page_title: International Workingmen's Association in America
section_title: Growth of the IWA in America
hierarchical_section_title: International Workingmen's Association in America / Organizational history / Growth of the IWA in America
caption_attribution_description: English: Corps of the combatants of the Paris Commune arranged in coffins. These men were shot by the Versailles army in May 1871. Français&#160;: Corps des combattants de la Commune de Paris disposés dans des cercueils. Ces hommes ont été fusillés par l'armée Versaillaise au mois de mai 1871.
context_page_description: The International Workingmen's Association in the United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA, commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members, frequently new immigrants to America, including those who spoke German, French, Czech, as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups.
  The peak membership of the various sections of the International Workingmen's Association in the United States has been variously estimated in the vicinity of 4,000 to 5,000.
context_section_description: The IWA was not geographically limited to New York City and its environs. In actual fact the first formal section of the International was established in the West Coast city of San Francisco in March 1869. Within a year supporters of the International were playing a role in the movement for the 8-hour day in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York.
  Growth of the IWA in America was spurred enormously by the launch of the Paris Commune on March 26, 1871. Vilified by the conservative press, iconoclasts and radicals of all stripes in America rallied to the revolutionary city government of Paris, which was closely linked with the International Workingmen's Association in the public mind, if not in actual practice. Although the Parisian barricades were overrun by defenders of the old regime in May amidst a bloody reaction that claimed as many as 20,000 lives, the French events nevertheless occupied the thinking of a generation in much in the same way that the Russian Revolution of 1917 would have a polarizing and far reaching impact nearly half a century later.
  While most of the American press denounced the revolutionaries of Paris, radical reformers took up the revolutionary vision in the pages of their own journals. The National Anti-Slavery Standard carried regular dispatches from Paris and kept its readers informed of the legal and political retribution levied against Commune leaders in the aftermath of the failed uprising. The Boston magazine Commonwealth, established by a Southern abolitionist minister, likewise defended the Commune in its pages. So, too, did radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who declared, "There is no hope for France but in the Reds."
  In addition to the abolitionist movement, an additional source of broad support for the goals and methods of the Paris Commune came via various newspapers associated with the Spiritualist movement. The largest Spiritualist weekly, Banner of Light, attempted to explain for its readers the motivations and actions of the Communards, declaring they were "weary of the servitude that practically accompanies the wages condition, when all exercise of political power is denied it."
  By September 1871 there were 19 sections of the International in the US, of which 3 were "American" and 16 were non-English speaking. Eight more sections were added the next month and another 7 in November. By the end of 1871 the IWA in America included a total of about 35 sections, including groups in Philadelphia, Washington, DC, St. Louis, New Orleans, Newark, New Jersey, and Springfield, Massachusetts, among other places.
  While no hard membership data is extant, scholarly estimates of the total number of American participants have generally clustered in the vicinity of 5,000, Samuel Bernstein, perhaps the most careful scholar of the subject, indicates that total membership "very likely did not go beyond 4,000, after the increase in the first part of 1872."
caption: The defeat of the Paris Commune in May 1871 was followed by harsh reprisals against the defeated revolutionaries.
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