ABSTRACT
Socialism had been proclaimed to them as a gospel of hope and cheer, and they were welcoming it with the enthusiasm of men to whose lot the powers ordained by God had long been singularly indifferent. A democratic franchise and genuine popular government had been the aspiration of the German nation long before the Frankfort National Assembly brought them so near to realization in 1848. German artisans, in their wanderings to France, Switzerland, and England, found themselves transported into a new and larger world of ideas, and what they learned by intercourse with their comrades in these and other countries they gave back to their own circles at home. The International thus came on the scene in Germany at a time specially favourable to its success. The great significance of the step taken at Bebel’s instigation lay in the fact that the German Socialistic movement for the first time entered a political channel.
