Chapter CDXIV: Act 8: Parliament 1. repeated in Act 99. Parliament 7 (11)

"Hermann Schulze was born at Delitzsch, in Prussian Saxony,
August 29th, 1808. He studied jurisprudence at Leipzig and
Halle, and afterwards occupied judicial posts under the
Government, becoming District Judge at Delitzsch in 1841, a
position which he held until 1850. In 1848, he was elected to
the Prussian National Assembly, and the following year he
became a member of the Second Chamber, in which he sat as
Schulze-Delitzsch, a name which has since adhered to him.
Being a member of the Progressist party, he proved a thorn in
the Government's flesh, and he was made District Judge at
Wreschen, but he returned later to the Prussian Diet, and
became also a member of the North German and German
Reichstags.
{2947}
For more than thirty years Schulze headed the co·operative
movement in Germany, but his self-sacrifice impoverished him,
and although his motto as a social reformer had always been
'Self-help,' as opposed to Lassalle's 'State-help,' he was
compelled in his declining years to accept a gift of £7,000
from his friends. Schulze died honoured if not famous on April
29th, 1883. Schulze-Delitzsch is the father of the
co-operative movement in Germany. He had watched the
development of this movement in England, and as early as 1848
he had lifted up his voice in espousal of co-operative
principles in his own country. Though a Radical, Schulze was
no Socialist, and he believed co-operation to be a powerful
weapon wherewith to withstand the steady advance of
Socialistic doctrines in Germany. Besides carrying on
agitation by means of platform-speaking, he published various
works on the subject, the chief of which are: 'Die arbeitenden
Klassen und das Associationswesen in Deutschland, als Programm
zu einem deutschen Congress,' (Leipzig, 1858); 'Kapitel zu
einem deutschen Arbeitercatechismus,' (Leipzig, 1863); 'Die
Abschaffung des geschäftlichen Risico durch Herrn Lassalle,'
(Berlin, 1865); 'Die Entwickelung des Genossenschaften in
einzelnen Gewerbszweigen,' (Leipzig, 1873). Schulze advocated
the application of the co-operative principle to other
organisations than the English stores, and especially to loan,
raw material, and industrial associations. He made a practical
beginning at his own home and the adjacent town of Eilenburg,
where in 1849 he established two co-operative associations of
shoemakers and joiners, the object of which was the purchase
and supply to members of raw material at cost price. In 1850
he formed a Loan Association (Vorschussverein) at Delitzsch on
the principle of monthly payments, and in the following year a
similar association on a larger scale at Eilenburg. For a long
time Schulze had the field of agitation to himself, and the
consequence was that the more intelligent sections of the
working classes took to his proposals readily. Another reason
for his success, however, was the fact that the movement was
practical and entirely unpolitical. It was a movement from
which the Socialistic element was absent, and one in which,
therefore, the moneyed classes could safely co-operate.
Schulze, in fact, sought to introduce reforms social rather
than Socialistic. The fault of his scheme as a regenerative
agency was that it did not affect the masses of the people,
and thus the roots of the social question were not touched.
Schulze could only look for any considerable support to small
tradesmen and artisans, to those who were really able to help
themselves if' shown the way. But his motto of 'Self-help' was
an unmeaning gospel to the vast class of people who were not
in this happy position. … The movement neared a turning point
in 1858. In that year Schulze identified himself with the
capitalist party at a Congress of German economists, held at
Gotha, and he soon began to lose favour with the popular
classes. The high-water mark was reached in 1860, at which
time the co-operative associations had a membership of
200,000, and the business done amounted to 40,000,000 thalers
or about £6,000,000; the capital raised by contribution or
loan approaching a third of this sum. In the year 1864 no
fewer than 800 Loan and Credit Associations had been
established, while in 1861 the number of Raw Material and
Productive Associations was 172, and that of Co-operative
Stores 66. Possibly the movement might have continued to
prosper, even though Schulze was suspected of sympathy with
the capitalists, had no rival appeared on the scene. But a
rival did appear, and he was none other than Lassalle."

_W. H. Dawson,
German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle,
chapter 7._

The co-operative societies in Germany on the Schulze-Delitzsch
plan have been regularly organized into an association. "The
number of societies in this association increased from 171 in
1859, to 771 in 1864, and was 3,822 in 1885. At the last named
date they were distributed thus: loan and credit societies,
1,965; co-operative societies in various branches of trade,
1,146; co-operative store societies, 678; building societies,
33. At the end of 1884 the membership was 1,500,000. Of their
own capital, in shares and reserve funds, they possessed
300,000,000 marks; and of borrowed capital 500,000,000 marks."

_Science,
September 9, 1887._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1859-1887.
The "Social Palace" of M. Godin at Guise.

