Written between March 3 and 31, 1878 Reproduced from the newspaper 

(New York), March 3, 10, 17, 24 and 31, 

THE LABOR STANDARD. 

Bewwied to the GQugnndeation ond Mumensipeiion of the Wesking Poepin, 
Tas T_tae Bmanctphiion + ot the Werktag Stasees muct be aehbteved by the Werntag Ctaeses thamectece. 

VOLAITL.-Me, 08, MW TORE, OUNDAT, MAREE Ord, 170, (Paice B Bante 

The past year has been an eventful and a fruitful one for the 
Working Class of Europe. Great progress has been made in almost 
all countries with regard to the organization and extension of a 
Workingmen’ s Party; unity, threatened at one time by a small but 
active sect," has been virtually restored; the working-class 
movement has forced itself more and more into the foreground of 
every-day politics, and, a sure sign of approaching triumph, 
political events, no matter what turn they took, always turned out, 
in some way or other, favorable to the progress of that movement. 

At its very outset, the year 1877 was inaugurated by one of the 
greatest victories ever gained by workingmen. On the 10th of 
January, the triennial elections, by universal suffrage, for the 
German Parliament (Reichstag) took place; elections which, ever 
since 1867, have given the German Workingmen’s Party an 
opportunity of counting their strength and parading before the 
world their well organized and ever increasing battalions. In 1874, 
four hundred thousand votes fell to the candidates of labor; in 
1877, more than six hundred thousand. Ten workingmen 
candidates” were elected on the 10th, while twenty-four more had 
to be ballotted for in the supplementary elections which took place 
a fortnight after. Of these twenty-four, only a few were actually 
returned, all other parties uniting against them. But the 
important fact remained, that in all the large towns and industrial 
centres of the Empire the working-class movement had advanced 

a See this volume, p. 213.— Ed. 

b I, Auer, W. Blos, W. Bracke, A. Demmler, F. W. Fritzsche, W. Hasenclever, 
W. Liebknecht, J. Most, J. Motteler (Hasenclever received two mandates).— Ed. 

¢ A. Bebel, A. Kapell, M. Rittinghausen.— Ed. 

with giant strides, and that all these electoral districts were certain 
to fall into their hands at the next ballotting in 1880. Berlin, 
Dresden, the whole of the Saxon manufacturing districts, and 
Solingen had been conquered; in Hamburg, Breslau, Nuremberg, 
Leipzig, Brunswick, in Schleswig-Holstein and the manufacturing 
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, 

4H. Kaulitz and R. Hackenberger.— Ed. 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 211 

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 

a “Manifest des Ausschusses der sozial-demokratischen Arbeiterpartei. An alle 
deutschen Arbeiter” [September 5, 1870], Der Volksstaat, No. 73, September 11, 
1870.— Ed. 

16* 

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. 

a William I.— Ed. 

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 

a A. Bebel, A. Geib, W. Hasenclever, W. Hasselmann, W. Liebknecht, J. Most, 
J. Motteler, O. Reimer, J. Vahlteich.— Ed. 
b See this volume, p. 49.— Ed. 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 215 

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 
themselves an insignificant minority, face to face with the 
delegates of the united and unanimous great working-class 
organizations of Europe. The Congress, while energetically re- 
pudiating their ridiculous doctrines and their arrogant preten- 
sions, and establishing the fact that they repudiated merely a small 
sect, extended to them, in the end, a generous toleration. 

Thus, after a four years’ intestine struggle, complete harmony 
was restored to the action of the working class of Europe, and the 
policy proclaimed by the majority of the last Congress of the 
International was thoroughly vindicated by events. A basis was 
now recovered upon which the workingmen of the different 
European countries could again act firmly together, and give each 
other that mutual support which constitutes the principal strength 
of the movement. The International Workingmen’s Association 
had been rendered an impossi-[...]* many, which forbade the 
workmen of these countries to enter into any such international 
bond. The Governments might have spared themselves all this 
trouble. The working-class movement had outgrown not only the 
necessity but even the possibility of any such formal bond; but not 
only has the work of the great Proletarian organization been fully 
accomplished, it continues to live itself, more powerful than ever, 
in the far stronger bond of union and solidarity, in the community 
of action and policy which now animates the working class of all 
Europe, and which is emphatically its own and its grandest work. 
There is plenty of variety of views amongst the workmen of the 
different countries, and even of those of each country taken by 
itself; but there are no longer any sects, no more pretensions to 
dogmatic orthodoxy and supremacy of doctrine, and there is a 
common plan of action originally traced by the International but 
now universally adopted because everywhere it has grown 
consciously or unconsciously out of the struggle of the necessities 
of the movement; a plan which, while adapting itself freely to the 
varying conditions of each nation and each locality, is nevertheless 
the same everywhere in its fundamental traits, and thus secures 
unity of purpose and general congruence of the means applied to 
obtain the common end, the emancipation of the working class 
through the working class itself. 

