John Spargo

“ But we want brains for the foundation of our revolution—brains, not powder. We must have patience, lots of patience. Mushrooms grow up in a night and last only a day; oaks take a hundred years to grow, but the wood lasts a thousand years. And it's oaks we want, not mushrooms.'"
"How like Marx that was, Hans," said the Young Comrade then, "how patient and far-seeing! And what did Lassalle think of that?"
"He never understood Karl, I think. Anyhow, Karl told me that Lassalle ceased to be his friend after that meeting. ”

“ The workers of all countries [35] must unite—only just that, unite! And that night, after the long session of the congress, when he took me away with Engels and a few other friends—I remember that Karl Pfander was one—he could speak of little else: the workers must be united somehow, and whoever proposed further divisions instead of unity must be treated as a traitor.
"Some there were who had not his patience. Few men have, my lad, for his was the patience of a god. They wanted 'action,' 'action,' 'action,' and some of them pretended that Karl was just a plain coward, afraid of action. ”

“ Well, when the case for the prosecution was all in, Karl began to talk to the jury. He didn't make a speech exactly, but just talked as he always did when he sat with a few friends over a glass of lager. In a chatty sort of way, he explained the law to the jury, showed where the clever lawyers for the government had made big mistakes, and proved that he knew the law better than they did. After that he gave them a little political lecture, you might say. He explained to them just how he looked at the political questions—always from the standpoint of the working people. ”

“ Karl would say to me: 'Bah! It's all froth, Hans, every bit of it is froth. They cry out for revolution because the words seem big and impressive, but they mustn't be regarded seriously. Pop-gun revolutionists they are!'
"Well, as I was saying, I heard the lectures on political economy which Karl [68] gave at the club along in fifty-six and fifty-seven. He lectured to us just as he talked to the juries, quietly and slowly—like a teacher. ”

“ We were sitting smoking and talking after dinner when Karl said: 'Hans, I've made up my mind that it is time things begun to move a bit—in connection with the movement I mean. We must unite, Hans. All the workers ought to unite—can unite—must unite! We've got a good start in the visit of these French and German workingmen to the Universal Exhibition. ”

“ Sometimes Karl and Engels would talk seriously about the great cause, and I just listened and kept my mouth shut while my ears were wide open. At other times they would throw off their seriousness as a man throws off a coat, and then they would tell stories and sing songs, and of course I joined in. People [38] say—people that never knew the real Karl—that he was gloomy and sad, that he couldn't smile. I suppose that is because they never saw the simple Karl that I knew and loved, but only Marx, the great leader and teacher, with a thousand heavy problems burdening his mind. ”

“ Then father spoke up. 'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'I'll wager that Karl is all right, and that he will do credit to the old town yet. Some of our greatest men have failed to pass their examinations in the universities you know, Herr Marx, while some of the most brilliant students have done nothing worthy of note after leaving the universities crowned with laurels. ”

“ So he went at once to Paris. Only a week before that the Provisional Government had sent him an official invitation to come back to the city from which Guizot had expelled him. It was like a conqueror that he went, you may imagine.
"Boy, you can never understand what we felt in those days. Things are not so any more. We all thought that the day of our victory was surely nigh. Karl had made us believe that when things started in France the proletariat of all Europe would awaken: 'When the Gallican cock crows the German workers will rise,' he used to say. ”

“ There was no quarrel, you understand, only Lassalle realized that he and Karl were far apart in their views. 'Lassalle is a clever man all [78] right,' Karl used to say, 'but he wants twelve o'clock at eleven, like an impatient child.' And there's lots of folks like Lassalle in that respect, my lad; folks that want oaks to grow in a night like mushrooms. ”

“ That was a hard blow to me, lad. It looked to me as if Karl had made a mistake. I felt that the International was practically killed when the General Council was moved to America, and told Karl so. But he knew that as well as I did, only he couldn't help himself.
"'Yes, Hans, I'm afraid you're right. The International can't amount to much under the circumstances. But it had to be, Hans, it had to be. My health is very poor, and I'm about done [79] for, so far as fighting is concerned. ”

“ It takes more courage to live for the long struggle than to go out and be shot.' He wanted the comrades to wait patiently and to do all they could to persuade their friends in Paris not to follow Herwegh's advice. Most of the Germans in Paris followed Karl's advice, but a few followed Herwegh and marched into Baden later on, to be scattered by the regular troops as chaff is scattered by the wind.
"The German comrades in Paris sent us a special manifesto, which Karl wrote, and we were asked to distribute it among the working people. ”