"The Familistère founded at Guise (Aisne), France, by the late
M. Jean Baptiste Andre Godin, has a world-wide reputation. The
Social Palace itself, a marvel of ingenious philanthropy,
which realizes successfully some of the characteristic ideas
of Fourier, … entitles M. Godin to a high place among the
social reformers of the 19th century. He was the son of a
worker in iron, and even before his apprenticeship had
conceived the idea that he was destined to set a great example
to the industrial world. … The business carried on in the
great foundries at Guise is the manufacture of cast-iron wares
for the kitchen and general house use, and of heating
apparatus of various kinds. M. Godin was the first man in
France to use cast iron in making stoves, in place of sheet
iron; this was but one example of his inventive powers. He
began in 1840, with 20 workmen, the manufacture which employed
in 1883 over 1,400 at Guise and 300 in the branch
establishment at Laeken, in Belgium. From the beginning there
was an organization for mutual aid among the workmen, assisted
by the proprietor. The Familistère was opened in 1860; but it
was not until 1877, owing to the obstacles presented by the
French law to the plan which he had in mind, that M. Godin
introduced participation by the workmen in the profits of his
gigantic establishment. … In 1880 the establishment became a
joint-stock company with limited liability, and the system of
profit sharing was begun which still [1889] obtains there. M.
Godin's main idea was gradually to transfer the ownership of
the business and of the associated Familistère into the hands
of his workmen. … No workman is admitted to participation [in
the profit-sharing] who is not the owner already of a share.
But the facility of purchase is great: and the interest on his
stock adds materially to the income of the average workman. M.
Godin was gradually disposing of his capital to the workmen up
to his death [in 1888], and this process will go on until
Madame Godin simply retains the direction of the business. But
when this shall have happened, the oldest workmen shall, in
like manner, release their shares to the younger, in order to
keep the ownership of the establishment in the hands of the
actual workers from generation to generation. In this way a
true cooperative productive house will be formed within ten or
a dozen years. M. Godin's capital in 1880 was 4,600,000
francs; the whole capital of the house in 1883 had risen to
6,000,000 francs, and of this sum 2,753,500 francs were held
by various employees in October, 1887.
{2948}
The organization of the workmen as participators forms quite a
hierarchy," at the head of which stand the "associates." "The
'associates' must own at least 500 francs' worth of stock;
they must be engaged in work, and have their home in the
Familistère: they elect new members themselves. … They will
furnish Madame Godin's successor from their ranks."

_N. P. Gilman,
Profit Sharing,
pages 173-177._

In April, 1859, M. Godin began to realize the most important
of his ideas of social reform, namely, "the substitution for
our present isolated dwellings of homes and dwellings combined
into Social Palaces, where, to use M. Godin's expressive
words, 'the equivalents of riches,' that is the most essential
advantages which wealth bestows on our common life, may be
brought within reach of the mass of the population. In April,
1859, he laid the foundation of the east wing of such a
palace, the Familistère of Guise. It was covered in in
September of the same year, completed in 1860, and fully
occupied in the year following. In 1862 the central building
was commenced. It was completed in 1864 and occupied in 1865.
The offices in front of the east wing were built at the same
time as that wing—in 1860. The other appendages of the palace
were added in the following order—the nursery and babies'
school in 1866; the schools and theatre in 1869; and the baths
and wash-houses in 1870. The west wing was begun in 1877,
finished in 1879, and fully occupied in 1880. Till its
completion the inhabitants of the Familistère numbered about
900 persons; at present [1880] it accommodates 1,200. Its
population therefore already assumes the proportion of a
considerable village; while its style of construction would
easily allow of the addition of quadrangles, communicating
with the north-eastern and north-western angles of the central
building, by which the number of occupants might be raised to
1,800 or 2,000, without in any way interfering with the
enjoyments of the present inmates, supposing circumstances
made it desirable to increase their numbers to this extent. …
Of the moral effect upon the population of the free and yet
social life which a unitary dwelling makes possible, M. Godin
wrote in 1874:—'For the edification of those who believe that
the working classes are undisciplined or undisciplinable, I
must say that there has not been in the Familistère since its
foundation a single police case, and yet the palace contains
900 persons; meetings in it are frequent and numerous; and the
most active intercourse and relations exist among all the
inhabitants.' And this is not the consequence of any strict
control exercised over the inmates. On the contrary, the whole
life of the Familistère is one of carefully-guarded individual
liberty, which is prevented from degenerating into license
simply by the influence of public opinion among its
inhabitants, who, administering their own internal affairs as
a united body, exercise a disciplinary action upon each other.
There are no gates, beyond doors turning on a central pivot
and never fastened, introduced in winter for the sake of
warmth; no porter to mark the time of entrance or egress of
anyone. Every set of apartments is accessible to its occupants
at any hour of the day or night, with the same facility as if
it opened out of a well-lighted street, since all the halls of
the Familistère are lighted during the whole night. And as
there are ten different entrances, each freely communicating
with the whole building, it would be less easy for one inmate
to spy the movements of another than it is for the neighbours
in an ordinary street to keep an outlook on each other's
actions. … But one factor, and I conceive a very important
factor, in this effort, must not be lost sight of, namely that
the Social Palace at Guise is not a home provided for the
poor, by a benevolence which houses its own fine clay in its
isolated dwelling over against the abodes where those of
coarser clay are clustered together. It is a home for M. Godin
and members of his family, the heads of departments and other
persons connected with him, whose means rise considerably
above those of the workers, no less than for the workers in
the foundry—a mansion of which it is the glory that all the
rooms on every floor originally differ only by a few inches of
height, and such slight differences in the height and width of
doors and windows as require careful observation to detect,
and that all participate alike, according to the quarter of
the sky to which they look, in air and light. So that the
difference of accommodation is [practically reduced to the
number of square feet which the means of the inmate enables
him to occupy, and the internal arrangement of the space at
his disposal."

_E. V. Neale,
Associated Homes._

ALSO IN:
_E. Howland,
The Social Palace at Guise, and
The Familistère at Guise
(Harper's Monthly Magazine, April, 1872,
and November, 1885)._

_M. Godin,
Social Solutions._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1860-1870.
Nihilism in Russia.

