keep its promise, so that the movement had no practical results, except that it led, as will be seen, to the formation of the Labour party of Illinois, with a Lassallean programme. No sooner had the strife between Section 1 and the other New York sections been allayed than a new and more serious conflict broke out. The International was suffering the fate of every revolutionary organisation of immigrants who, feeling unable to bring any power to bear upon the government and ruling classes, eventually turn against each other. This time the rebels were members of Section 1, who turned against Sorge on account of the changes he made in the editorial personnel of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. Sorge felt dissatisfied with the colourless matter with which the editors, Carl and Starke, filled the columns of the paper, and therefore, persuaded the board of directors to engage Wilhelm Liebknecht to send bi-weekly correspondence from Germany at $10 per month. Carl felt incensed over Sorge's meddling, and began to look for an opportunity to overthrow his influence. The opportunity came with a letter published in Die Gleicheit (Vienna), the organ of the Austrian socialists, in which the General Council was accused of having aided by its inaction the faction led by one Oberwinder, later shown to have been a government spy. Carl embraced the chance and accused Sorge of having betrayed the interests of the workingmen in the Austrian controversy. Sorge became weary of the permanent strife and resigned both from the General Council and the board of directors of the Arbeiter-Zeitung. However, at the next meeting of the board of directors, he was induced to withdraw his resignation and was promised more influence on the paper. This led Carl and his followers to arrange for a coup d'état. They declared the paper to be under the protection of Section 1, and the latter gave Bolte a guard of ten men to defend its possession by force. In retaliation the General Council suspended Section 1, and expelled Carl and Bolte from the International. At the same time it brought action in court against Carl for unlawfully taking possession of the property that belonged to all the German sections in the country. The court decided, January, 1875, against Carl, but the paper was discontinued two months later for lack of sup port.30 The outcome was that the paper was discontinued in March, 1875, and the organisation of the International was wrecked to such a degree that it practically ceased to exist. No convention was therefore held in 1875. The only encouraging event to the International during 1875 was the affiliation of the United Workers of America, a small organisation of Irish workingmen, headed by J. P. McDonnell,31 with General Rules identical with those of the International.82 McDonnell and his associates played an important part in the socialist movement of the next few years, and he became, like Adolph Strasser, one of the pioneers of the new trade union movement. In all other respects the International was rapidly breaking down. Throughout the European countries the workingmen were building up political parties in place of the federations of the International. In America, the same tendency towards a political party was manifesting itself, so that there was nothing left for the International but to merge itself in such a party. On July 15, 1876, a congress attended by delegates from nineteen American sections met in Philadelphia and officially dissolved the International Workingmen's Association.33 30 An die Leser und Theilhaber der Arbeiter-Zeitung. (Pamphlet signed by the board of directors and the Commission of Control of the paper, New York, 1874.) 31 J. P. McDonnell was born in Dublin, Ireland, in a middle-class family. He took part in the Fenian movement and suffered repeated imprisonment, and was closely related to Marx and the International after 1869. He went to The Hague as a representative of Ireland at the Congress of the International, and from there to New York to settle in America. With the dissolution of the International, McDonnell joined its Americanised successor, the Workingmen's party of the United States, and assumed the editorship of the official English organ, the New York Labor Standard. In 1877, when the party became the Socialist Labor party, devoted exclusively to politics, he broke away and moved his paper first to Fall River and then to Paterson. 1878 he organised the International Labor Union with a programme of organising the unskilled. About the same time he became involved in a libel suit for applying the name "scab" to strike-breakers in connection with a textile strike in Pater In son, and was sentenced to two months' 32 General Rules of the Association of United Workers of America (Pamphlet, New York, 1874); Doc. Hist., IX, 376878. THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION MOVEMENT True to its philosophy, the International, as soon as it became firmly established in America, began a campaign having as its object the organisation of new trade unions and the propagation of its principles among the unions that already existed. The success met with among the English-speaking workingmen was anything but gratifying. The strong prejudice aroused by the Commune in Paris was soon turned against the International in this country, and this became mingled with the mocking contempt for the notorious exploits of Section 12. On the other hand, among the non-English-speaking wage-earners, particularly among the Germans, the ideas of the International soon became a potent force. But even there a certain amount of passive resistance was met with on one side from a survival of the Schulze-Delitzsch ideas of voluntary co-operation, which had attained popularity in 1864,34 and, on the other side, from a strong disposition in favour of greenbackism that proceeded from the general labour movement of the period. The principal centre of the German trade union movement was New York, where a German trades' assembly called Die Arbeiter Union was formed