Out of that double contact emerged the trade unionism of the
American Federation of Labor.
The _Internationale_ is generally reputed to have been organized by Karl
Marx for the propaganda of international socialism. As a matter of fact,
its starting point was the practical effort of British trade union
leaders to organize the workingmen of the Continent and to prevent the
importation of Continental strike-breakers. That Karl Marx wrote its
_Inaugural Address_ was merely incidental. It chanced that what he wrote
was acceptable to the British unionists rather than the draft of an
address representing the views of Giuseppe Mazzini, the leader of the
"New Italy" and the "New Europe," which was submitted to them at the
same time and advocated elaborate plans of cooperation. Marx emphasized
the class solidarity of labor against Mazzini's harmony of capital and
labor. He did this by reciting what British labor had done through the
Rochdale system of cooperation without the help of capitalists and what
the British Parliament had done in enacting the ten-hour law of 1847
against the protest of capitalists.
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