"For the origin of nihilism [which had its period of activity
between 1860 and 1870] we must go back half a century to a
little company of gifted young men, most of whom rose to great
distinction, who used at that time to meet together at the
house of a rich merchant in Moscow, for the discussion of
philosophy, politics and religion. They were of the most
various views. Some of them became Liberal leaders, and wanted
Russia to follow the constitutional development of the West
nations; others became founders of the new Slavophil party,
contending that Russia should be no imitator, but develop her
own native institutions in her own way; and there were at
least two among them—Alexander Herzen and Michael Bakunin—who
were to be prominent exponents of revolutionary socialism. But
they all owned at this period one common master—Hegel. Their
host was an ardent Hegelian, and his young friends threw
themselves into the study of Hegel with the greatest zeal.
Herzen himself tells us in his autobiography how assiduously
they read everything that came from his pen, how they devoted
nights and weeks to clearing up the meaning of single passages
in his writings, and how greedily they devoured every new
pamphlet that issued from the German press on any part of his
system. From Hegel, Herzen and Bakunin were led, exactly like
Marx and the German Young Hegelians, to Feuerbach, and from
Feuerbach to socialism. Bakunin, when he retired from the
army, rather than be the instrument of oppressing the Poles
among whom he was stationed, went for some years to Germany,
where he lived among the Young Hegelians and wrote for their
organ, the 'Hallische Jahrbücher'; but before either he or
Herzen ever had any personal intercommunication with the
members of that school of thought, they had passed through
precisely the same development.
{2949}
Herzen speaks of socialism almost in the very phrases of the
Young Hegelians, as being the new 'terrestrial religion,' in
which there was to be neither God nor heaven; as a new system
of society which would dispense with an authoritative
government, human or Divine, and which should be at once the
completion of Christianity and the realization of the
Revolution. 'Christianity,' he said, 'made the slave a son of
man; the Revolution has emancipated him into a citizen.
Socialism would make him a man.' This tendency of thought was
strongly supported in the Russian mind by Haxthausen's
discovery and laudation of the rural commune of Russia. The
Russian State was the most arbitrary, oppressive, and corrupt
in Europe, and the Russian Church was the most ignorant and
superstitious; but here at last was a Russian institution
which was regarded with envy even by wise men of the west, and
was really a practical anticipation of that very social system
which was the last work of European philosophy. It was with no
small pride, therefore, that Alexander Herzen declared that
the Muscovite peasant in his dirty sheepskin had solved the
social problem of the nineteenth century, and that for Russia,
with this great problem already solved, the Revolution was
obviously a comparatively simple operation. You had but to
remove the Czardom, the services, and the priesthood, and the
great mass of the people would still remain organized in fifty
thousand complete little self-governing communities living on
their common land and ruling their common affairs as they had
been doing long before the Czardom came into being. … All the
wildest phases of nihilist opinion in the sixties were already
raging in Russia in the forties. … Although the only political
outbreak of Nicholas's reign, the Petracheffsky conspiracy of
1849, was little more than a petty street riot, a storm of
serious revolt against the tyranny of the Czar was long
gathering, which would have burst upon his head after the
disasters to his army in the Crimea, had he survived them. He
saw it thickening, however, and on his death-bed said to his
son, the noble and unfortunate Alexander II., 'I fear you will
find the burden too heavy.' The son found it eventually heavy
enough, but in the meantime he wisely bent before the storm,
relaxed the restraints the father had imposed, and gave
pledges of the most liberal reforms in every department of
State—judicial administration, local government, popular
education, serf emancipation. … An independent press was not
among the liberties conceded, but Russian opinion at this
period found a most effective voice in a newspaper started in
London by Alexander Herzen, called the 'Kolokol ' (Bell),
which for a number of years made a great impression in Russia.
… Herzen was the hero of the young. Herzenism, we are told,
became the rage, and Herzenism appears to have meant, before
all, a free handling of everything in Church or State which
was previously thought too sacred to be touched. This
iconoclastic spirit grew more and more characteristic of
Russian society at this period, and presently, under its
influence, Herzenism fell into the shade, and nihilism
occupied the scene. We possess various accounts of the meaning
and nature of nihilism, and they all agree substantially in
their description of it. The word was first employed by
Turgenieff in his novel 'Fathers and Sons,' where Arcadi
Petrovitch surprises his father and uncle by describing his
friend Bazaroff as a nihilist. 'A nihilist,' said Nicholas
Petrovitch. 'This word must come from the Latin nihil,
nothing, as far as I can judge, and consequently it signifies
a man who recognises nothing.' 'Or rather who respects
nothing,' said Paul Petrovitch. 'A man who looks at everything
from a critical point of view,' said Arcadi. 'Does not that
come to the same thing?' asked his uncle. 'No, not at all. A
nihilist is a man who bows before no authority, who accepts no
principle without examination, no matter what credit the
principle has.' … 'Yes, before we had Hegelians; now we have
nihilists. We shall see what you will do to exist in
nothingness, in a vacuum, as if under an air pump.'
Koscheleff, writing in 1874, gives a similar explanation of
nihilism. 'Our disease is a disease of character, and the most
dangerous possible. We suffer from a fatal unbelief in
everything. We have ceased to believe in this or in that, not
because we have studied the subject thoroughly and become
convinced of the untenability of our views, but only because
some author or another in Germany or England holds this or
that doctrine to be unfounded. … Our nihilists are simply
Radicals. Their loud speeches, their fault-finding, their
strong assertions, are grounded on nothing.'"

_J. Rae,
Contemporary Socialism,
chapter 9._

See, also, NIHILISM.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1862-1864.
Ferdinand Lassalle and the formation of the
Social Democratic Party in Germany.

