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VISIONS OF VICTORY 341
machines for broken lives. And, if the working class
was striking back with the same weapons that were being
used against it, so, too, were the "pan-destroyers," except
that for the most part their weapons were incrediblyinadequate
and ridiculous. Sticks and stones and barricades
were their method of combating rifles and trained
armies. All this again
confusion.
is more evidence of the mire of
However, if the weapons of the rebellious were utterly
futile and ineffectual, there were no others, for every
move the workers or their friends made was considered
lawless. All political and trades associations were against
the law. Peaceable assembly was sedition. Strikes were
treason. Picketing was intimidation ;
and the boycott was
conspiracy in restraint of trade. Such associations as
existed were forced to become secret societies, and, even
if a working-class newspaper appeared,
it was almost immediately
suppressed. And,
if all forms of trade-union
activity were criminal, political activity was impossible
where the vast majority of toilers had no votes. With
methods mainly imitative, retaliative, and revengeful ;
with no program of what was wanted in total ;
ignorance
of the causes of their misery; and with little appreciation
that in unity there is strength, the workers and their
friends, in the middle of the last century, were stuck in
the mire— of ignorance, helplessness, and confusion.
This was the world in which Marx and Engels began
their labor. Direct action was at its zenith, and the
struggle of the classes was ferocious. Indeed, all Europe
was soon to see barricades in every city, and thrones and
governments tumbling into apparent ruin. Yet in the
midst of all this wild confusion, and even touching elbows
with the leaders of these revolutionary storms,
Marx and Engels outlined in clear, simple, and powerful