On January 31, 1849, Proudhon, in the presence of a notary, set up a society known as the People’s Bank, with a view to showing the practicability of free credit. The actual organisation differs considerably from the theoretical outline of the Exchange Bank. The Exchange Bank was to have no capital: the People’s Bank had a capital of 5,000,000 francs, divided into shares of the value of 5 francs each. The Exchange Bank was to suppress metallic money: the People’s Bank had to be content with issuing notes against certain kinds of commercial goods only. The Exchange Bank was to suppress interest: the People’s Bank fixed it at 2 per cent., expecting that it could be reduced to a minimum of ¼ per cent. Despite these important changes the bank would not work. At the end of three months the subscribed capital was only 18,000 francs, although the number of subscribers was almost 12,000. Just at that moment—March 25, 1849—Proudhon was brought before the Seine Assize Court to answer for two articles published on January 16 and 27, 1849, containing an attack on Louis Bonaparte. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and fined 3000 francs. On April 11 he announced that the experiment would be discontinued, and that “events had already proved too strong for it,” which seemed to suggest that he had lost faith in the scheme. From that moment free credit falls into the background, and political and social considerations obtain first place in his later works. IV: PROUDHON’S INFLUENCE AFTER 1848 It is extremely difficult to follow the influence of Proudhon’s thought after 1848. Karl Marx, who was almost unknown in 1848, became by the publication of his _Kapital_ in 1867 practically the sole representative of theoretical socialism. Marx’s _Misère de la Philosophie_,[687] published in 1847, is a bitter criticism of the _Contradictions économiques_, and shows how violently he was opposed to Proudhon’s ideas. To the champion of collectivism the advocate of peasant proprietorship is scarcely comprehensible; the theorist of class war can hardly be expected to sympathise with the advocate of class fusion, the revolutionary with the pacificist.[688] The success of Marx’s ideas after 1867 cast all previous social systems into the shade. Proudhon, he thought, was a mere _petit bourgeois_. When the celebrated International Working Men’s Association was being founded in London in 1864 the Parisian workmen who took part in it seemed to be entirely under the influence of Proudhon. At the first International Congress, held at Geneva in 1866, a memorial was presented which bore clear indications of Proudhon’s influence, and its recommendations were adopted. At the following Congress, in 1867, Proudhon’s ideas met with a more determined resistance, and by the time of the Congress of Brussels (1868), and that of Basle (1869), Marx’s influence had become predominant.