144 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
Die Revolution, which survived through two issues only; several
German church papers, and a humor sheet planned in imitation
of the Kladderadatsch. In the 1850's, outside New York, there
were radical papers like the Arbeiterzeitung of New Orleans and
Cincinnati; Die Reform of Baltimore, which was an organ of the
workers' association of that city; the Kommunist, published by
Leopold Stiger in Cleveland; the Neu England Zeitung of Boston;
Wilhelm Rothacker's Menschenrechte of Cincinnati; Fritz An¬
neke's Newarker Zeitung; H. Rösch's Proletarier, the first social
ist paper founded in Chicago in 1853; and Christian Essellen's
brilliant Atlantis, from whose pages Weitling quoted extensively.
Even so selective and incomplete a list indicates the vigor of radi
calism among the German immigration and the large number of
refugee Forty-eighters who turned to journalism in the United
States.
The first number of Die Republik der Arbeiter appeared in
New York in January, 1850. The editor and publisher offered it
for sale at six and a fourth cents a copy, and announced that until
it could be expanded into a daily the paper would appear each
month on the fifteenth. The prospectus appealed to both workers
and employers, for Weitling classified all but capitalists as work
ers. With a true but somewhat immodest reference to his long
services for the working class in Europe, Weitling offered to be
come their champion in America, to "take up his cross" anew in
his adopted fatherland, and to brave the opposition, ridicule, and
mockery of friend and foe, of stupid and intelligent. He likened
his steadfastness to the faith and devotion of a Columbus venturing
out on unknown seas and boasted that he had never yet failed in
any activity which he had undertaken.
In the opinion of the editor, the final objectives of the new paper
were the establishment of a bank of exchange (Weitling's Tausch¬
bank), to be considered more fully in a later chapter; co-operative
stores and warehouses; a new kind of currency based entirely on
the amount of labor expended; and the founding of a colony
where communist theories could be practiced. Obviously such a
program could not be achieved in its entirety immediately, and
barré
(Barré)
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