ttle for the preservation of their most cherished
ideas. And in all this period the socialist and labor movement was
overrun with _agents provocateurs_, and every variety of paid police
agents sent to disrupt and destroy these organizations. And, as has
always been the case, these "reptiles," as they were called, were
advocating among the masses those deeds which the chief anarchists were
proclaiming as revolutionary methods. Riots, insurrections, dynamite
outrages, the shooting of individuals, and all forms of violence were
being preached to the poor and hungry men who made up the mass of the
labor movement. Under the guise of anarchists, these "reptiles" were
often looked upon as heroic figures, and everywhere, even when they did
not succeed in winning the confidence of the masses, they were able to
awaken suspicion and distrust that demoralized the movement. The
socialists were assailed as traitors to the cause of labor, because they
were preaching peaceable methods. They were accused of alliances with
other parties, because they sought to elect men to parliament. They were
denounced as in league with the Government and even the police, because
they disapproved of dynamite.

On the other hand, the socialists were equally bitter in their attacks
upon the anarchists. They denounced their methods as suicidal and the
Propaganda of the Deed as utter madness. In _La Periode Tragique_, when
Duval, Decamps, Ravachol, and the other anarchists in France were
committing the most astounding crimes, Jules Guesde and other socialist
leaders condemned these outrages and protested against being associated
in the public mind with those who advocated theft and murder as a method
of propaganda. Indeed, the anarchists in the late seventies and in the
eighties lost many who had been formerly friendly to them. Guesde and
Plechanoff, both of whom had been influenced in their early days by the
Bakouninists, had broken with them completely. Later Paul Brousse and
Andrea Costa left them. And, in fact, the anarchists were now incapable
of any effective action or even education. Without committees,
executives, laws, votes, or chairmen, they could not undertake any work
which depended on organized effort, and, except as they managed from
time to time to gain a prominent position in some labor or radical
organization built up by others, they had no influence over any large
body of people. They were fighting desperately to prevent extinction,
and