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334 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Engels are now translated into every important language
and are read with eagerness in all parts of the world.
The Communist Manifesto of 1847 * s issued by the
socialist parties
of all countries as the text-book of the
movement. Indeed, it is not uncommon nowadays to see
a socialist book translated immediately
languages and circulated by millions of copies.
into all the chief
And, if
one will take up the political programs of the party
in the twenty chief nations of the world, he will find them
reading almost word for word alike. For these various
reasons no informed person to-day questions the claims
of the socialist as to the international, world-wide character
of the movement.
Perhaps there is no experience quite like that of the
socialist who attends one of the great periodical gatherings
of the international movement. He sees there a
thousand or more delegates, with credentials from organizations
numbering approximately ten million adherents.
They come from all parts of the world — from mills,
mines, factories, and fields— to meet together, and, in
the recent congresses, to pass in utmost harmony their
resolutions in opposition to the existing regime and their
suggestions for remedial action. Not only the countries
of Western Europe, but Russia, Japan, China, and the
South American Republics send their representatives, and,
although the delegates speak as many as thirty
different
languages, they manage to assemble in a common meeting,
and, with hardly a dissenting voice, transact their business.
When we consider all the jealousy, rivalry, and
hatred that have been whipped up for hundreds of years
among the peoples of the various nations, races, and
creeds, these international congresses of workingmen become
in themselves one of the greatest achievements of
modern times.