@ One or two lines are missing in the newspaper.— Ed 

Il 

In the preceding article, we have already foreshadowed the 
principal facts of interest connected with the history of the 
working-class movement in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium. 
Still, something remains to be told. 

In Spain, the movement had rapidly extended between 1868 
and 1872, when the International boasted of more than 30,000 
paying members. But all this was more apparent than real, the 
result more of momentary excitement, brought on by the 
unsettled political state of the country than by real intellectual 
progress. Involved in the Cantonalist (federalist-republican) rising 
of 1873,°*" the Spanish International was crushed along with it. 
For a time it continued in the shape of a secret society, of which, 
no doubt, a nucleus is still in existence. But as it has never given 
any sign of life save sending three delegates to the Ghent 
Congress,"“* we are driven to the conclusion that these three 
delegates represent the Spanish working class much in the same 
way as whilom the three tailors of Tooley-street represented the 
People of England.*” And whenever a political revulsion will give 
the workingmen of Spain the possibility of again playing an active 
part, we may safely predict that the new departure will not come 
from these “anarchist” spouters, but from the small body of 
intelligent and energetic workmen who, in 1872, remained true to 
the International”? and who now bide their time instead of 
playing at secret conspiracy. 

In Portugal the movement remained always free from the 
“anarchist” taint, and proceeded upon the same rational basis as 
in most other countries. The Portuguese workmen had numerous 
International sections and Trades’ Unions; they held a very 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 217 

successful Congress in January 1877,”! and had an excellent 
weekly: “O Protesto” (The Protest). Still, they too were hampered 
by adverse laws, restrictive of the press and of the right of 
association and public meeting. They keep struggling on for all 
that, and are now holding another Congress at Oporto, which will 
afford them an opportunity of showing to the world that the 
working class of Portugal takes its proper share in the great and 
universal struggle for the emancipation of labor. 

The workmen of Italy, too, are much obstructed in their action 
by middle-class legislation. A number of special laws”? enacted 
under the pretext of suppressing brigandage and wide-spread 
secret brigand organizations, laws which give the government 
immense arbitrary powers, are unscrupulously applied to work- 
men’s associations; their more prominent members equally with 
brigands are subjected to police supervision and banishment 
without judge or jury. Still the movement proceeds, and, best sign 
of life, its centre of gravity has been shifted from the venerable, 
but half-dead cities of Romagna to the busy industrial and 
manufacturing towns of the North, a change which secured the 
predominance of the real working-class element over the host of 
“anarchist” interlopers of middle-class origin who previously had 
taken the lead. The workmen’s clubs and Trades’ Unions, ever 
broken up and dissolved by the government, are ever reformed 
under new names. The Proletarian Press, though many of its 
organs are but short-lived in consequence of the prosecutions, 
fines and sentences of imprisonment against the editors, springs 
up afresh after every defeat, and, in spite of all obstacles, counts 
several papers of comparatively old standing. Some of these 
organs, mostly ephemeral ones, still profess “anarchist”? doctrines, 
but that fraction has given up all pretensions to rule the 
movement and is gradually dying out, along with the Mazzinian or 
middle-class Republican party, and every inch of ground lost by 
these two factions is so much ground won by the real and 
intelligent working-class movement. 

