entury the real building of the labor movement commenced. In every
country men soberly and seriously set to work, and everywhere throughout
the entire industrial world the foundations were laid for the great
movement that exists to-day. Yet the present world-wide movement, so
harmonious in its principles and methods and so united in doctrines,
could not have been all that it is had there not come to its aid in its
most critical and formative period several of the ablest and
best-schooled minds of Europe. At the period when the workers were
finding their feet and beginning their task of organization on a large
scale, there was also in Europe much revolutionary activity in
"intellectual" circles. The forties was a germinating period for many
new social and economic theories. In France, Germany, and England there
were many groups discussing with heat and passion every theory of trade
unionism, anarchism, and socialism. On the whole, they were middle-class
"intellectuals," battling in their sectarian circles over the evils of
our economic life, the problems of society, and the relations between
the classes. Suddenly the revolution was upon them--the moment which
they all instinctively felt was at hand--but, when it came, most of them
were able to play no forceful part in it. It was a movement of vast
masses, over which the social revolutionists had little influence, and
the various groups found themselves incapable of any really effective
action. To be sure, many of those seeking a social revolution played a
creditable part in the uprisings throughout Europe during '48 and '49,
but the time had not yet arrived for the working classes to achieve any
striking reforms of their own. The only notable result of the period, so
far as the social revolutionary element was concerned, was that it lost
once again, nearly everywhere, its press, its liberty of speech, and its
right of association. It was driven underground; but there germinated,
nevertheless, in the innumerable secret societies, some of the most
important principles and doctrines upon which the international labor
movement was later to be founded.

In France socialist theories had never been wholly friendless from the
time of the great Revolution. The memory of the _enrages_ of 1793 and of
Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and
Marechal. The ruling classes had very cunningly lauded liberty and
fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the stru