The duration of the law had been fixed at two years. At the end of each term it was renewed, each time with diminishing majorities. Meanwhile the rigor of the law was not diminished. The minor state of siege was extended to other centers, including Stettin and Offenbach. Meetings were suppressed everywhere, and dismissed often for the most trivial reasons. The police were given the widest powers and exercised them in the narrowest spirit.[14] "A hateful system of persecution, espionage, and aggravation was established, and its victims were the classes most susceptible to disaffection."[15]
On the unique _index expurgatorius_ of the government were over a thousand titles, including the works of the high priests of the party, the poetry of Herwegh, the romances of Von Schweitzer, the photographs of the favorite Socialist saints, over eighty newspapers and sixty foreign journals. Bales of interdicted literature were smuggled in from Switzerland to feed the morose and disaffected mind of the German workingman.
I can find no record of how many arrests were made. Bebel reported to the party convention in 1890 that 1,400 publications of all kinds had been interdicted and that 1,500 persons had been imprisoned, serving an aggregate of over one thousand years.[16] Every trial was a scattering of the seeds, and every imprisoned or exiled comrade became a hero. The awkwardness of the government was matched against the adroitness of the propagandists. A good deal of terror was spread among the people, stories of sudden uprisings and bloody revolutions were told. Even the National Liberals lost their heads at times. But Bebel was always superbly cool. This woodturner developed into one of the ablest political generals of his time.
Persecuted and pressed into underground channels of activity the party persisted in growing. In 1880 it rid itself of the violent revolutionary faction led by Most and Hasselman.
In the elections of 1881 the Socialists gained three deputies, but their popular vote was reduced over 125,000. In the next election, 1884, they won twenty-four seats and polled 549,990 votes; two out of six seats in Berlin were won, and one-tenth of the voters in the land were rallied under the red flag. The police were alarmed and the law was enforced with renewed energy.