the cause of the miners, disclosed their miserable 
economical condition,’ rushed to the rescue of the families of the 
dead and wounded, and procured legal counsel for the prisoners, 
who were finally all of them acquitted by the jury. After the 
affair of Charleroi the success of the International in Belgium was 
assured. The Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, denounced 
the International Association in the Chamber of Deputies and 
made of its existence the principal pretext for the renewal of the 
law against foreigners.'? He even dared to threaten he should 

¢ See the tribunal’s sentences of March 20 and May 22, 1868 in Procés de 

prevent the Brussels Congress from being held.* The Belgian 
Government ought at last to understand that petty States have no 
longer any raison d’étre in Europe except they be the asylums of 
liberty. 

In Italy, the progress of the Association has been impeded by 
the reaction following close upon the ambuscade of Mentana”’; 
one of the first consequences was the restriction put upon the 
right of association and public meeting. But the numerous letters 
which have come to our hands fully prove that the Italian working 
class is more and more asserting its individuality quite indepen- 
dently of the old parties. 

In Prussia, the International cannot exist legally, on account of a 
law which forbids all relations with foreign societies.?) Moreover, 
in regard to the General Union of the German Working Men, the 
Prussian Government has imitated Bonapartism on a shabby scale. 
Always ready to fall foul of each other, the military Governments 
are cheek by jowl when entering upon a crusade against their 
common enemy, the working classes. In spite, however, of all these 
petty tribulations, small groups spread over the whole surface of 
Germany had long since rallied round our Geneva centre.” The 
General Union of the German Working Men, whose branches are 
mostly confined to Northern Germany, have in their recent 
Congress held at Hamburg decided to act in concert with the 
International Working Men’s Association,”? although debarred 
from joining it officially.” In the programme of the Nuremberg 
Congress, representing upwards of 100 working men’s societies, 
which mostly belong to Middle and Southern Germany, the direct 
adhesion to the International has been put on the order of the 
day.“ At the request of their leading committee we have sent a 
delegate to Nuremberg.** 

In Austria the working-class movement assumes a more and 
more revolutionary aspect.‘ In the beginning of September a 
congress was to meet at Vienna, aiming at the fraternisation of the 
working men of the different races of the Empire. They had also 
sent an address to the English and French working men, in which 
they declared for the principles of the International.“ Your 

1868, published in La Liberté, No. 47, May 17, 1868.— Ed. 

General Council had already appointed a delegate to Vienna* 
when the Liberal Government of Austria, on the very point of 
succumbing to the blows of the feudal. reaction, had the 
shrewdness to stir the anger of the working men by prohibiting 
their congress. 

In the struggle maintained by the building trades of Geneva the 
very existence of the International in Switzerland was put on its 
trial. The employers made it a preliminary condition of coming to 
any terms with their workmen that the latter should forsake the 
International. The working men indignantly refused to comply 
with this dictate. Thanks to the aid received’ from France, 
England, Germany, &c., through the medium of the International, 
they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour‘ of labour 
and 10 per cent“ increase of wages. Already deeply rooted in 
Switzerland, the International has witnessed since that event a 
rapid increase in the number of its members. In the month of 
August last the German working men residing in Switzerland 
(about 50 societies) passed at their Congress in Neuenburg a 
unanimous vote of adhesion to the International.” 

In England the unsettled state of politics,° the dissolution of the 
old parties, and the preparations for the coming electoral 
campaign have absorbed many of our most active members, and, 
to some degree, retarded our propaganda. Nevertheless, we have 
entered into correspondence with numerous provincial trades’ 
unions, many of which have sent in their adhesion. Among the 
more recent London affiliations those of the Curriers’ Society and 
the City Men’s Shoemakers are the most considerable as regards 
numbers. 

Your General Council is in constant communication with the 
National Labour Union of the United States. On its last Congress 
of August, 1867, the American Union had resolved to send a 
delegate to the Brussels Congress,’ but, pressed for time, was 
unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the 
vote.” 

The latent power of the working classes of the United States has 
recently manifested itself in the legal establishment of a working 

day of eight hours in all the workshops of the Federal Govern- 
ment, and in the passing [of] laws to the same effect by many State 
Legislatures.”’ However, at this very moment the working men of 
New York, for example, are engaged in a fierce struggle for 
enforcing the eight hours’ law, against the resistance of rebellious 
capital. This fact proves that even under the most favourable 
political conditions all serious success of the proletariat depends 
upon an organisation that unites and concentrates its forces; and 
even. its national organisation is still exposed to split on the 
disorganisation of the working classes in other countries, which 
one and all compete in the market of the world, acting and 
reacting the one upon the other. Nothing but an international 
bond of the working classes can ever ensure their definitive 
triumph. This want has given birth to the International Working 
Men’s Association. That Association has not been hatched by a sect 
or a theory. It is the spontaneous growth of the proletarian 
movement, which itself is the offspring of the natural and 
irrepressible tendencies of modern society. Profoundly convinced 
of the greatness of its mission, the International Working Men’s 
Association will allow itself neither to be intimidated nor misled. 
Its destiny, henceforward, coalesces with the historical progress of 
the class that bear in their hands the regeneration of mankind.* 

London, September 1