INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION, commonly known as the International, organized in 1864 at London by an assemblage of workingmen from the principal countries of Europe, is an association of trades-unions designed to protect the working-classes against the power of capitalists, and seeking to overthrow the system of paying labor with wages by for it national co-operative associations. The programme and rules for its government drawn up by Dr. Carl Marx were finally adopted, in preference to those of Mazzini Baktmin, at the first congress, held at Geneva, Sept., 1866. The reasons assigned for forming the association were : 1. That the emancipation of labor must be accomplished by workingmen themselves.
2. That the struggle to effect it is a struggle, not for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties with an abrogation of class rule. 3. That the economical subjection of laborers to capitalistS—who monopolize the means of labor—that is, the sources of life—lies at the foundation of servitude in all its forms, of all social unhappi ness, mental inferiority and political bondage. 4. That the economical deliverance of the working classes is, therefore, the first great end which political movements ought to seek. 5. That efforts in this direction have, thus far, been unsuccessful because of the want of union among the departments of labor in each country, and among the working classes of different countries. 6. That the emancipation sought for is not a merely local or even national problem; but one which, embracing all countries where modern society exists, requires especially the co-operation of the most advanced nations. 7. That the present revival of effort among the working-classes in the principal countries of Europe, while it may animate their hope, should also warn them against a repetition of their old errors, and calls on them to consolidate immediately the various disconnected movements among themselves. Three subsequent meetings of the general congress were regularly held; but the fifth meeting, which was to have been at Paris in 1870, was prevented by toe war between France and Prussia, and since that time no meeting has been held. The influence of the association has been extensive and effective. The strikes of the bronze workers in Paris, 1867, and of the builders in Geneva, 1868. were sustained and made successful by English money; and in England the power of trades-unions and of strikes was greatly increased, through the power which the association exerted in preventing the master-workmen from obtaining supplies of laborers in other lands. The move ment encountered a very severe check during the Franco-Prussian war. Many of the Paris communists belonged to the association, and it defended their excesses in a pamphlet written by Marx and published by the general council at London. But while
its operation is at present less public—even its visible organization having been broken up or suspended—its importance is maintained by an increased efficiency among the national unions, and by the establishment in all the principal countries, of organs for diffusing its ideas.
It is a curiously interesting fact that we owe the International to an occasion on which it would be least of all expected that such an institution would arise. That occasion was the international exhibition held in London in 1862, operating through the visit paid by French workmen, on the invitation of their English brothers. In accordance with this invitation, delegates were sent from the different French trades-unions, and these men inspected carefully the exhibits and processes displayed at Kensington, and duly reported their opinions and impressions to the labor organizations which they repre sented. But besides this semi-official duty, they assumed another, which appears to have been thrust upon them—perhaps innocently enough—from both sides of the chan• nel, that of investigating the relations of English laborers to their employers, and of comparing notes as to the relative conditions of labor in the two countries. On Aug. 5, 1862, at a tavern in London, a meeting of the delegates and of English workingmen was held, which may be considered to have been the first step towards international labor organization. At this meeting an address was read by the English workingmen, which. while harmless enough in its sense and in its wording, contained the secret cause of all labor struggles, since it recited the reasons for dissatisfaction on the part of the laboring class, while it recommended international association as a remedy. The existing objec tionable conditions of labor were stated to be competition, disputes as to wages. and the increasing introduction of machinery. The French delegates were not only cordially received and liberally treated by their English comrades, but, moreover, inducements were held out to certain of them to remain in England for the purpose of conference and study as to the most advantageous plan on which to organize vast, strikes which should be sustained by the full power of international associated effort. In 1863, by taking advantage of a manifestation in favor of Poland, a preteT:t was found for a reunion, at which the organization was still further advanced. And now it needed only certain changes in the French laws to make the new' society permanent and powerful. This was effected by a fortunate bill which passed the French coups legisiatif in 1864, by which coalitions were authorized in France.