Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1889-07-27
summary of this programme, which
speaks for itself;

"l, Organization OF the international
Association; its ends; its means of &C
ton. 2 Labor societies; their past,
present and future; shut-downs and
strikes; primary and technical educa-
ton, ;. Female and child labor in fac
tories. 4. Reduction of the working
hours; physical and moral consequences
thereof. -. Association, its principle
and applications; cooperation as dis
tinguished from association proper. 4.
Relations of capital and labor; foreign
competition; treaties of commerce. 7,
Direct and indirect taxes. $, lnterna-
tonal institutions; mutual credit; paper
money; weights, measures, coin and
language, 8. Standing armies in their
relation to production. 10. Religious
ideas; their Influence upon the social
political and intellectual movement II.
Mutual help, moral and material, etc
Viewed in to.day's hight, this pro-
gramme may not appear to some stu
dents Of social science as remarkable as
it then undoubtedly was. Indeed, IA
writer on the other side observes with
establishment that "the question Of
property, which was to take such
prominent place in the other congresses,
WAS not even so much as mentioned in
this, at least in direct manner But
there is one circumstance in relation to
it that no historian can fail to deem ex-
tremely remarkable, and that is the fact
that for the first time in history, all at
once, at points widely distant from each
other, in large cities and in towns never
heard of by most of them, wage workers
of all civilized countries met for the
purpose Of discussing such questions,
and did actually discuss them for sew
eral months in that variety of languages
which heretofore had seemed an unsur
mountable barrier to the spirit of fra
ternity.
Wisely omitted in the first programme
for the omission was undoubtedly in
tentional-the property question could
not fail in the end to force itself upon
the consideration of every local section.
And when it appeared in the third con-
gress, held at Brussels in 1868, the solu-
ton proposed was the result of the
spontaneous deliberations of vast con-
| stituency, many times more numerous
than in 1866, and largely composed of
men that their former conservatism
would have prevented from entering the
Association if the very principles which
they were now anxious to proclaim
had then been already formulated, OF
even merely suggested. Again, the
next year, when the International had
become most formidable body, and
thousands of new recruits were every
day swelling its ranks, still more radi
cal solution was demanded by all, ant
by none so urgently as by those whC
ment
Now then, mark the progress:
In 1862 committees were appointed fo
the purpose of uniting the toilers of al
countries in an International Associa
ton.
In 1854 the Constituent Congress
states i'll general terms that the eco
nomlc dependence of the wngc-worker
upon those who have appropriated tn
sources of life and means of production
is the basis of political inferiority servi
tude in every form, social misery an,
mental degradation.
In 1866 the property question is no
directly considered, but resolution i
adopted inviting the trade-unions t
waste less energy in desultory warfar
against individual capitalists and cor
poratious, and to spend more of i
against the system itself, with a view t
the final emancipation of the wage class
In 1861 the outposts of the capitals
system are attacked, but upon lines q
the pure anti-monopoly order. BY de