districts of Westfalia and the Lower Rhine, a coalition of all the 
parties had scarcely sufficed to defeat the working-class candidates 
by bare majorities. German democratic socialism was a power, and 
a rapidly growing one, with which henceforth all other powers in 
the country, governing or otherwise, would have to reckon. The 
effect of these elections was enormous. The middle class were 
seized with a perfect panic, all the more so as their press had 
constantly represented social democracy as dwindling down into 
insignificance. The working class, elated at their own victory, 
continued the struggle with renewed vigor and upon every 
available battlefield; while the workingmen of other countries, as 
we shall see, not only celebrated the victory of the Germans as a 
triumph of their own, but were stimulated by it to fresh exertions 
in order not to be left behind in the race for the emancipation of 
labor. 

The rapid progress of the Workingmen’s Party in Germany is 
not bought without considerable sacrifices on the part of those 
who take a more active part in it. Government prosecutions and 
sentences of fine, and oftener of imprisonment, hail down upon 
them, and they have long since had to make up their minds to 
passing the greater part of their lives in prison. Although most of 
these sentences are for short terms, a couple of weeks to three 
months, long terms are by no means of rare infliction. Thus, in 
order to protect the important mining and manufacturing district 
of Saarbrucken from the infection by social democratic poison, two 
agitators* have recently been sentenced to two years and a half 
each, for having ventured upon this forbidden ground. The elastic 
laws of the Empire offer plenty of pretexts for such measures, and 
where they are not sufficient, the judges are mostly quite willing 
to stretch them to the point required for a conviction. 

A great advantage to the German movement is that the Trades’ 
organization works hand in hand with the political organization. 
The immediate advantages offered by the Trades’ organization 
draw many an otherwise indifferent man into the political 
movement, while the community of political action holds together, 

and assures mutual support to, the otherwise isolated Trades 
Unions. 

The success obtained in the elections to the German Parliament 
has encouraged our German friends to try their chance on other 
electoral fields. Thus, in two of the State Parliaments, in the 
smaller States of the Empire, they have succeeded in electing 
workingmen, and have also penetrated into a good many Town 
Councils; in the Saxon manufacturing districts, many a town is 
governed by a social democratic Council. The suffrage being 
restricted in these elections, no great result can be hoped for; still, 
every seat carried, helps to prove to the governments and the 
middle class that henceforth they will have to reckon with the 
workingmen. 

But the best proof of the rapid advance of conscious working- 
class organization is in the growing number of its periodical 
organs in the press. And here we have to overstep the boundaries 
of Bismarck’s “Empire”, for the influence and action of German 
social democracy is in no ways limited by these. There were 
publishing in the German language on the 31st of December 1877, 
in all, not less than seventy-five periodicals in the service of the 
Workingmen’s Party. Of these in the German Empire 62 (amongst 
which 15 organs of as many Trades Unions), in Switzerland 3, in 
Austria 3, Hungary 1, America 6; 75 in all, more than the number 
of workingmen’s organs in all other languages put together. 

After the battle of Sedan,” in September 1870, the Executive 
Committee of the German Workingmen’s Party told their con- 
stituents that by the results of the war the centre of gravity of the 
European working-class movement had been shifted from France 
to Germany, and that the German workmen had thus become 
invested with a higher trust and with new responsibilities which 
required on their part renewed exertions.” The year 1877 has 
proved the truth of this, and has proved, at the same time, the 
proletariat of Germany to have been in no wise inferior to the task 
of temporary leadership imposed upon it. Whatever mistakes some 
of the leaders may have made—and they are both numerous and 
manifold—the masses themselves have marched onwards resolute- 
ly, unhesitatingly and in the right direction. Their conduct, 
organization and discipline, form a marked contrast to the 
weakness, irresolution, servility and cowardice so characteristic of 

all middle-class movements in Germany. But while the German 
middle class has closed its career by sinking down into a more 
than Byzantine adulation of “William the Victorious”* and by 
surrendering itself, bound hand and foot to the wayward will of 
the one Bismarck,”’ the working class is marching from victory to 
victory, helped onwards and strengthened even by the very 
measures which government and middle class contrive in order to 
suppress it. 