"There has probably been no more interesting appearance in the
later political history of Germany than Lassalle's—no
character that has secured more completely the attention of
its world. There may be and there are many difficulties in the
way of accepting Lassalle's political creed, but he had
sufficient breadth and strength to win a secure place in the
two widely separated domains of German science and politics
and to profoundly influence the leading spirits of his time. …
In addition to his worth in the department of science Lassalle
was also a man of affairs, a practical politician, and—however
large an element of the actor and sophist there may have been
in him—the greatest German orator since Luther and John
Tauler. Besides this, he was naturally heroic, as beautiful in
person as Goethe; and when we remember that he was crossed in
love and met in consequence with a romantic death at the age
of thirty-nine, we see at once, as the publicist de Laveleye
has suggested, the making of a story like that of Abelard.
Lassalle has been the poetry of the various accounts of
contemporary socialism, and has already created a literature
which is still growing almost with the rapidity of the Goethe
literature. The estimate of Lassalle's worth has been in each
account naturally influenced by the economical or sentimental
standpoint of the writer. To de Laveleye, who takes so much
interest in socialism, Lassalle was a handsome agitator, whose
merit lies chiefly in his work as interpreter of Karl Marx. To
Montefiore he was a man of science who was led by accident
into politics; and Franz Mehring, who was once the follower of
Lassalle, in his 'Geschichte der deutschen Social-Demokratie,'
discusses his career in the intolerant mood in which one
generally approaches a forsaken worship.
{2950}
The Englishman John Rae, on the contrary, in his account of
socialism, makes Lassalle a hero; and in the narrative of the
talented Dane, Georg Brandes, Lassalle is already on the broad
road to his place as a god. In the same spirit Rudolf Meyer in
his work 'The Fourth Estate's Struggle for Emancipation' does
not hesitate to use the chief hyperbole of our modern writers,
and compares Lassalle with Jesus of Nazareth. Heine also, who
saw in his fellow Israelite that perfect Hegelian 'freedom
from God' which he himself had attempted in vain, hails
Lassalle as the 'Messiah of the age.' Among Lassalle's more
immediate disciples this deification seems to have become a
formal cultus, and it is affirmed, hard as one finds it to
believe the story, that after Lassalle's death he became an
object of worship with the German laborers. … The father of
Lassalle was a Jewish merchant in Breslau, where the future
'fighter and thinker' as Boeckh wrote mournfully over his
tomb, was born on the 11th of April, 1825. The Israelite
Lassal, for so the family name is still written, was a wealthy
wholesale dealer in cloth, and with a consciousness of the
good in such an avocation had from the first intended that
Ferdinand should be a merchant. … But this was not his
destiny. … The first feature in Lassalle was his will, the
source of his strength and his ruin, and one can find no
period in his life when this will seemed in the least capable
of compromise or submission. … When he decided to become a
Christian and a philosopher instead of a merchant, the family
had nothing to do but to accommodate themselves as best they
could to this arrangement."

_L. J. Huff,
Ferdinand Lassalle
(Political Science Quarterly, September, 1887)._

"It was in 1862 that Lassalle began his agitation in behalf of
the laboring classes, an agitation which resulted in the
formation of the German Social Democratic Party. Previous to
his time, German laborers had been considered contented and
peaceable. It had been thought that a working men's party
might be established in France or England, but that it was
hopeless to attempt to move the phlegmatic German laborers.
Lassalle's historical importance lies in the fact that he was
able to work upon the laborers so powerfully as to arouse them
to action. It is due to Lassalle above all others that German
working men's battalions, to use the social democratic
expression, now form the vanguard in the struggle for the
emancipation of labor. Lassalle's writings did not advance
materially the theory of social democracy. He drew from
Rodbertus and Marx in his economic writings, but he clothed
their thoughts in such manner as to enable ordinary laborers
to understand them, and this they never could have done
without such help. … Lassalle gave to Ricardo's law of wages
the designation, the iron law of wages, and expounded to the
laborers its full significance, showing them how it inevitably
forced wages down to a level just sufficient to enable them to
live. He acknowledged that it was the key-stone of his system
and that his doctrines stood or fell with it. Laborers were
told that this law could be overthrown only by the abolition
of the wages system. How Lassalle really thought this was to
be accomplished is not so evident. He proposed to the laborers
that government should aid them by the use of its credit to
the extent of 100,000,000 of thalers, to establish
co-operative associations for production; and a great deal of
breath has been wasted to show the inadequacy of his proposed
measures. Lassalle could not himself have supposed that so
insignificant a matter as the granting of a small loan would
solve the labor question. He recognized, however, that it was
necessary to have some definite party programme to insure
success in agitation. … On the 23d of May, 1863, German social
democracy was born. Little importance was attached to the
event at the time. A few men met at Leipsic, and, under the
leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle, formed a new political party
called the 'Universal German Laborers' Union' ('Der Allgemeine
Deutsche Arbeiterverein'). … Lassalle did not live to see the
fruits of his labors. He met with some success and celebrated
a few triumphs, but the Union did not flourish as he hoped. At
the time of his death he did not appear to have a firm,
lasting hold on the laboring population. There then existed no
social-democratic party with political power. Although
Lassalle lost his life in a duel [1864], which had its origin
in a love affair, and not in any struggle for the rights of
labor, he was canonized at once by the working men. … His
influence increased more than ten-fold as soon as he ceased to
live."

_R. T. Ely,
French and German Socialism in Modern Times,
chapter 12._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1862-1872.
The International in Europe.

