"La più grande manifestazione mai tenuta dal movimento operaio americano in onore di un uomo"

“After a period of protracted illness, Karl Marx died in his London home on March 14, 1883, less than two months before his sixty-fifth birthday. When the transatlantic telegraph relayed this news from England, leaders of the socialist and labor movements in the United States, after consulting with Sorge, who was in touch with Engels by cable, organized memorial meetings in several cities. Although arrangements had to be completed within only a few days, the memorial in New York City, sponsored by the Central Labor Union of Greater New York and Vicinity, was not only larger than any other in the world at the time, but was a milestone in the history of the U.S. working class. Bismarck’s antisocialist law prevented any commemoration from being held in Germany, nor were there any memorials in England or France. But in addition to the memorial meeting in New York City, another was held in Brooklyn, where the U.S. flag atop the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum flew at half-mast for an entire week. There were also meetings in New Haven, Cleveland, and Chicago. In the Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City, where Abraham Lincoln had spoken on the eve of the Civil War, thousands of working people paid homage to the memory of Karl Marx. It was, in the words of one trade-union paper, “the greatest demonstration ever held in the American labor movement in honor of any man” (26). The New York Sun gave this account of the event: «A Great International Memorial Meeting of Workingmen; Thousands Turned Away from the Doors of Cooper Union; Addresses in English, German, Russian, Bohemian and French. If the great hall of Cooper Union had been twice as large as it is, it could not have held the vast throng of workingmen who gathered last evening to do honor to the memory of Dr. Karl Marx. Long before the hour set for the meeting, every seat was taken, people of all trades, from all lands – American, Germans, Russians, Italians, Bohemians, and French. There were many ladies present. On the platform were many men prominent in such meetings» (27). The special significance of this meeting, apart from its extraordinary size and the depth of feeling it revealed for the author of ‘Capital’ and the ‘Communist Manifesto’ and the guiding figure in the International Workingmen’s Association – the First International – lay in the fact that it was the first time that representatives of all the diverse and opposing sections of the working-class movement in the United States had assembled together (28). Such was Marx’s stature in the United States at the time that these hostile factions entered into a coalition to honor the memory of a man whom the official organ of the Central Labor Union called “The Teacher” (29). This coalition included members of the Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Lassalleans, followers of Henry George and anarchists. Equally significant was the fact that it was the first time that the various groups of foreign-born and native workers bridged the differences of language and background for a major event in the labor movement (30)” [Philip S. Foner, ‘The Workingmen’s Party of the United States. A History of the First Marxist Party in the Americas’, Minneapolis and Minnesota, 1984] [(26) Philip S. Foner, ed., ‘When Karl Marx Died: Comments in 1883’, New York, 1973, p. 64; (27) Ibid., p. 86; (28) Ibid., pp. 83-85; (29) Ibid., p. 92; (30) Ibid., pp. 91-106]