II 

Great as was the effect of the German elections in the country 
itself, it was far greater abroad. And in the first instance, it 
restored that harmony to the European working-class movement 
which had been disturbed, for the last six years, by the pretensions 
of a smal] but extremely busy sect. 

Those of our readers who have followed the history of the 
International Workingmen’s Association, will recollect that, im- 
mediately after the fall of the Paris Commune, there arose 
dissensions in the midst of the great labor organization, which led 
to an open split, at the Hague Congress 1872, and to consequent 
disintegration.” These dissensions were caused by a Russian, 
Bakounine, and his followers, pretending to supremacy, by fair 
means or by foul, over a body of which they formed but a small 
minority. Their chief nostrum was an objection, on principle, to 
all political action on the part of the working class; so much so, 
that in their eyes, to vote at an election, was to commit an act of 
treason against the interests of the proletariat. Nothing, but 
downright, violent revolution would they admit as means of action. 
From Switzerland, where these “anarchists”, as they called 
themselves, had first taken root, they spread to Italy and Spain, 
where, for a time, they actually dominated the working-class 
movement. They were more or less supported, within the 
“International”, by the Belgians, who, though from different 
motives, also declared in favor of political abstention. After the 
split they kept up a show of organization and held congresses,” in 
which a couple of dozen men, always the same, pretending to 
represent the working class of all Europe, proclaimed their 
dogmas in its name. But already the German elections of 1874, 

and the great advantage which the German movement experi- 
enced from the presence of nine* of its most active members in 
Parliament, had thrown elements of doubt in the midst of the 
“anarchists”. Political events had repressed the movement in 
Spain,” which disappeared without leaving scarcely a trace; in 
Switzerland the party in favor of political action, which worked 
hand in hand with the Germans, became stronger every day and 
soon outnumbered the few anarchists at the rate of 300 to 1; in 
Italy, after a childish attempt at “social revolution” (Bologna, 
1874)*** at which neither the sense nor the pluck of the 
“anarchists” showed to advantage, the real working-class element 
began to look out for more rational means of action. In Belgium, 
the movement, thanks to the abstentionist policy of the leaders, 
which left the working class without any field for real action, had 
come to a dead stand. In fact, while the political action of the 
Germans led them from success to success, the working class of 
those countries, where abstention was the order of the day, 
suffered defeat after defeat, and got tired of a movement barren 
of results; their organizations dropped into oblivion, their press 
organs disappeared one after the other. The more sensible portion 
of these workmen could not but be struck by this contrast; 
rebellion against the ‘‘anarchist” and abstentionist doctrine broke 
out in Italy as well as in Belgium, and people began to ask 
themselves and each other, why for the sake of a stupid 
dogmatism they should be deprived of applying the very means of 
action which had proved itself the most efficacious of all. This was 
the state of things when the grand electoral victory of the 
Germans settled all doubts, overcame all hesitation. No resistance 
was possible against such a stubborn fact. Italy and Belgium 
declared for political action; the remnants of the Italian absten- 
tionists, driven to despair, attempted another insurrection near 
Naples; some thirty anarchists proclaimed the “social revolution”, 
but were speedily taken care of by the police.”” All they attained 
was the complete breakdown of their own sectarian movement in 
Italy. Thus the anarchist organization, which had pretended to 
rule the working-class movement from one end of Europe to the 
other, was again reduced to its original nucleus, some two 
hundred men in the Jura district of Switzerland, where from the 
isolation of their mountain recesses, they continue to protest 

against the victorious heresy of the rest of the world, and to 
uphold the true orthodoxy as laid down by the Emperor 
Bakounine, now defunct. And when in September last the 
Universal Socialist Congress met at Ghent, in Belgium**°—a 
congress which they themselves had convoked—they found