In Belgium, too, the centre of gravity of working-class action has 
been shifted, and this action itself has undergone an important 
change in consequence. Up to 1875, this centre lay in the 
French-speaking part of the country, including Brussels, which is 
half French and half Flemish; the movement was, during this 
period, strongly influenced by Proudhonist doctrines, which also 
enjoin abstention from political interference, especially from 
elections. There remained, then, nothing but strikes, generally 
repressed by bloody intervention of the military, and meetings in 

which the old stock phrases were constantly repeated. The 
work-people got sick of this and the whole movement gradually 
fell asleep. But since 1875 the manufacturing towns of the 
Flemish-speaking portion entered into the struggle with a greater 
and, as was soon to be proved, a new spirit. In Belgium there are 
no factory laws whatever to limit the hours of labor of women or 
children; and the first cry of the factory voters of Ghent and 
neighborhood was for protection for their wives and children, who 
were made to slave fifteen and more hours a day in the Cotton 
Mills.2 The opposition of the Proudhonist doctrinaires who 
considered such trifles as far beneath the attention of men 
occupied with transcendent revolutionism, was of no avail, and was 
gradually overcome. The demand of legal protection for factory- 
children became one of the points of the Belgian working-class 
platform, and with it was broken the spell which hitherto had 
tabooed political action. The example of the Germans did the rest, 
and now the Belgian workmen, like those of Germany, Switzer- 
land, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary, Austria and part of Italy, are 
forming themselves into a political party, distinct from, and 
opposed to, all other political parties, and aiming at the conquest 
of their emancipation by whatever political action the situation 
may require. 

The great mass of the Swiss workmen—the German-speaking 
portion of them—had for some years been formed into a 
“Workmen’s Confederation” which at the end of 1876 counted 
above 5,000 paying members. There was, alongside of them 
another organization, the “Griitli Society”,””* originally formed by 
the middle-class radicals for the spread of Radicalism amongst 
workmen and peasants; but gradually social democratic ideas 
penetrated into this widely-spread association and finally con- 
quered it. In 1877, both these societies entered into an alliance, 
almost a fusion, for the purpose of organizing a Swiss political 
labor party; and with such vigor did they act that they carried, at 
the national vote, the new Swiss Factory Law, of all existing factory 
acts the one which is most favorable to the work-people.** They 
are now organizing a vigilant supervision to secure its due 
execution against the loudly proclaimed ill-will of the mill owners. 
The “anarchists”, from their superior revolutionary standpoint, as 
a matter of course violently opposed all this action, denouncing it 
as a piece of arrant treason against what they call “the 

a “Manifest der sozialistischen Partei in Brabant (Belgien), Vorwarts, Nos. 10 
and 11, January 25 and 27, 1878.— Ed. 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 219 

Revolution”; but as they number 200 at the outside and here as 
elsewhere are but a general staff of officers without an army, this 
made no difference.— The programme of the Swiss workingmen’s 
Party is almost identical with that of the Germans, only too 
identical, having adopted even some of its more imperfect and 
confused passages. But the mere wording of the programme 
matters little, so long as the spirit which dominates the movement, 
is of the right sort. 

The Danish workingmen entered the lists about 1870 and at 
first made very rapid progress.*” By an alliance with the small 
peasant proprietors’ party, amongst which they succeeded in 
spreading their views, they attained considerable political influ- 
ence, so much so that the “United Left”, of which the peasant 
party formed the nucleus, for a number of years had the majority 
in parliament.”° But there was more show than solidity in this 
rapid growth of the movement. One day it was found out that two 
of the leaders* had disappeared after squandering the money 
collected for party purposes from the workingmen. The scandal 
caused by this was extreme, and the Danish movement has not yet 
recovered from the discouragement consequent upon it. Anyhow, 
if the Danish workingmen’s party is now proceeding in a more 
unobtrusive way than before, there is every reason to believe that 
it is gradually replacing the ephemeral and apparent domination 
over the masses, which it has now lost, by a more real and more 
lasting influence. 

In Austria and Hungary the working class has the greatest 
difficulties to contend with. Political liberty, as far as the press, 
meetings and associations are concerned, is there reduced to the 
lowest level consistent with a sham constitutional monarchy. A 
code of laws of unheard-of elasticity enables the Government to 
obtain convictions against even the mildest expression of the 
demands and interests of the working class. And yet the 
movement there, as well as elsewhere, goes on irrepressibly. The 
principal centres are the manufacturing districts of Bohemia, 
Vienna, and Pesth. Workingmen’s periodicals are published in the 
German, the Bohemian and the Hungarian languages. From 
Hungary the movement has spread to Servia, where, before the 
war, a weekly newspaper was published in the Servian language,” 
but when the war broke out the paper was simply suppressed. 

