The distribution of other socialistic literature was undertaken in our district by a man out of work on account of the 1st of May, who acted as colporteur for the excellent social-democratic comic paper Der Wahre Jakob, as well as for its companion sheet, Glühlichter, published in Vienna. He received and filled orders for social-democratic periodicals, tried to sell photographs of Schippel, Bebel, and Liebknecht, or watch-charms, matchboxes, scarf-pins, printed with their pictures, and was always at the meetings, as well as on the pleasure excursions, which he often helped to organise. What else he did I do not know, but at all events I never saw any importunate attempt at propaganda on his part, especially among the new men. He was agent for the three social-democratic bookstores in Chemnitz. It is well known that these social-democratic bookshops, with unheard-of narrowness, deal only in social-democratic literature, or such literature as indirectly promotes the party cause. It is only recently that they seem to have reached a point of sufficient intellectual freedom and fairness to place on sale such books as the works of Schiller and Goethe, which are, to be sure, in their eyes, the productions of bourgeoisie incarnate. These shops are fruitful sources of agitation in Chemnitz, and have proved themselves to be important factors in popular education there.
A peculiar influence in the party agitation, and one not to be under-estimated, was that wielded by the two social-democratic comic papers, sold by the colporteur whom I mentioned. Whoever is familiar with them will agree that these papers are very respectable publications of their kind. The illustrations are almost always good artistically, the jokes pointed and clever, but of course nearly always coloured by party politics; the humour is healthy and good. Their existence has always been a source of inward satisfaction to me, for it is a proof of the peaceful character of the whole great social-democratic movement. A band of rabid conspirators, a party with the single and conscious aim of bringing about a bloody revolution, whose sole and greatest joy lay in the total overthrow of existing institutions, would hardly occupy itself with comic papers like these; would, indeed, be incapable of producing them. Where, as in these two publications, wit can express itself blended with a genuine and joyous humour in distinction from mere satire filled with bitterness and inspired by hatred, the suspicion of blood-thirstiness is more and more removed; and it is from such small signs, trivial in themselves, that we may acquire the conviction that this movement, with all its moral dangers and its intellectual immaturities, with all the dangerous explosive material which is undeniably to be found within it, yet possesses such healthy vigour and pulsates with such fresh life that, under right influence and guidance, it may be made to become a mighty factor, blessed of God, in the future development of humanity.
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