4. The possession, carrying, introduction, and sale of weapons within the area affected are forbidden, restricted, or made dependent on certain conditions. All ordinances issued on the strength of this section were to be notified at once to the Reichstag and to be published in the official _Gazette_.[26] When this law went into effect, the outlook for the labor movement seemed utterly black and hopeless. Every path seemed closed to it except that of violence. Immediately many places in Germany were put under martial law. Societies were dissolved, newspapers suppressed, printing establishments confiscated, and in a short time fifty agitators had been expelled from Berlin alone. A reign of official tyranny and police persecution was established, and even the employers undertook to impoverish and to blacklist men who were thought to hold socialist views. Within a few weeks every society, periodical, and agitator disappeared, and not a thing seemed left of the great movement of half a million men that had existed a few weeks before. There have been many similar situations that have faced the socialist and labor movements of other countries. England and France had undergone similar trials. Even to-day in America we find, at certain times and in certain places, a situation altogether similar. In Colorado during the recent labor wars and in West Virginia during the early months of 1913 every tyranny that existed in Germany in 1879 was repeated here. Infested with spies seeking to encourage violence, brutally maltreated by the officials of order, their property confiscated by the military, masses thrown into prison and other masses exiled, even the right of assemblage and of free speech denied them--these are the exactly similar conditions which have existed in all countries when efforts have been made to crush the labor movement.