Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/726

 704 THE ECONOMIC JOURN,L <lered impracticable; and that the heads of the revolutionary Hydra might be wholly crushed and all after-growth made impossible, not only were all leaders 6f the party banished from the centre of the movement, but also any of the rank and file who showed in any way symptoms of ability to replace them. Hard-pressed and like to have been strangled by these abnormal circumstances, the party could no longer set forth in programmes the reflex adjustments which its organization under- went. Hence anything we here record depends for its justifica- tion upon inference from patent facts to the principles of that .organization. And thus we gather that in the first instance the ruthless Draconic rgime actually did not fail to hit the mark. In fact the phalanx of the party was knocked to pieces and a rally of the disorganized squares rendered impossible under the appal- ling artillery-fire of police measures; pale terror had seized on all; no one knew for the moment what to do; no one dared to do anything. Nothing during that first interval, when the Socialist law was put into force, betrayed that any life was left in German Social Democracy at all. Only little by little it slowly recovered itself, forming into a sort of sporadic organization, in spite of the Damoklean sword of the Act of Exception suspended above every participator, and affording a splendid example of the devoted spirit in the German proletariate, thousands of whom were ready to offer up at any moment life itself on the altar of the general idea of the ranks of Labour. Organic unitt being impossible under existing conditions, men banded themselves together on such methods as local circum- stances chanced to admit of. Here a group of working-men put themselves into communication with Zurich, the Rone of Socialists under the Exception Act, so as to procure and diffuse the party organ, The Social Democrat, or other forbidden printed matter. Then another group itseft undertook to print leaflets secretly and supervise directly their distribution. Another group combined to meet at tea-parties or other apparently harmless gatherings, as, e.g., the Choral Society of the 'Lilies of the Valley,' (lit. ' MaybeIls,') or the gaming club ' Ace of Diamonds,' and there carried on their propaganda. In 1881 Workme's Trade Unions (Fachvereine) were once more legally permitted, and therewith the ranks of Social Demo- cracy quickened with new life. The unions furnished excellent points of muster and canvassing offices for the active army of