236 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
Weitling's experience is but another example of the fate of most
alien radical systems imported into this country. Though they may
have had brief popularity, to date their demise has been equally
sudden. Even Friedrich Engels, in 1890, came to the conclusion
that Americans "won't let theory be shoved down their throats"
and must be allowed to "go their own way," following "their own
experience and their own blunders and the results of them."^6
(^6) Quoted in Gilbert and Helen Highet (trans.), Gustav Mayer's Friedrich
Engels (New York, 1935), 276.