“ Nothing I've ever done means so much as that to the [81] movement, and nobody else can do it. I must live for that, even though every breath is an agony.'
"But he didn't live to finish his task, after all. It was left for Engels to put the second and third volumes in shape. A mighty good thing it was for the movement that there was an Engels to do it, I can tell you. Nobody else could have done it. But Engels was like a twin brother to Karl. Some of the comrades were a bit jealous sometimes, and used to call Karl and Engels the 'Siamese twins,' but that made no difference to anybody. ”

“ He was always trying to hide the worst. Never did I hear of such a man as he was for turning things bright side upwards. But Conrad Schramm, who was related to Barbara—a sort of second cousin, I think—lodged in the same house with us. Schramm was the closest friend Karl and Jenny had in London then, and he told me things that made my heart bleed. ”

“ Of course, we knew that Chartism was a 'bread and butter question' at the bottom, and that the Chartists' cause was ours.
"Well, now that we had heard the Gallican cock, we wanted to get things started in Germany, too. Every night we held meetings at the club in Cologne to discuss the situation. Some of us wanted to begin war at once. You see, the Revolution was in our blood like [42] strong wine: we were drunk with the spirit, lad.
"When Karl wrote that we must wait, that we must have patience, there was great disappointment. ”

“ If another boy did anything to him, Karl would write some verses that made the fellow look like a fool, and we would all recite them just to see the poor fellow get mad. Such fun we had then. But, I tell you, we were awfully afraid of Karl's pin-pricking verses!
"Once, I remember well, we had a bad-tempered old teacher. He was a crabbed old fellow, and all the boys got to hate him. Always using the rod, he was. Karl said to me one day as we were going home from school: 'The crooked old sinner! ”

“ He got the International to take the matter up with the different workingmen's societies, and meetings were held all over the country. And he kept so much in the background that very few people ever knew that it was Karl Marx who turned the tide of opinion in England to the side of Lincoln. And when Lincoln was murdered by that crazy actor, Booth, Karl actually cried. ”

“ Ah, boy, Lincoln appreciated the support we gave him in those awful days of the war, and Karl showed me the reply Lincoln sent to the General Council thanking them for it.
"Karl was always like that; always guiding the working people to do the [75] right thing, and always letting other people get the credit and the glory. He planned and directed all the meetings of the workers demanding manhood suffrage, in 1866, but he never got the credit of it. ”

“ Why, when he went to his office in the mornings he would very often have from two to half a dozen children clinging around him, strange children who had taken a fancy to him because he smiled kindly at them and patted their heads. ”

“ And anyway he loves Jenny so much that he'd be sure to let her marry whoever she loved, even if the man had not a thaler to his name.'
"Soon Karl went away again to the University at Berlin, not back to Bonn. Thought he'd get on better at Berlin, I suppose. He might have been gone a year or more when his father came into father's little shop one day while I was there. He said that Karl wasn't doing as well at Berlin as he had expected. He tried to laugh it off, saying that the boy was in love and would probably [22] settle down to work soon and come out all right, upon top as usual. ”

“ Engels used to help him, too. At any rate, he and his family moved out into the suburbs and I did not see him so often. My family had grown large by that time, and I had to drop agitation for a few years to feed and clothe my little ones. But I used to visit Karl sometimes on Sundays, and then we'd talk over all that had happened in connection with the [69] movement. I used to take him the best cigars I could get, and he always relished them.
"For Karl was a great smoker. Nearly always he had a cigar in his mouth, and, ugh!—what nasty things he had to smoke. ”

“ Karl never got along very well with Bakunin and there was generally war going on between them.
"Did you ever hear of Robert Blum, my lad? Ever read the wonderful verses Freiligrath wrote about him? I suppose not. Well, Blum was a moderate Democrat, a sort of Liberal who belonged to the Frankfort National Assembly. When the insurrection of October, 1848, broke out in Vienna Blum was sent there by the National [50] Assembly, the so-called 'parliament of the people.'
"He assumed command of the revolutionary forces and was captured and taken prisoner by the Austrian army and ordered to be shot. ”

“ One of the [29] great men was urging that the time had come for some desperate action. 'Nothing but a bloody revolution can help the working people, Herr Marx,' he said. But Karl smiled quietly, and I thought I could see the old scornful curl of his lip as he said: 'Revolution? ”