206 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
calfskins from his tannery in Kalamazoo, one half to be sold to
the associated shoemakers of New York, the other half to be ac
cepted as a donation to Die Republik der Arbeiter.
Despite increasing evidence of internal friction, the official
organ of the Arbeiterbund reported early in 1852 that additional
groups had been organized in many cities and listed substantial
financial receipts from these new sources. Weitling himself tried
to infuse new life by a prodigious correspondence which he car
ried on with his followers everywhere. In Cincinnati, 89 members
paid $477 into the central treasury, and they owned and operated
a hall and a co-operative grocery which seemed to be quite suc
cessful. In Sandusky, a nucleus of four members grew to fifty.
Detroit sent in contributions from eighty members, and the news
from Milwaukee and Buffalo was equally encouraging. Buoyed
up by such reports, Weitling decided that the time had come to
put the whole movement on a sound constitutional basis. In the
issue of Die Republik der Arbeiter of April 3, 1852, he published
his new constitution.
Weitling was the sole author of this constitution, which offi
cially proclaimed the Arbeiterbund in existence after May 1, 1852.
Later, when he was criticized for having ignored democratic pro
cedures, he replied that such complaints were "the voice of am
bition and conceit," and he urged the dissatisfied to withdraw. He
promised, however, to submit the constitution to a congress for re
vision as soon as the membership should reach 3,000. Though the
number of bona fide members still was small, the founder's mas
tery of the multiplication table convinced him that as a result of
the new constitution, the Bund would grow by leaps and bounds.
The constitution itself described a workers' league with the following main purposes: to establish a mutual-insurance society
which would pay death, sickness, old age, fire, and, eventually,
unemployment insurance; to found economic associations to make
goods and services available as cheaply as possible; to create a sav
ings bank, a building and loan association, and a colonization
society; and to carry on propaganda for the realization of these