CRUCIBLE OF REVOLUTION 15
Reform Bill of 1832 had given additional political recognition to
the British middle class, but the proletariat remained politically
powerless though their number was growing rapidly. Chartism
and the rising trade-union movement were further evidences of
social ferment in the British Isles. A few enlightened employers
like Robert Owen of New Lanark were aware of what was hap
pening. Owen became an out-and-out exponent of a communist
society, though his "Community of Equality," established at New
Harmony, Indiana, hardly inspired confidence in the new ide
ology. Repercussions of the new social conflict may also be found
in the novels of George Sand and in Kingsley's Village Sermons
and Disraeli's Sybil. By 1831, moreover, there were 300 co
operative stores in England.
Italy had its Carbonari and the "Young Italy" movement, whose
activities spread from the peninsula to the rest of Europe. Despite
its major emphasis on political unification, "Young Italy" had
many broader objectives suggestive of a general social revolution.
Germans, Poles, Swiss, and Italians co-operated in the "Young
Europe" movement. In the United States, the period was marked
by the rise of a labor movement, the introduction of Fourierism
by Albert Brisbane, the friendly interest of Horace Greeley's
Tribune in the new radicalism, the antirent movement in New
York, and the radical ideas introduced by hundreds of immigrants
from Europe. Some conservative Americans thought the new
radicalism could be killed by ridicule; others, like James Gordon
Bennett of the New York Herald, expected "storms and tempests
and tornadoes and earthquakes."^5
Thus the whole Western world was more or less in ferment.
Paris, however, was the intellectual center from which the new
movements derived much of their sustenance, and Weitling was
there during one of its most exciting periods. Moreover, the tradi
tions of the French Revolution lingered on and provided the
germs from which many of the economic and philosophical prin
ciples of modern socialism developed.
(^5) See Henry Christman, Tin Horns and Calico (New York, 1945), 67.