early in 1866,35 and became affiliated with the National Labor Union. In June, 1866, several of the largest unions 36 established an Arbeiter-Union Publishing Association and issued a paper of the same name, with one Doctor Landsberg as editor. During his brief period of editorship the philosophy of the paper was a curious mixture of trade unionism and the Schulze-Delitzsch system of voluntary cooperation seasoned by a strong aversion to political action.87 Dr. Landsberg resigned in October,38 after the New York convention of the National Labor Union had declared for the immediate formation of a labour party. The new editor was a 34 During 1864-1865 some of the Ger. man trade unionists in New York became interested in voluntary co-operation. They established a paper, the New Yorker Arbeiter-Zeitung, which espoused the tenets of Hermann Schultze-Delitzsch, who was then at the height of his popularity in Germany as the "apostle of voluntaryism." 35 Boston Daily Evening Voice, Mar. 7, 1866. 36 The United Cabinet-makers with 2,000 members, the marble cutters' union with 400, the German varnishers, the piano makers, and cigar makers No. 90. Die Arbeiter-Union (New York), June 13, 1866. 37 Ibid., July 11 and 25, 1868. man who subsequently became the most interesting personage in the American socialist movement, Adolph Douai.39 "40 Under Douai's careful editorship the paper became a real mirror of trade conditions and of the labour movement. It summed up the year 1868 as one during which "labor had wrested bigger concessions than in all of the ten years preceding." His general philosophy was at this time in essence the greenbackism of the National Labor Union. He declared that the chief enemy of labour was capital in the fluid state of money capital, bearing an exorbitant rate of interest.11 Yet the remedy he offered, while based on Kellogg's idea, was very different from the one officially adopted by the National Labor Union. He insisted that "the government should first raise by a resumption of specie payment the value of the greenbacks to a par with gold and only then install the scheme of the interchangeable bonds and greenbacks," whereby he said, “it would be possible, first, gradually to reduce the rate of interest upon the present national debt without any losses, and second, to protect the value of the new paper money." 42 Meantime, the influence of the International was growing in the German trades' assembly, being propagated by Sorge and 39 Adolph Douai was born in 1819 at Altenburg, Germany, in a poor family of French émigrés. He studied in the gym. nasium and university and graduated as "candidate in theology." But being too poor to get established as instructor in the University of Jena, his original plan, he accepted a position as a private tutor in the family of a rich Russian land owner and passed the examination for the doctor's degree at the University of Dorpat, Russia. He then returned to Altenburg and established a private school. The idealistic educator was at the same time an ardent social and political reformer, so that the year 1848 found him the leading spirit of the revolution in Altenburg. After the victory of the counter revolution, he successfully defended himself in a trial for high treason, but was obliged immediately thereafter to spend a year in prison for an attack he made upon the government in the press. Coming out of prison he was not allowed to continue his school and therefore migrated to Texas in 1852 and established a small paper in San Antonio. His paper being of the abolitionist tendency, he was obliged to leave San Antonio after three years of hard struggle and went to Boston, where he established a three-graded school with a 40 Die Arbeiter Union, Jan. 2, 1869. Carl, delegates from the General German Workingmen's Union. Douai also fell under their influence and the paper began to print extracts from Marx's Das Kapital, along with selections from Kellogg's Money and other Capital. Finally, in the summer of 1870 the trades' assembly decided to affiliate with the International in Europe, mainly because this would give it a degree of control over immigration.43 Furthermore, the delegates to the convention of the National Labor Union of that year were instructed to work for the incorporation into the platform of the demand for government ownership of all means of transportation. However, the instructions included also an endorsement of Kellogg's greenbackism. The breaking out of the Franco-Prussian War caused strife and confusion in the German movement. The socialistic element placed itself in opposition to the war, in accordance with the manifesto issued by the General Council of the International, and was strongly supported by Douai in his paper. The trades' assembly took the same attitude and issued an address against the war to the "workingmen of New York and vicinity." 44 The separate unions, however, were almost evenly divided on both sides, and the paper, which practically depended only upon private subscriptions, was made to bear the brunt of the fight waged by the patriotic workingmen, and finally succumbed in September, 1870. The last issue named the war as the cause of its death.45 The dissensions had a similar effect upon the trade unions themselves. Sorge stated in his monthly report to the General Council of the International at London for July, 1871, that "Trade Unions in general hold their own except the German unions, which are unfortunately losing ground presently." 46 The report for October mentioned that "seven German Unions have combined again to maintain the Arbeiter-Union, and the Cabinetmakers' Union (German) of New York City have taken energetic steps to inaugurate an 8-hour movement in their trade and to organise and combine their fellow tradesmen all over the country on a firm basis." 47 The organisation of the furniture workers was under the complete control of the International. The first national con 43 Ibid., May 11, 1870. 44 Ibid., July 30, 1870. 45 Ibid., Sept. 17, 1870. 46 Copy-book, 33. 47 Ibid., 70. |