The International came into being immediately after the
holding of the International Exhibition at London, in 1862. At
least it was then that it took bodily shape, for the idea, in
its theoretical form, dates from much earlier. … In 1862
certain manufacturers, such as M. Arlès-Dufour, and certain
newspapers, such as 'Le Temps' and 'L' Opinion Nationale,'
started the idea that it would be a good thing to send
delegates from the French working men to the London
Exhibition. 'The visit to their comrades in England,' said 'L'
Opinion Nationale,' 'would establish mutual relations in every
way advantageous. While they would be able to get an idea of
the great artistic and industrial works at the Exhibition,
they would at the same time feel more strongly the mutual
interests which bind the working men of both countries
together; the old leaven of international discord would settle
down, and national jealousy would give place to a healthy
fraternal emulation.' The whole programme of the International
is summed up in these lines; but the manufacturers little
foresaw the manner in which it was going to be carried out.
Napoleon III. appeared to be very favourable to the sending of
the delegates to London. He allowed them to be chosen by
universal suffrage among the members of the several trades,
and, naturally, those who spoke the strongest on the rights of
labour were chosen. By the Emperor's orders, their journey was
facilitated in every way. At that time Napoleon still dreamed
of relying, for the maintenance of his Empire, on the working
men and peasants, and of thus coping with the liberal middle
classes. At London the English working men gave the most
cordial welcome to 'their brothers of France.' On the 5th of
August they organized a fête of 'international fraternization'
at the Freemasons' Tavern. …
{2951}
They proposed to create committees of working men 'as a medium
for the interchange of ideas on questions of international
trade.' The conception of a universal association appears here
in embryo. Two years afterwards it saw the light. On the 28th
of September, 1864, a great meeting of working men of all
nations was held at St. Martin's Hall, London, under the
presidency of Professor Beesly. M. Tolain spoke in the name of
France. Karl Marx was the real inspirer of the movement,
though Mazzini's secretary, Major Wolff, assisted him—a fact
which has given rise to the statement that Mazzini was the
founder of the International. So far was this from being the
case that he only joined it with distrust, and soon left it.
The meeting appointed a provisional committee to draw up the
statutes of the association, to be submitted to the Universal
Congress, which was expected to meet at Brussels in the
following year. In this committee England, France, Italy,
Poland, Switzerland, and Germany were represented; and
afterwards delegates from other countries were admitted. They
were fifty in all. They adopted none of the ways of a secret
society. On the contrary, it was by publicity that they hoped
to carry on their propaganda. Their office was in London. …
Mazzini, by his secretary, Wolff, proposed a highly
centralized organization, which would entrust the entire
management to the leaders. Marx took the other side. … Marx
carried the day. Soon, in his turn, he too was to be opposed
and turned off as too dictatorial. Mazzini and his followers
seceded. … The progress of the new association was at first
very slow." After its second congress, held at Lausanne, in
1867, it spread rapidly and acquired an influence which was
especially alarming to the French government. In 1870 the
International was at the summit of its power. In 1872 its
congress, at the Hague, was a battlefield of struggling
factions and clashing ideas, and practically it perished in
the conflict. "The causes of the rapid decline of the famous
Association are easy to discover, and they are instructive.
First of all, as the organizer of strikes, its principal and
most practical end, it proved itself timid and impotent. The
various bodies of working men were not slow to perceive this,
and gave it up. Next, it had taken for motto, 'Emancipation of
the workers by the workers themselves.' It was intended, then,
to do without the bourgeois-radicals, 'the palaverers,' 'the
adventurers,' who when the revolution was made, would step
into power and leave the working men as they were before. The
majority of the delegates were nevertheless bourgeois; but, in
reality, the sentiment of revolt against the aristocratic
direction of the more intelligent members always persisted,
and it fastened principally on Karl Marx, the true founder of
the International, and the only political brain that it
contained. But to keep in existence a vast association
embracing very numerous groups of different nationalities, and
influenced sometimes by divergent currents of ideas, to make
use of publicity as the sole means of propaganda, and yet to
escape the repressive laws of different States, was evidently
no easy task. How could it possibly have lasted after the only
man capable of directing it had been ostracized? The cause of
the failure was not accidental; it was part of the very
essence of the attempt. The proletariat will not follow the
middle-class radicals, because political liberties, republican
institutions, and even universal suffrage, which the latter
claim or are ready to decree, do not change the relations of
capital and labour. On the other hand, the working man is
evidently incapable of directing a revolutionary movement
which is to solve the thousand difficulties created by any
complete change in the economic order. Revolutionary Socialism
thus leads to an insoluble dilemma and to practical impotence.
A further cause contributed to the rapid fall of the
International, namely, personal jealousies."

_E. de Laveleye,
The Socialism of To-day,
chapter 9._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1866-1875.
Rise and growth of the Patrons of Husbandry, or Grangers,
in the United States.

The order, composed of farmers, known as Patrons of Husbandry,
or Grangers, was founded in 1866. It grew rapidly during the
first decade of its existence, and reported a membership, in
November, 1875, of 763,263. After that period the numbers
declined. The general aims of the order were set forth in a
"Declaration of Purposes," as follows: "We shall endeavor to
advance our cause by laboring to accomplishing the following
objects: To develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood
among ourselves. To enhance the comforts and attractions of
our homes, and strengthen our attachments to our pursuits. To
foster mutual understanding and co-operation. … To
discountenance the credit system, the mortgage system, the
fashion system, and every other system tending to prodigality
and bankruptcy. We propose meeting together, talking together,
working together, buying together, selling together, and in
general acting together for our mutual protection and
advancement, as occasion may require. We shall avoid
litigation as much as possible by arbitration in the Grange. …
We are not enemies to capital, but we oppose the tyranny of
monopolies. We long to see the antagonism between labor and
capital removed by common consent and by an enlightened
statesmanship worthy of the nineteenth century. … Last, but
not least, we proclaim it among our purposes to inculcate a
proper appreciation of the abilities and sphere of woman, as
is indicated by admitting her to membership and position in
our order."

