ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the sixties there was an upsurge of the workers' movement not only in Germany, as has already been mentioned, but also in England and in France, the two countries which took the chief part in the formation of the International Working Men's Association. The committee was far too big. It had fifty-five members, of whom twenty-seven were English. These were mainly trade union leaders. Of the rest the French and Germans had nine representatives each, and the Italians, the Swiss and the Poles two each. The majority of the non-English members were émigrés. In these circumstances it was not very easy to agree on the fundamental aims of the association, its programme and its statutes. The task of translating the statutes of the Italian workers' association, which it was intended to make the basis of the associations' own statutes, devolved upon Major Wolff, Mazzini's secretary.