Thus, wherever we look in Europe, the working-class movement 

aL. Pio and P. Geleff.— Ed. 
b Hapodna sorva,— Ed. 

is progressing, not only favorably but rapidly, and what is more, 
everywhere in the same spirit. Complete harmony is restored, and 
with it constant and regular intercourse, in one way or another, 
between the workmen of the different countries. The men who 
founded, in 1864, the International Working Men’s Association, 
who held high its banner during years of strife, first against 
external, then against internal foes, until political necessities even 
more than intestine feuds brought on disruption and seeming 
retirement—these men can now proudly exclaim: “The Interna- 
tional has done its work; it has fully attained its grand aim—the 
union of the Proletariat of the whole world in the struggle against 
their oppressors.” 

IV 

Our readers will have noticed that in the three preceding 
articles there has been scarcely any mention made of one of the 
most important countries of Europe—France, and for this reason: 
In the countries hitherto treated of, the action of the working 
class, though essentially a political action, is not intimately mixed 
up with general, or so to say official politics. The working class of 
Germany, Italy, Belgium etc., is not yet a political power in the 
State; it is a political power only prospectively, and if the official 
parties in some of these countries, Conservatives, Liberals, or 
Radicals, have to reckon with it, it is merely because its rapid 
onward progress makes it evident, that in a very short time the 
Proletarian party will be strong enough to make its influence felt. 
But in France it is different. The workmen of Paris, seconded by 
those of the large provincial towns, have ever since the great 
Revolution been a power in the State. They have been for nearly 
ninety years the fighting army of progress; at every great crisis of 
French history, they descended into the streets, armed themselves 
as best as they could, threw up barricades and provoked the battle, 
and it was their victory or defeat which decided the future of 
France for years to come. From 1789 to 1830, the revolutions of 
the middle class were fought out by the workmen of Paris; it was 
they who conquered the Republic in 1848, having mistaken that 
Republic to mean emancipation of labor, they were cruelly 
undeceived by the defeat inflicted on them, in June of the same 
year”*’; they resisted on the barricades Louis Napoleon’s Coup 
d’Etat 18517°° and were again defeated; they swept away in 

9 

September 1870 the defunct Empire”? which the middle-class 
Radicals were too cowardly to touch. In March 1871 Thiers’ 
attempt to take away from them the arms with which they had 
defended Paris against foreign invasion, forced them into the 
revolution of the Commune and the protracted struggle which 
ended with its bloody extinction. 

A national working class which thus, for nearly a century, not 
only has taken a decisive part in every crisis of the history of its 
own country, but at the same time has always been the advanced 
guard of European Revolution, such a working class cannot live 
the comparatively secluded life which is still the proper sphere of 
action of the rest of the continental workmen. Such a working 
class as that of France is bound to its past history and by its past 
history. Its history, no less than its acknowledged decisive fighting 
power, has mixed it up indissolubly with the general political 
development of the country. And thus, we cannot give a retrospect 
of the action of the French working class without entering into 
French politics generally. 

Whether the French working class had been fighting its own 
battle or the battle of the Liberal, Radical, or Republican middle 
class, every defeat it suffered has hitherto been followed by an 
oppressive political reaction, as violent as it was enduring. Thus, 
the defeats of June 1848 and December 1851 were succeeded by 
the eighteen years of the Bonapartist Empire, during which the 
press was fettered, the right of meeting and of association 
suppressed and the working class consequently deprived of every 
means of inter-communication and organization. The necessary 
result was that when the revolution of September 1870 came, the 
workmen had no other men to put into office, but those 
middle-class radicals who under the Empire had formed the 
official parliamentary opposition and who as a matter of course 
betrayed them and their country. After the stamping-out of the 
Commune, the working class, disabled for years in their fighting 
power, had but one immediate interest: to avoid the recurrence of 
such another protracted reign of repression, and with it the 
necessity of again fighting, not for their own direct emancipation, 
but for a state of things permitting them to prepare for the final 
emancipatory struggle. Now, in France there are four great 
political parties: three monarchist, the Legitimists, Orleanists and 
Bonapartists, each with a separate pretender to the crown; and the 
Republican party. Whichever of the three pretenders* were to 