_R. T. Ely,
The Labor Movement in America,
chapter 3._

See, also,
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1877-1891.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1867-1875.
The Brocton Community of the Brotherhood of the New Life.

The Community of the Brotherhood of the New Life was
established at Brocton, on the shore of Lake Erie, by Thomas
Lake Harris, in 1867. Harris had been, partly at least, the
founder of an earlier community at Mountain Cove, in North
Carolina, which went to pieces after two years. For some time
he travelled and lectured in America and England, and during a
certain period he engaged in business as a banker, at Amenia,
in Dutchess county, New York. He possessed qualities which
exercised a fascinating influence upon many people of superior
cultivation, and made them docile recipients of a very
peculiar religious teaching. He claimed to have made a strange
spiritual discovery, through which those who disciplined
themselves to the acceptance of what it offered might attain
to a "new life."
{2952}
The discipline required seems to have involved a very complete
surrender to the leader, Harris; and it was on such terms,
apparently, that the Community at Brocton—or Salem-on-Erie as
the Brotherhood renamed the place-was constituted. Among those
who entered it was the brilliant writer, diplomatist, and man
of society, Laurence Oliphant, who joined, with his wife, and
with Lady Oliphant, his mother. The connection of Oliphant
with the society drew to it more attention than it might
otherwise have received. The Community bought and owned about
2,000 acres of land, and devoted its labors extensively and
with success to the culture of grapes and the making of wine.
The breaking up of the Brotherhood appears to be covered with
a good deal of obscurity. Harris left Brocton in 1875 and went
to California, where he is reported to be living, at Sonoma,
on a great estate. Some of the Brotherhood went with him;
others were scattered, and the Brocton vineyards are now
cultivated by other hands.

_W. E. K.,
Brocton (Buffalo Courier, July 19, 1891)._

ALSO IN:
_M. O. W. Oliphant,
Memoir of the life of Laurence Oliphant._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1869-1883.
The Knights of Labor.

"The second great attempt [the first having been 'the
International'] to organize labor on a broad basis—as broad as
society itself, in which all trades should be recognized—was
the Noble Order of Knights of Labor of America. This
organization was born on Thanksgiving Day, 1869, in the city
of Philadelphia, and was the result of the efforts of Uriah S.
Stephens, as the leader, and six associates, all
garment-cutters. For several years previous to this date, the
garment-cutters of Philadelphia had been organized as a
trades-union, but had failed to maintain a satisfactory rate
of wages in their trade. A feeling of dissatisfaction
prevailed, which resulted, in the fall of 1869, in a vote to
disband the union. Stephens, foreseeing this result, had
quietly prepared the outlines of a plan for an organization
embracing 'all branches of honorable toil,' and based upon
education, which, through co-operation and an intelligent use
of the ballot, should gradually abolish the present wages
system. Stephens himself was a man of great force of
character, a skilled mechanic, with the love of books which
enabled him to pursue his studies during his apprenticeship,
and feeling withal a strong affection for secret
organizations, having been for many years connected with the
Masonic order. … He believed it was necessary to bring all
wage-workers together in one organization, where measures
affecting the interests of all could be intelligently
discussed and acted upon; and this he held could not be done
in a trades-union. At the last session of the Garment-cutters'
Union, and after the motion to disband had prevailed, Stephens
invited the few members present to meet him, in order to
discuss his new plan of organization. … Stephens then laid
before his guests his plan of an organization, which he
designated 'The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.'
It was a new departure in labor organization. The founder
described what he considered a tendency toward large
combinations of capital, and argued that the trades-union form
of organization was like a bundle of sticks when unbound,—weak
and powerless to resist combination. … Stephens' great
controlling ideas may be formulated as follows: first that
surplus labor always keeps wages down; and, second, that
nothing can remedy this evil but a purely and deeply secret
organization, based upon a plan that shall teach, or rather
inculcate, organization, and at the same time educate its
membership to one set of ideas ultimately subversive of the
present wages system. … At a subsequent meeting, held December
28, 1869, upon the report of a Committee on Ritual, involving
obligations and oaths, Mr. Stephens and his six associates
subscribed their names to the obligations; and, when the
ritual was adopted, Mr. James L. Wright moved that the new
Order be named the 'Knights of Labor.' … The members were
sworn to the strictest secrecy. The name even of the Order was
not to be divulged. … The rules of government. … excluded
physicians from the Order, because professional confidence
might force the societies' secrets into unfriendly ears. The
rule prohibiting the admission of physicians, however, was
repealed at Detroit in 1881. Politicians were to be excluded,
because the founders of the Order considered that their moral
character was on too low a plane for the sacred work of the
new Order; and, besides, it was considered that professional
politicians would not keep the secrets of the Order, if such
secrets could be used for their own advantage. Men engaged in
political work are not now excluded for that cause alone.
Lawyers were to be excluded, and still are, because the
founders considered that the logical, if not the practical,
career of the lawyer is to get money by his aptitudes and
cunning, which, if used to the advantage of one, must be at
the expense of another. … Rum-sellers were and are excluded,
because the trade is not only useless, by being non-productive
of articles of use, but results in great suffering and
immorality. … The founders also considered that those who sell
or otherwise handle liquors should be excluded, because such
persons would be a defilement to the Order. In consequence of
the close secrecy thrown around the new organization, it did
not grow rapidly. Stephens, impressed with the Masonic ritual
and that of the Odd Fellows, was unwilling to allow any
change. … So the society struggled on, admitting now and then
a member, its affairs running smoothly, as a whole, but the
name of the organization never divulged. … In January, 1878,
when the whole machinery of the organization was perfected so
far as bodies were concerned, there had been no general
declaration of principles. The Order had been intensely
secret, as much as the society of the Masons or of the Odd
Fellows. The name of the Order began to be whispered about;
but beyond the name and most exaggerated accounts of the
membership, nothing was known of the Knights of Labor. The
membership must have been small,—indeed, not counting far into
the thousands. In fact, it did not reach fifty thousand until
five years later. … About this time [1878] the strict secrecy
in the workings of the Order, and the fact that the
obligations were oaths taken on the Bible, brought on a
conflict with the Catholic Church, and during the years
1877-78 many Local and several District Assemblies lapsed. …
Measures were adopted whereby a satisfactory conciliation was
brought about, on the general ground that the labor movement
could consistently take no interest in the advocacy of any
kind of religion, nor assume any position for or against
creeds.
{2953}
The prejudices against the Knights of Labor on account of
Catholic opposition then naturally, but gradually,
disappeared; and the Order took on new strength, until there
were in 1879 twenty-three District Assemblies and about
thirteen hundred Local Assemblies in the United States. … The
third annual session of the General Assembly was held at
Chicago, in September, 1879, when the federal body busied
itself with general legislation, and was called upon to
consider the resignation of Mr. Stephens as Master Workman.
This resignation, urgently pressed by Mr. Stephens, was
accepted; and Hon. Terrence V. Powderly was elected Grand
Master Workman in his place. … The membership was stated to be
five thousand in good standing. … The next annual meeting of
the General Assembly (the fourth) took place at Pittsburg, in
September, 1880, and consisted of forty delegates. At this
session, strikes were denounced as injurious, and as not
worthy of support except in extreme cases. … The fifth session
was held in September, 1881, at Detroit. This session had to
deal with one of the most important actions in the history of
the Order. The General Assembly then declared that on and
after January 1, 1882, the name and objects of the Order
should be made public. It also declared that women should be
admitted upon an equal footing with men. … A benefit insurance
law was also passed, and an entire change of the ritual was
advised. … The sixth annual assembly was held in New York in
September, 1882, the chief business consisting in the
discussion, and finally in the adoption, of a revised
constitution and ritual. At this Assembly, what is known as
the 'strike' element—that is, the supporters and believers in
strikes—was in the majority, and laws and regulations for
supporting strikes were adopted; and the co-operation of
members was suppressed by a change of the co-operative law of
the Order. … The seventh annual session of the General
Assembly was held at Cincinnati in September, 1883, and
consisted of one hundred and ten representative delegates. …
This large representation was owing to the rapid growth of the
Order since the name and objects had been made public. … The
membership of the Order was reported to this Assembly to be,
in round numbers, fifty-two thousand. In September, 1884, the
eighth annual Assembly convened at Philadelphia. Strikes and
boycotts were denounced. … The ninth General Assembly convened
at Hamilton, Ontario, in October, 1885, and adopted
legislation looking to the prevention of strikes and boycotts.
The session lasted eight days, the membership being reported
at one hundred and eleven thousand. … The tenth annual session
of the General Assembly was held at Richmond, Virginia, in
October, 1886. … Mr. Powderly, in his testimony before the
Strike Investigating Committee of Congress, April 21, 1886,
made the following statement as to membership: 'Our present
membership does not exceed 500,000, although we have been
credited with 5,000,000.' This statement indicates a growth of
nearly 400,000 in one year. The growth was so rapid that the
Executive Board of the Order felt constrained to call a halt
in the initiation of new members. To-day (December 10, 1886),
while the membership has fallen off in some localities, from
various causes, in the whole country it has increased, and is,
according to the best inside estimates, not much less than one
million."

