IN SWITZERLAND 41
with a total membership estimated variously from 550 to 1,100.
He himself put the number of societies at seventeen, thirteen Ger
man and four French, and reported that they provided "the means
of instruction" for a total membership of 1,300, the tried and true
advance guard of the communist revolution. He asserted that the
indoctrination of new members was proceeding at the rate of 600
annually. Johann K. Bluntschli's report on Weitling's activities in
Switzerland estimated 750 German and 400 French members in
these organizations. Whatever the exact number, it is known that
Weitling founded or directed the activities of Arbeitervereine in
Lausanne, Vevey, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Geneva,
Zurich, Aarau, Winterthur, St. Gallen, Kreuzlingen, Bern, and
Zofingen. The French societies seem to have been the stronger as
a rule, partly because of the more liberal attitude of the authorities
in the French-speaking section of Switzerland and partly because
they received some support directly from Paris. In Lausanne the
club of some eighty members met every evening and on Sunday
afternoon. Whenever Weitling attended he opened the meeting
with a parody of the Lord's Prayer. These societies attracted the
attention of communists as far away as London, and the Commu
nist Chronicle, published in London by Goodwyn Barmby,
"president-in-chief" of England's Universal Communitarian As
sociation, frequently referred to the progress of the movement in
Switzerland, to the success of the circulating library in Lausanne,
and to the translation of "Weiling's" [sic] work into French.^17
Groups such as these were composed largely of the better-paid
and better-situated workers, men intelligent enough to be at
tracted not only by the new propaganda but by the opportunity
to further their education as well. The clubs subscribed for news
papers and journals, and at Lausanne the organization employed
a teacher at two francs per hour plus free board. It issued a
half-dozen numbers of a handwritten Volkstümlicher Hand-
werker which Simon Schmidt prepared and which carried the
motto "Equality-Brotherhood-Liberty-Unity-Education-Moral-
(^17) London Communist Chronicle, I, No. 5, p. 80.