4 Chambord, Napoleén Eugéne Bonaparte and the Count of Paris.— Ed. 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 223 

ascend the throne, he would in every case be supported by a small 
minority only of the people, he would consequently have to rely 
upon force only. Thus, the reign of violence, the suppression of 
all public liberties and personal rights, which the working class 
must wish to avoid, was the necessary concomitant of every 
Monarchist restoration. On the other hand the maintenance of the 
established Republican government left them at least the chance of 
obtaining such a degree of personal and public liberty as would 
allow them to establish a working-class press, an agitation by 
meetings and an organization as an independent political party, 
and moreover, the conservation of the Republic would save them 
the necessity of delivering a separate battle for its future 
re-conquest. 

It was thus another proof of the high instinctive political 
intelligence of the French working class, that as soon as, on the 
16th May last,” the great conspiracy of the three Monarchist 
factions declared war against the Republic, the workmen, one and 
all, proclaimed the maintenance of the Republic to be their chief 
immediate object. No doubt in this they acted as the tail of the 
middle-class Republicans and Radicals, but a working class which 
has no press, no meetings, no clubs, no political societies, what else 
can it be but the tail of the Radical middle-class party? What can it 
do, in order to gain its political independence, but support the 
only party which is bound to secure to the people generally, and 
therefore, to the workmen too, such liberties as will admit of 
independent organization? Some people say, the workmen at the 
last election ought to have put up their own candidates, but even 
in those places where they could have done so successfully, where 
were the working-class candidates, well known enough amongst 
their own class to find the necessary support? Why, the 
government since the Commune have taken good care to arrest, 
aS a participator in that insurrection, every workman who made 
himself known even by private agitation in his own district of 
Paris. 

The victory of the Republicans at the elections last November” 
was signal. It was followed by still more signal triumphs at the 
departmental, municipal and supplementary elections which fol- 
lowed it. The Monarchist conspiracy would, perhaps, not have 
given way for all that; but its hand was lamed by the unmistakable 
attitude of the army. Not only were there numerous Republican 
officers especially in the lower grades; but, what was more 
decisive, the mass of the soldiers refused to march against the 
Republic. That was the first result of the reorganization of the 

army, by which bought substitutes had been done away with and 
the army transformed into a fair representation of the young men 
of all classes.” Thus, the conspiracy broke down without having 
to be broken up by force. And this, too, was much in the interest 
of the working class which, too weak yet after the blood-letting of 
1871, can have no wish to waste again its greatest, its fighting 
power, in struggles for the benefit of others or to engage in a 
series of violent collisions before it has recovered its full strength. 
But this Republican victory has yet another significance. It 
proves that since 1870 the country people have made a great step 
in advance. Hitherto, every working-class victory gained in Paris, 
was nullified in a very short time by the reactionist spirit of the 
small peasantry who form the great mass of the French 
population. Since the beginning of this century, the French 
peasantry had been Bonapartist. The second Republic, established 
by the Paris workingmen in February 1848, had been cancelled by 
the six million peasant votes given to Louis Napoleon in December 
following. But the Prussian invasion of 1870 has shaken the 
Imperialist faith of the peasantry, and the elections of November 
last prove that the mass of the country population had become 
Republican, and this is a change of the highest importance. It does 
not only mean that henceforth all Monarchist restoration has 
become hopeless in France. It means also the approaching alliance 
between the workingmen of the towns and the peasantry of the 
country. The small peasant proprietors established by the great 
Revolution are proprietors of the soil, but in name. Their farms 
are mortgaged to usurers; their crops are spent in the payment of 
interest and law-expenses; the notary, the attorney, the bailiff, the 
auctioneer are constantly threatening at their doors. Their position 
is fully as bad as that of the workingmen, and almost as insecure. 
And if these peasants now turn from Bonapartism to the Republic, 
they show by this that they no longer expect an improvement of 
their condition from those Imperialist miracles which Louis 
Napoleon ever promised and never performed. Thiers’ faith in 
the mysterious powers of salvation held by an “Emperor of 
peasants” has been rudely dispelled by the second Empire. The 
spell is broken. The French peasantry are at last in a state of mind 
rational enough to look out for the real causes of the chronic 
distress and for the practical means to do away with it; and once 
set a thinking they must soon find out that their only remedy lies 
in an alliance with the only class that has no interest in their 
present miserable condition, the working class of the town. 
Thus, however contemptible the present Republican govern- 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 225 

