THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY.
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abundant, gave in. This victory obtained for the association
a large number of adhesions throughout France. In England
other measures brought in recruits. In certain trades, the
employers, threatened by strikes, brought workmen over from
Belgium and Germany. The International immediately set
to work. It succeeded in arresting the departure of further
detachments of workmen, and as to those already employed,
it induced them to return to their own country on having their
expenses paid and getting something over for themselves. A
whole batch of Germans, warned at the moment of landing,
returned home on the first opportunity. The trades’ unions,
which hitherto had confined their operations exclusively to
England, now understood the object of the International, and
a certain number of them joined it. Recruiting recommenced
in Germany, where it had been arrested in the preceding year
by the war between Austria and Prussia, and was carried on
to a considerable extent in Switzerland, especially in the
French cantons. Several Socialist newspapers, too, placed
their services at the disposal of the International.*
The second congress held its sittings at Lausanne, from the
2nd to the 8th September, 1867. Radical ideas began to find
utterance, though as yet they did not prevail. Neither the
abolition of hereditary succession nor the adoption of collective
property was voted, but only the taking up by the State of the
railways, “ in order to destroy the monopoly of the great
companies, which, by subjecting the working class to their
arbitrary rules, attack at once both the dignity of man and the
liberty of the individual.” Except for this curious clause, which
looks as if it had been drawn up by a dismissed engineer,
there is nothing very revolutionary in this motion. Indeed,
Governments vie with each other in putting it into practice.
I'he congress did not even approve of gratuitous education.
* Among these were : in France, La Fourmi, PAssociation, Lc Congrès
ouvrier, La Mutualité ; in Germany, the Sozi al-Demokrat and the Deutsche
Arbeiter-Zeitung of Berlin, the Nordstern of Hamburg, the Correspondent
of Leipzig ; in London, the Workman's Advocate, edited by Eccarius,
and the International Courier, written both in English and in French ;
in Belgium, La Tribune du peuple. The International also found organs in
Italy, Spain and America.
