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