ment of France may be, the final establishment of the Republic 
has at last given the French workingmen the ground upon which 
they can organize themselves as an independent political party, 
and fight their future battles, not for the benefit of others, but for 
their own; the ground, too, upon which they can unite with the 
hitherto hostile mass of the peasantry and thus render future 
victories not, as heretofore, short-lived triumphs of Paris over 
France, but final triumphs of all the oppressed classes of France, 
led by the workmen of Paris and the large provincial towns. 

Vv 
(CONCLUSION) 

There is still another important European country to be 
considered— Russia. Not that there exists in Russia a working-class 
movement worth speaking of. But the internal and external 
circumstances in which Russia is placed are most peculiar and big 
with events of the highest importance with regard to the future, 
not only of the Russian workingmen, but those of all Europe. 

In 1861 the government of Alexander II carried out the 
emancipation of the serfs, the transformation of the immense 
majority of the Russian people from bondsmen, attached to the 
soil and subject to forced labour for their landlord, into free 
peasant proprietors. This change, the necessity of which had long 
been evident, was effected in such a way that neither the former 
landlords nor the former serfs were the gainers by it. The peasant 
villages received allotments of soil, which henceforth were to be 
their own, while the landlords were to be paid for the value of the 
land thus ceded to the villages, and also, to a certain extent, for 
the claim they hitherto had possessed to the peasant’s labor. As the 
peasants evidently could not find the money to pay the landlords, 
the State stepped in. One portion of this payment was effected by 
transferring to the landlord a portion of the land hitherto 
cultivated by the peasants for their own account; the rest was paid 
in the shape of government bonds, advanced by the State, and to 
be repaid to it with interest, in yearly instalments, by the peasants. 
The majority of the landlords sold these bonds and spent the 
money; they are thus not only poorer than before, but cannot find 
laborers to till their estates, the peasants actually declining to work 
upon them and to leave their own fields uncultivated. As to the 
peasants, their shares of land had not only been reduced in size 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 227 

from what they had been before, and very often to an extent 
which, under Russian circumstances, left them insufficient to 
maintain a family; these shares had, in most instances, been taken 
from the very worst land on the estate, from bogs or other 
unclaimed lands, while the good land, hitherto owned by the 
peasants and improved by their labor, had been transferred to the 
landlords. Under these circumstances, the peasants, too, were 
considerably worse off than before; but besides this, they were 
expected to pay every year to the government the interest and 
part of the capital advanced by the State for buying them off, and, 
moreover, the taxes levied upon them increased from year to year. 
Furthermore, before emancipation, the peasants had possessed 
certain common rights on the estate lands of pasture for their 
cattle, the hewing of timber for building and other purposes, etc. 
These rights were expressly taken from them by the new 
settlement; if they wanted to exercise them again, they had to 
bargain with their former landlord. 

Thus, while the majority of the landed proprietors became even 
more indebted, in consequence of the change, than they had been 
before, the peasantry were reduced to a position in which they 
could neither live nor die. The great act of emancipation, so 
universally extolled and glorified by the Liberal press of Europe, 
had created nothing but the groundwork and the absolute 
necessity of a future revolution. 

This revolution, the government did all in its power to hasten 
on—the corruption pervading all official spheres, and leaving 
whatever power for good they might be supposed to possess—this 
hereditary corruption remained as bad as ever, and came to light 
glaringly in every public department at the outbreak of the 
Turkish war.” The finances of the empire, completely disordered 
at the end of the Crimean war,’ were allowed to go from bad to 
worse. Loan after loan was contracted, until there was no other 
means of paying the interest of the old debts except by contracting 
new ones. During the first years of Alexander’s” reign, the old 
imperial despotism had been somewhat relaxed; the press had 
been allowed more freedom, trial by jury established and 
representative bodies, elected by the nobility, the citizens of the 
towns, and the peasants respectively, had been permitted to take 
some share in local and provincial administration. Even with the 
Poles some political flirtation had been carried on. But the public 

ain 1856.— Ed. 
b Alexander II’s.— Ed. 

