THE RISE AND FALL OF THE INTERNATIONAL. 167 
I am a member of the International ; but it is not a secret 
society. The circumstances under which I joined it are as 
follows :—At the time of the strike of the ironfounders, one of 
our friends said to us at a meeting, ‘ We have formed a society 
of resistance, but we have something more to do, and that is, 
to join the International.’ He then read the statutes to us, 
and we recognized that they were good, and that there would 
be no harm in joining. The matter was put to the vote, and 
to the number of 1200 we joined the International.” Another 
prisoner, Duval, the future general of the Commune, repeated 
a similar case : “ Thirty-six of our masters, out of forty-seven, 
refused our claims. Several of them replied, ‘ We shall wait 
until you are starving.’ In the face of this contemptuous 
treatment, the next meeting voted and signed a strike à 
outrance. We swore on our honour not to take work until 
our claims had been admitted. A motion was made with 
regard to the International. The eight or nine hundred 
members present joined in a body, signed their adhesion 
during the sitting, and straightway appointed four delegates 
to represent them at the federal council of Paris.” 
In the month of July, 1869, the silk-winders of Lyons went 
out on strike. Their committee wrote to the general council 
of London, to signify their adhesion to the International in 
their own name, and in that of the 8000 members of their 
body. They added, “ that in order to keep within the French 
law, the new adherents would not constitute any organization 
in France. They would simply send their annual subscription 
as a lump sum to the general council.” In Belgium the 
woollen operatives of Verviers, the cotton-hands of Ghent, the 
miners of Hainault, and the workers in a large number of 
the trades of Brussels joined in the mass. A Flemish journal, 
the Werker, was started. Holland was invaded in its turn. The 
German associations assembled at Nuremberg were affiliated. 
In Italy, as in France, prosecutions only drew the attention 
of working men to the International. It gained a footing in 
Vienna, where the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeihing was established, also 
at Pesth, and in the principal towns of Spain, while it extended 
Its ramifications in America as far as California. The reports