_Carroll D. Wright,
Historical Sketch of the Knights of Labor
(Quarterly Journal of Economics, January, 1887)._

"At the annual convention of the Knights of Labor, held at
Philadelphia, November 14-28 [1893], Grand Master Workman
Powderly, for fifteen years the head of the order, was
succeeded by J. R. Sovereign, of Iowa. The new leader's first
address to the organization, issued December 7, contained in
addition to the usual denunciation of capitalists, a strong
demand for the free coinage of silver and an expansion of the
currency."

_Political Science Quarterly, June, 1894;
Record of Political Events._

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1872-1886.
The International in America.

By the order of the congress of the International held at the
Hague in 1872, the General Council of the Association was
transferred to New York. "Modern socialism had then
undoubtedly begun to exist in America. The first proclamation
of the council from their new headquarters was an appeal to
workingmen 'to emancipate labor and eradicate all
international and national strife.' … The 'Exceptional Law'
passed against socialists by the German Parliament in 1878
drove many socialists from Germany to this country, and these
have strengthened the cause of American socialism through
membership in trades-unions and in the Socialistic Labor
Party. There have been several changes among the socialists in
party organization and name since 1873, and national
conventions or congresses have met from time to time. … The
name Socialistic Labor Party was adopted in 1877 at the Newark
Convention. In 1883 the split between the moderates and
extremists had become definite, and the latter held their
congress in Pittsburg, and the former in Baltimore. … The
terrible affair of May 4, 1886, when the Chicago
Internationalists endeavored to resist the police by the use
of dynamite, terminated all possibility of joint action—even
if there could previously have been any remote hope of it; for
that was denounced as criminal folly by the Socialistic Labor
Party. … The Internationalists, at their congress in
Pittsburg, adopted unanimously a manifesto or declaration of
motives and principles, often called the Pittsburg
Proclamation, in which they describe their ultimate goal in
these words:—'What we would achieve is, therefore, plainly
and simply,—First, Destruction of the existing class rule, by
all means, i. e., by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and
international action. Second, Establishment of a free society
based upon co-operative organization of production. Third,
Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the
productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongery.
Fourth, Organization of education on a secular, scientific and
equal basis for both sexes. Fifth, Equal rights for all
without distinction to sex or race. Sixth, Regulation of all
public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous
(independent} communes and associations, resting on a
federalistic basis.'"

