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222 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
ecuted as an accomplice. These terrorist acts materially
aided Bismarck in his warfare on the social democrats.
Again and again large towns were put in a minor state
of siege, with the military practically in control. Meetings
were dispersed, suspected papers suppressed, and all
tyranny that can be conceived of exercised upon
all those
suspected of sympathy with the socialists. Yet everyone
had to admit that the socialists had not been checked.
Not only did their organization still exist, but it was all
the time carrying on a vigorous agitation, both by meetings
and by the circulation of literature. Papers printed
abroad were being smuggled into the country in great
quantities socialist literature was even being introduced
;
into the garrisons and there seemed to be no
;
dealing with
associations, because no more was one dissolved than two
arose to take its place.
Von Puttkamer himself reported to the Reichstag in
1882, "It is undoubted that it has not been possible by
means of the law of October, 1878, to wipe social-democracy
from the face of the earth or even to shake it to
the center." (32) Indeed, Liebknecht was bold enough
to say in 1884: "You have not succeeded in destroying
our organization, and I am convinced that you will never
succeed. I believe, indeed, it would be the greatest misfortune
for you if you did succeed. The anarchists, who
are now carrying on their work in Austria, have no footing
Germany— in and why Because in Germany the
mad plans of those men are wrecked on the compact
organization of social-democracy, because the German
of your socialist
proletariat, in view of the fruitlessness
law, has not abandoned hope of attaining its ends peacefully
by means of socialistic propaganda and agitation.
If— and I have said this before— if your law were not
pro nihilo, it would be pro nihilismo. If the German