148 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
"new Messiahs" of the workers.^13 A few American papers, notably
Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, quoted occasionally from
the new labor paper,^14 but Weitling was deeply hurt and disap
pointed because the New Yorker Staatszeitung paid so little atten
tion to him and his program.
In view of the factionalism so characteristic among radical refu
gees, it is not strange to find that Die Republik der Arbeiter be
came involved in violent newspaper polemics with some of its
competitors. Almost from the outset a serious threat to its future
developed from the activities of a group of German editors, type
setters, and printers who decided to publish a paper in New York
on a co-operative basis. Weitling agreed to serve as editor, pro
vided the venture would follow his "specific school" of thought
as a part of his movement instead of as a separate association. The
Central Commission of the United German Crafts of New York
to which Weitling belonged apparently approved a plan which
would have made such a paper virtually an evening edition of Die
Republik der Arbeiter, to be known as the New York Arbeiter¬
zeitung. But presently a quarrel broke out between the two groups
which became so violent that it finally was carried to the courts.
The new paper kept up a running fight with its competitor, Weitling insisting on complete centralization of the workers' move
ment under his "spiritual guidance," and the Abendzeitung (the
name finally agreed upon) favoring local autonomy and decen
tralization and accusing Weitling of fomenting dissension between
manual and brain workers. The latter countered with the charge
that his competitor had stolen hundreds of his subscribers by a
deliberate policy of misrepresentation, called attention to "the
worm at the heart of our beautiful movement," and accused his
opponents of having learned the "art of destruction" from Marx
and Engels.
Die Republik der Arbeiter also became involved in a feud with
Friedrich Hassaurek and his Cincinnati Hochwächter. A veteran
(^13) Baltimore Wecker, August 7, 1851.
(^14) See New York Tribune, April 22, 1850.