9362 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYnational continued to favour its growth in the middle years of the decade.
The political instability leading up to the Franco-Prussian War and the
increase in strikes generated by the economic crisis of 1866-6 7 inevitably
enhanced the International's prestige, and in its first years it was able to
grow steadily inside the fairly loose doctrinal framework set up by Marx.
In England, the International made good progress for the first few
years. It secured the affiliation of, among other organisations, the import-
ant Union of Bricklayers and Cordwainers. Its activities were regularly
reported in the most influential working-class newspaper, the Beehive.
One of the first acts of the General Council was to send a bombastic
Address (drawn up by Marx) to Lincoln, the 'single-minded son of the
working class'. In April 1865 Edmund Beales and other middle-class
radicals joined six workers to create the Reform League to agitate for
manhood suffrage. Marx, renewing contact with his old friend Ernest
Jones, was active in getting the League formed. All six workers were
members of the General Council and Marx wrote enthusiastically to
Engels: 'The great success of the International Association is this: The
Reform League is our doing.'^27 In reality, however, the League merely
weakened the International, whose work many of its members considered
of less immediate importance than the League's own programme.
Marx put into the International a tremendous amount of work - much
of it evidently against his will. In March 1865 , for instance, he explained
to Engels how he had spent the previous week: on 28 February there had
been a sitting of the General Council until midnight which had been
followed by a further session in a public house where he had to sign
more than 200 membership cards. The following day he had attended a
public meeting to commemorate the Polish uprising. On the fourth and
sixth of March there had been sub-committee meetings into the small
hours, and on the seventh again a meeting of the General Council until
midnight.^28 A few months later Marx had to pretend to be absent on a
journey in order to snatch some time to work on Capital and by the end
of the year he complained that 'the International and everything to do
with it haunts me like a nightmare'.^29
During 1866 the progress of the previous year was maintained and the
International displayed for the first time what the English viewed as its
chief asset: its ability to prevent the introduction of blackleg labour from
the Continent. Marx emphasised to Liebknecht that 'this demonstration
of the International's direct effectiveness has not failed to impress itself
on the practical spirit of the English'.^30 The strike of the London Amalga-
mated Tailors was a success owing to the International's efforts in this
field and they immediately applied for affiliation. Several small societies
joined and in August there was a major breakthrough: the Sheffield