17* 

had misunderstood the benevolent intentions of the government. 
The press became too outspoken. The juries actually acquitted 
political prisoners which the government had expected them to 
convict against evidence. The local and provincial assemblies, one 
and all, declared that the government, by its act of emancipation, 
had ruined the country, and that things could not go on in that 
way any longer. A national assembly was even hinted at as the only 
means of getting out of troubles fast becoming insupportable. And 
finally, the Poles refused to be bamboozled with fine words, and 
broke out into a rebellion” which it took all the forces of the 
empire, and all the brutality of the Russian generals, to quell in 
torrents of blood. Then the government turned round again. 
Stern repression once more became the order of the day. The 
press was muzzled, the political prisoners were handed over to 
special courts, consisting of judges packed for the purpose, the 
local and provincial assemblies were ignored. But it was too late. 
The government, having once shown signs of fear, had lost its 
prestige. The belief in its stability, and in its power of absolutely 
crushing all internal resistance, had gone. The germ of a future 
public opinion had sprung up. The forces could not be brought 
back to the former implicit obedience to government dictation. 
Discussion of public matters, if only in private circles, had become 
a habit among the educated classes. And finally, the government, 
with all its desire to return to the unbridled despotism of the reign 
of Nicholas, still pretended to keep up, before the eyes of Europe, 
the appearances of the liberalism initiated by Alexander. The 
consequence was a system of vacillation and _ hesitation, of 
concessions made to-day and retracted to-morrow, to be again 
half-conceded and half-retracted in turns, a policy changing from 
hour to hour, bringing home to everybody the intrinsic weakness, 
the want of insight and of will, on the part of a government which 
was nothing unless it was possessed of a will and of the means to 
enforce it. What was more natural than that every day should 
increase the contempt felt for a government which, long since 
known to be powerless for good and obeyed only through fear, 
now proved that it doubted of its power of maintaining its own 
existence, that it had at least as much fear of the people as the 
people had of it? There was only one way of salvation for the 
Russian government, the way open to all governments brought 
face to face with overwhelming popular resistance—foreign war. 
And foreign war was resolved upon; a war, proclaimed before 
Europe as undertaken for the deliverance of Christians from 
protracted Turkish misrule, but proclaimed before the Russian 

The Workingmen of Europe in 1877 229 

people as carried on for the bringing home of their Slavonic 
brethren in race from Turkish bondage into the fold of the Holy 
Russian Empire. 

This war, after months of inglorious defeat, has now come to an 
end through the equally inglorious crushing of Turkish resistance, 
partly by treachery, partly by immensely superior numbers. But 
the Russian conquest of the greater part of Turkey in Europe is 
itself only the prelude to a general European war. Either Russia, 
at the impending European Conference (if that Conference ever 
meets), will have to recede so much from the position now gained, 
that the disproportion between the immense sacrifices and the 
puny results must bring the popular discontent to a violent 
revolutionary outburst; or else, Russia will have to maintain her 
newly conquered position in a European war. More than half 
exhausted as she is already, her government cannot carry her 
through such a war—whatever may be its final result—without 
important popular concessions. Such concessions, in the face of a 
situation as that described above, mean the commencement of a 
revolution. From this revolution the Russian government cannot 
possibly escape, if even it may succeed in delaying its outbreak for 
a year or two. But a Russian revolution means more than a mere 
change of government in Russia herself. It means the disappear- 
ance of a vast, though unwieldy, military power which, ever since 
the French Revolution, has formed the backbone of the united 
despotisms of Europe. It means the emancipation of Germany 
from Prussia, for Prussia has already been the creature of Russia, 
and has only existed by leaning upon her. It means the 
emancipation of Poland. It means the awakening of the smaller 
Slavonic nationalities of Eastern Europe from the Panslavist 
dreams fostered among them by the present Russian government. 
And it means the beginning of an active national life among the 
Russian people themselves, and along with it the springing up of a 
real working-class movement in Russia. Altogether, it means such 
a change in the whole situation of Europe as must be hailed with 
joy by the workingmen of every country as a giant step towards 
their common goal—the universal emancipation of Labor.