_R. T. Ely,
The Labor Movement in America,
chapters 8-9._

{2954}

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1875-1893.
Socialist parties in Germany.
Their increasing strength.

Before 1875, there existed in Germany two powerful Socialist
associations. The first was called the 'General Association of
German Working Men' (der allgemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein).
Founded by Lassalle in 1863, it afterwards had for president
the deputy Schweizer, and then the deputy Hasenclever. Its
principal centre of activity was North Germany. The second was
the 'Social-democratic Working Men's Party' (die
Social·democratische Arbeiterpartei), led by two well-known
deputies of the Reichstag, Herr Bebel and Herr Liebknecht. Its
adherents were chiefly in Saxony and Southern Germany. The
first took into account the ties of nationality, and claimed
the intervention of the State in order to bring about a
gradual transformation of society; the second, on the
contrary, expected the triumph of its cause only from a
revolutionary movement. These two associations existed for a
long time in open hostility towards each other; less, however,
from the difference of the aims they had in view than in
consequence of personal rivalry. Nevertheless, in May, 1875,
at the Congress of Gotha, they amalgamated under the title of
the 'Socialist Working Men's Party of Germany' (Socialistische
Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands). The deputy Hasenclever was
nominated president; but the union did not last long, or was
never complete, for as early as the month of August following
a separate meeting of the 'General Association of German
Working Men' was held at Hamburg. … The German Socialist party
does not confine itself to stating general principles. Now
that it has gained foothold on political soil, and sends
representatives to Parliament, it endeavours to make known the
means by which it hopes to realize the reforms it has in view.
This is what it claims:—'The German Socialist party demands,
in order to pave the way for the solution of the social
question, the creation of socialistic productive associations
aided by the State, under the democratic control of the
working people. These productive associations for manufacture
and agriculture should be created on a sufficiently large
scale to enable the socialistic organization of labour to
arise out of them. As basis of the State, it demands direct
and universal suffrage for all citizens of twenty years of
age, in all elections both of State and Commune; direct
legislation, by the people, including the decision of peace or
war; general liability to bear arms and a militia composed of
civilians instead of a standing army; the abolition of all
laws restricting the right of association, the right of
assembly, the free expression of opinion, free thought, and
free inquiry; gratuitous justice administered by the people;
compulsory education, the same for all and given by the State;
and a declaration that religion is an object of private
concern.'"

_E. de Laveleye,
The Socialism of To-day,
introduction and chapter 1._

"The social democratic party [in Germany] advanced in
strength, as far as that is measured by votes, until 1878,
when the decrease was only slight. Two attempts were made on
the life of the Emperor William in that year, and the social
democrats had to bear a good share of the blame. … In the
Reichstag the celebrated socialistic law was passed, which
gave government exceptional and despotic powers to proceed
against social democracy. … Governmental persecution united
the divided members and gave new energy to all. … They all
became secret missionaries, distributing tracts and exhorting
individually their fellow-laborers to join the struggle for
the emancipation of labor. The German social democrats have
held two congresses since the socialistic law, both, of
course, on foreign soil, and both have indicated progress. The
first was held at Wyden, Switzerland, August 20-23, 1880. This
resulted in a complete triumph for the more moderate party.
The two leading extremists, Hasselmann and Most, were both
expelled from the party—the former by all save three votes,
the latter by all save two. The next congress was held at
Copenhagen, Denmark, from March 29 to April 2, 1883. It
exhibited greater unanimity of sentiment and plan, and a more
wide-spread interest in social democracy, than any previous
congress."

_R. T. Ely,
French and German Socialism,
chapter 14._

At the general election, February, 1890, in Germany, the
Social Democratic party "polled more votes than any other
single party in the Empire, and returned to the Imperial Diet
a body of representatives strong enough, by skilful alliances,
to exercise an effective influence on the course of affairs.
The advance of the party may be seen in the increase of the
socialist vote at the successive elections since the creation
of the Empire:
In 1871 it was 101,927;
1874, 351,670;
1877, 493,447;
1878, 437,438;
1881, 311,961;
1884, 549,000;
1887, 774,128;
1890, 1,427,000.

The effect of the coercive laws of 1878, as shown by these
figures, is very noteworthy. … The first effect … was, as was
natural, to disorganize the socialist party for the time.
Hundreds of its leaders were expelled from the country;
hundreds were thrown into prison or placed under police
restriction; its clubs and newspapers were suppressed; it was
not allowed to hold meetings, to make speeches, or to
circulate literature of any kind. In the course of the twelve
years during which this exceptional legislation has subsisted,
it was stated at the recent Socialist Congress at Halle
[1890], that 155 socialist journals and 1,200 books or
pamphlets had been prohibited; 900 members of the party had
been banished without trial; 1,500 had been apprehended and
300 punished for contraventions of the Anti-Socialist Laws."
But this "policy of repression has ended in tripling the
strength of the party it was designed to crush, and placing it
in possession of one-fifth of the whole voting power of the
nation. It was high time, therefore, to abandon so ineffectual
a policy, and the socialist coercive laws expired on the 30th
September, 1890. … The strength of the party in Parliament has
never corresponded with its strength at the polls. … In 1890,
with an electoral vote which, under a system of proportional
representation, would have secured for it 80 members, it has
carried only 37."

_J. Rae,
Contemporary Socialism,
pages 33-34._