On the other hand, the working men, finding themselves neglected or repudiated by those who, according to the natural laws of historical development, should for a time at least have been their leaders, gave ear, it may be prematurely, to men of revolutionary views and antecedents like Lassalle and Karl Marx; and in this manner was formed a revolutionary party which in many ways has not had a salutary organic relation to the main stream of German life. It is in fact the reaction which has profited by the division between the _bourgeoisie_ and the working class. * * * * * We shall now return to the history of the Universal Working Men’s Association which, as we have seen, was founded by Lassalle in 1863.[1] At the death of the founder in 1864 the membership of the Association amounted to 4610, a small number, but we must recollect that it had existed for only about fifteen months. Lassalle, in his will, had recommended as his successor Bernhard Becker, a man totally unqualified for such a difficult post. At the founding of the Association it had been thought good that the president should exercise a species of dictatorship. This arrangement might be suitable so long as the office was filled by a Lassalle. It was not easy to get a competent man of any kind. In such a novel organisation we need not say that there were hardly any members of ability and experience. Lassalle’s choice was therefore extremely limited. The most capable of his adherents undoubtedly was Von Schweitzer, a young man who belonged to a patrician house of Frankfort on the Main, but his reputation was so far from stainless that the German workmen for some time refused to have anything to do with him. Becker was elected, and conducted the affairs of the Association with more energy than wisdom, while the Countess Hatzfeldt, as the intimate friend of Lassalle, used her wealth and social position to control its fortunes in a way little calculated to satisfy the self-respecting German working men. It was a time of confusion and uncertainty in the Association; of suspicion, jealousy, and contention among its leading members. There would be no profit, however, in narrating the squabbles which disturbed the progress of the Association in its helpless infancy.