General Association of German Workingmen (_Allgemeiner Deutscher
Arbeiterverein_) was founded.

The immediate results of the foundation of the General Association of
German Workingmen were much less than Lassalle had anticipated. He had
hoped that it would quickly surpass the Liberal National Association,
founded by the leaders of the Progressive party in 1859, which at this
time counted about 25,000 members. In fact, during Lassalle's life the
Workingmen's Association never reached one-fifth of that number. The
workingmen generally were slow to recognize either the character of
Lassalle's purposes or the character of the man himself. Despite the
power and brilliancy of the speech-making campaign upon which Lassalle
promptly entered he made little headway. The progress of the movement
among the rank and file, however, was more satisfactory than in any
other quarter. Marx had been lost to the movement before it was
inaugurated and the rigid Marxians among the German socialists
continued to hold aloof. Lassalle's close personal friend, Lothar
Bucher, could see no prospect of early success and withdrew while
there was still time. The independent socialist, Rodbertus, to whom
Lassalle next turned for assistance, had little faith in manhood
suffrage and none at all in State-aided producers' associations. To
confirm his unbelief in manhood suffrage he pointed to the ease with
which a popular plebiscite could be manipulated by a Louis Napoleon.
State-aided producers' associations, he declared to be incompatible
with scientific socialism, a dangerous compromise between the national
workshops advocated by the utopian socialist, Louis Blanc, and the
cooeperative corporations, advocated by the anarchist, Prudhomme. So
Lassalle found himself alone at the head of his new independent labor
party.

It was not the workingmen but the middle-class Progressive party that
was most aroused by Lassalle's _Open Letter._ He was regarded as a
traitor to the cause of the constitution and a practical ally of the
forces of reaction--in short, as either a fool or a knave. Lassalle
saw clearly enough that he could not succeed without making clear to
his prospective followers the irreconcilability of liberalism and
socialism, and directed his most powerful efforts against the position
of the Progressive party. His _Workingmen's Reader_ (May, 1863) and
_Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_ (January, 1864) are conspicuous
memorials of his campaign against