Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/56

 preached by the great majority of present-day anarchists as the "propaganda of the deed."

Concerning the evils inflicted by the anarchists in the "International" and by the uprising in Spain in 1873 we can only make a passing reference. Five years after these uprisings came the incident of the popular rage excited by the attacks of Hodel and Nobiling, without which Bismarck would scarcely have been able to carry his anti-Socialist laws. It certainly could not have been so rigorously administered as it was during the first years of its existence, and the German proletariat would have been spared some terrible sacrifices, and its victorious progress would not have been checked even for a moment.

The next setback suffered by the labor movement was in Austria in 1884 as a result of the knavery and bestiality of Kammerer, Stellmacher, and their followers. The mightily growing Socialist movement there was overthrown at a single stroke without being able to offer a trace of resistance, crushed, not by the authorities, but by the general rage of the people, who charged the Socialists with the acts of the so-called anarchists.

Another setback came in America in 1886. The labor movement had been growing rapidly, and had attained great power. It had been progressing with such giant strides that many observers thought it possible that within a short time it would pass the European movement and stand on the apex of the labor movement of the world. In the spring of 1886 the unions made a tremendous concerted effort to secure the eight hour day. The labor organizations grew to colossal size. Strike followed strike. The most hopeful expectations ruled, and the Socialists, always the foremost and most active, began to attain to the leadership of the movement.

Then at one of the numerous clashes between the laborers and the police came the well known Chicago bomb affair of May 4. No one knows, even today, who