CRUCIBLE OF REVOLUTION 2?
In Paris the young tailor developed rapidly into a militant com
munist and became one of the most eloquent orators and literary
champions of the proletariat. In passionate language, suggestive
of the style of an old-fashioned American revivalist, he undertook
to give expression to the yearnings of the underprivileged for
Utopia.^19 It was during his residence in Paris that Weitling read
Jean Jacques Pillot's little book entitled Ni Chateaux ni Chau¬
mieres, ou État de la question sociale en 1840, translated into Ger
man under the title, Weder Schlösser noch Hütten ("Neither
Castles nor Hovels"). In the workers' clubs which he frequented,
he perused such journals as Intelligence, Égalitaire, Tribune du
Peuple, and Journal du Peuple. Tailors, who could put their minds
on other things while sewing at the bench, often made it a practice
to employ someone to read to them while they worked, and this
procedure also was followed in some of the Paris societies. Thus
newcomers like Weitling could perfect their French. In the Paris
journals he found discussions of the theories of Fourier, Saint-
Simon, and others; and by 1840, the ideas of Robert Owen were
beginning to reach the Parisian workers. In the long and excited
debates in which the radicals tried to agree upon a set of doctrines,
Weitling moved steadily toward the left, away from such moder
ate Utopians as Ewerbeck, who rejected the extreme tactics of
revolution. Weitling developed into a good public speaker and
became the recognized spokesman for the "tailor party," known
to be more radical than the cabinetmakers and several other
groups.
The most convincing evidence of Weitling's growing impor
tance among the radicals of Paris and of the respect which his fel
low workers had for his intellectual ability was the fact that in
1838 he was commissioned by the League to prepare its first major
publication. It was the intention of the sponsors to produce a
treatise which would formulate the principles for which the so
ciety stood, for circulation as propaganda material in France and(^19) See also H. D. Lockwood, Tools and the Man, a Comparative Study of the
French Workingman and the English Chartist, 1830-48 (New York, 1927), 76.