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210 \ 10LENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
of Lassalle. And, while the labor movement was already
launched, it was in a deplorable condition when these two
began their great work of uniting the toilers and organizing
a political party. One of the first difficult tasks
placed before them was to root out of the labor movement
the corruption which Bismarck had introduced into
it. That great and rising statesman was a practical politician
not excelled even in America. In the most coldblooded
manner he sought to buy men and movements.
For various reasons of his own he wanted the support
of the working-class; and, as early as 1864, he employed
Lothar Bucher, an old revolutionist who had been
intimately associated with Marx. Possessed of remarkable
intellectual gifts and an easy conscience, Bucher
was of invaluable service to Bismarck, both in his knowledge
of the inside workings of the labor and socialist
movement and as a go-between when the Iron Chancellor
had any dealings with the socialists. Through Bucher,
Bismarck tried to bribe even Marx, and offered him a
position on the Government official
newspaper, the
Staats Anzeiger. Bucher was also an intimate friend of
Lassalle's, and it was doubtless through him that Bismarck
arranged his secret conferences with Lassalle.
The latter left no account of their relations, and it is
difficult now to know how intimate they were or who
first sought to establish them. About all that is known
is what Bismarck himself said in the Reichstag when
Bebel forced him to admit that he had conferred frequently
with Lassalle "Lassalle himself wanted :
urgently
to enter into negotiations with me." (20) It is known
that Lassalle sent to the Chancellor numerous communications,
and that one of his letters to the secretary of the
Universal Association reads, "The things sent to Bismarck
should go in an envelope" marked "Per-