The Utopian Communist: A Biography of Wilhelm Weitling

158 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
Perhaps the most striking feature of this labor paper was the
relatively little space devoted to current American issues other
than labor. In this respect, Weitling's policy was in sharp contrast
with that of many other German-language publications, and their
editors frequently commented on their colleague's total ignorance
of practical politics. In 1850, Weitling denounced both Whigs
and Democrats as "humbugs" and mere seekers of political spoils.
Two years later, he endorsed Horatio Seymour for governor of
New York, solely because the Democratic state ticket was pledged
to fight nativism, temperance legislation, and Sunday-closing laws,
issues on which the German element was easily aroused and com­
pletely united.
American presidential campaigns impressed Weitling as "com­
edy" and "shadow-boxing" in which workers should take no
part. He favored elections in which men voted for principles
and issues; but voting for individual candidates by merely count­
ing noses, and equating the vote of an intelligent and honest man
with that of the most "ignorant rowdy," he dismissed as "stupid
nonsense." He was not interested in nations as "cultural entities,"
and agreed with Marx that "the proletarian knows no fatherland."
Karl Heinzen's Pionier stands out as a notable exception among
German-language newspapers of the last hundred years because of
its courageous championing of equal rights for women. The vast
majority of German-American editors were confirmed oppo­
nents of woman's suffrage and believed that the prime concerns
of the females of the race should be Kinder and Küche, if not al­
ways Kirche. Weitling accepted a completely masculine inter­
pretation of history, but as an advocate of equal rights for all he
felt it necessary to make his position clear. Die Republik der
Arbeiter adhered to the doctrine that all workers who were not
completely free should be emancipated, but added: "If the whole
human being is emancipated," then "the wife, and the Jew will
be free also. A reformer who knows his business will not con­
centrate on the emancipation of any particular group."