home of what is called the "New Unionism;" that is to say, of the
organisation of the great mass of "unskilled" workers. This organisation
may to a great extent adopt the form of the old Unions of "skilled"
workers, but it is essentially different in character. The old Unions
preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded, and look upon
the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they at
best can modify in the interest of their members. The new Unions were
founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was
severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either
consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose adhesion gave them strength,
were rough, neglected, looked down upon by the working-class aristocracy;
but they had this immense advantage, that _their minds were virgin soil_,
entirely free from the inherited "respectable" bourgeois prejudices which
hampered the brains of the better situated "old" Unionists. And thus we
see now these new Unions taking the lead of the working-class movement
generally, and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud "old"
Unions.

Undoubtedly, the East Enders have committed colossal blunders; so have
their predecessors, and so do the doctrinaire Socialists who pooh-pooh
them. A large class, like a great nation, never learns better or quicker
than by undergoing the consequences of its own mistakes. And for all the
faults committed in past, present, and future, the revival of the East
End of London remains one of the greatest and most fruitful facts of this
_fin de siecle_, and glad and proud I am to have lived to see it.

F. ENGELS.
_January_ 11_th_, 1892.