ON TOUR FOR THE CAUSE 169He was greatly depressed when he found it necessary to spend
Sunday in Bridgeport, a town "as still as the grave."
In New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, he found that half
of the Germans were Jews engaged either in business or in operat
ing inns, and with that trace of anti-Semitism which the champion
of equality never overcame altogether, he reported that they did
not constitute "a favorable factor for enobling the German ele
ment." The beer was poor, the wine adulterated, and the whisky
plentiful in these New England citadels of "temperance." He
found the Irish addicted to drink and the Germans to playing
cards. He visited a number of factories where he saw the daughters
of New England farmers tending machines for $20 to $25a month,
with board and lodging for $1.50 a week, and he concluded that
they were well treated. In New Haven he attended a lecture by
the "speaker" of the Freie Gemeinde which Schroeter had organ
ized, and found a small group of twenty-five who were eager to
co-operate in the workers' movement. Weitling expounded his
own system so dogmatically that he frequently made enemies
rather than friends. In Hartford, he found thirty Germans who
were ready to sponsor a Freie Gemeinde, but few who had money
left for the Arbeiterbund. Everywhere in New England he noted
the "hypocricy" bred by prohibition, and he came to the conclu
sion that the section would benefit greatly from an immigration of
German gardeners and brewers. He also urged a German doctor
and a German butcher to move at once to Hartford.
When Weitling reached Troy, New York, he learned that the
town had seventeen German innkeepers and so many German
lodges that the community could not be interested in any new or
ganizations. Nevertheless, he stayed longer than he had planned
and apparently had a thoroughly enjoyable time. As in New
England, he visited the textile mills and again could find no
"misery" among the girls who were tending the machines at wages
of $3.00 to $5.00 a week. He reported that he had seen "no ragged,
dirty people" in New England, and that conditions in general were