At the present moment the Union has about 3,500 members, of whom the Trust employs 1,000 and the co-operative factories 2,500. There are a very few bottle-blowers not in the union, mostly foreigners. Every member of the Union is a shareholder, even those working in the factories of the Trust.

Two factors have especially contributed to the success of the workers. One is the technical efficiency of the glass-blowers, their professional consciousness brought out in their effort to create collectively something new and positive. The other factor is their moral solidarity evolved by their Socialist training. Their Socialist education imbued the glass-workers with that high sense of solidarity which calls for some productive work and is not satisfied with mere indulging in sentiments, while their professional and industrial organization gave a definite form to their work and made them capable of realizing their productive aim. In their struggle they forgot their immediate interests and worked with all their energy for the liberation of their whole class from capitalism. They were dominated by a social vision, by a greater sense of human fraternity. A wonderful discipline prevails in their factories, a discipline that guarantees a continuous process of production and fires each worker to work at his best. In all the factories of this Union there is not a single overseer, and the technical and business managers are all bottle-blowers.

The moral solidarity created by the struggle awakened the conscience of workers in all directions. For example, glass-blowers the world over are heavy drinkers, but these men gave up drinking. Their life being filled with an ideal, a social purpose, and a continuous concentration on various problems, they find pleasure in it, and have no need to drink for solace.

They renounced their legitimate divi

dends, accepting the same wages as their comrades working for capitalist concerns, and turned over all the net profits of their co-operative to mutualaid funds; and, as we said before, they gave up, and are still giving up when necessary, their last farthing toward the establishment or strengthening of their movement.

They have no intention whatever of becoming capitalists. They want to free themselves from capitalism and to set an example to other workers. With the profits of their enterprise they help the Socialist and labor movements, they provide schools for their own children and for the children of other workers, and were actually among the first to adopt the now famous Montessori system of kindergarten education. They built workmen's houses, providing beter homes, better nucleuses for the new social life.

Their factories are model factories in the industry; they are the best equipped in the world with labor-saying machinery, labor-protecting devices, hygienic arrangements, and they are prepared to introduce any new technical or financial method in their industry. Experts from all countries come to them to learn and profit by their experience. And by their example and by their closer union with the workers employed in all the other branches of the glass industry, they are in a fair way to raise to their own level a group of about ten thousand workers.

In short, they have improved the conditions of their own life and work, making both healthier and less irksome, accomplishing their higher duty to themselves, since a revolutionary working class must elevate its material level in order to make itself fit for fulfilling its social mission.

This movement, then, represents the new fact of Syndicalism in operation. An industrial union of workers has found within itself all the necessary

elements for resistance against organized capital and all the necessary factors for progressing towards the positive and thorough conquest of the means of production.

The Bottle Blowers' Industrial Union of Italy has discovered the material, technical, commercial, and moral capacities for getting hold, within a comparatively short period of time, of the biggest share of the Italian bottle industry, and sooner or later it will undoubtedly run the whole industry through its co-operatives.

The force which these workers have substituted for individual and associated capitalist initiative, namely, the collective effort and efficiency of their organized class, foreshadows to Syndicalists the future, for they declare that just this professional consciousness and moral training is the force which will lead to the future social order and on which, it will depend, and, as it is in the present, so will it be in the future a source of unceasing economic progress and continuously growing moral improvement.

In agriculture, the basic industry of Italy, the same factors are at work on a much larger scale. Here some 200,000 acres have passed into the hands of the farm laborers organized into unions and co-operative societies. Through industrial organizations and Socialist education the agricultural laborers acquired the power, the technical capacity, and the moral energies to fight for, obtain, and run their industry. They do not, however, own their lands themselves, but lease them from the land

owners.

The landowners were confronted, and are still confronted, by a situation from which there seems no other peaceful way out than the leasing of the fields to the co-operative societies of the laborers. The laborers, having through their unions obtained in many localities practically a monopoly of

farm labor, struck for higher wages and shorter working hours. The landowners, on the one hand, claimed that the profits from farming would not allow this increase in the cost of production; and the unions, on the other hand, insisted, and indeed proved with exact figures, that the granting of their demands would not necessarily impair the profits of the landowners. After many prolonged strikes and boycotts the contending parties finally came to the following settlement:

The unions of the laborers legally organized themselves into co-operative societies, and leased the farms from the landowners on the same terms that had been usually agreed between landowners and the tenant farmers. These co-operatives, now leasing a couple of hundred thousand acres, have not only satisfied the landowners by prompt payment of rent, but have so improved the land that the landlords, after the expiration of the first leases with the co-operatives, have usually been glad to renew them.

Space does not allow to go into the details of the working of this system. Its chief features are as follows: The landowners are protected from strikes; they are getting their former average income, and at the same time their farms are being technically improvedtherefore, growing in value. The workers have a greater control over their own industry, and so their desires are satisfied. They are responsible for the management of the farms, but at the same time the results of their efforts to produce more efficiently are entirely their own.

They are also in a position to regulate employment, since they are not looking for dividends; they can and actually do eliminate the former brutal sacrificing of the unemployed, of the old and less fit workers, by organizing work so as to give employment to all of the union, and in many cases even

to the non-union workers. Thus, under this system, a high principle of solidarity is realized through the moral force of collective control necessarily obtaining in an organization with so wide a scope, the workers become alive to the problems of industry and hence become more efficient, and they educate themselves to active solidarity by obliging themselves to work more intensively in the interest of their fellowworkers.

Many Italian municipalities and charitable institutions have leased their farms to the co-operative societies of laborers, preferring them to the tenant speculators. A great number of absentee landlords in Sicily have been for generations robbed and their land ruined by the same tenant speculators, and hence have willingly turned over their land to the organized peasants.

The importance of this new and essentially Syndicalist departure in farming has been recognized by the Italian Government as a valuable asset in the economy of the nation. A Bill is before the Italian Parliament considering the leasing of the Italian State lands, amounting to several million acres, to these co-operative societies. The same Bill proposes the establishment of a co-operative bank that, by giving credit to the land laborers on favorable terms, will encourage their collective organizations.

There are several other important organizations in Italy that are developing on similar lines; for instance, reclamation work is carried out on a large scale for municipalities and the State by co-operative societies of laborers who have fitted themselves technically and morally to accomplish the most difficult work at less cost and in less time than the capitalist contractors, and are therefore given the preference by the State and the municipal authorities.

One of the greatest Syndicalist associations in the world is the Industrial Union of Italian Railway men, including practically all the employés of the State railways except the higher offcials. Still far from being a perfect organization, faced with many internal problems that must be solved before it realizes its whole power, it is even now a strong and intelligent factor in the life of the country. We cannot in the present article attempt more than a very slight indication of its complex activity and the important part it plays in the Italy of to-day.

By its method of organizing according to the technical nature of each man's occupation, while the problems of the whole service are kept before the mind of every member and his opinion and vote called for on each, the men are educated to a keen interest in everything that concerns the whole work of the railways. That they have arrived at a considerable degree of suc cess is proved by the fact that conscious of their increased collective efficiency and power, they set before themselves the revolutionary aim-"The Railways for the Railwaymen.”

This is not simply a vague Syndicalist war-cry, but is inspired by the actual conditions of the railway system. The State in 1905 took over the railways at a great price, proposing to give better and cheaper service, but the tech. nical incompetence of the bureaucratic administration has demoralized the system and brought about a growing yearly deficit in the returns. Innumerable sinecures and well-paid offices were established; but the State neglected the technical side, and with increased financial burden came greater confusion in the working.

On the other hand, through their organization the workers have been eagerly learning details of every kind of work necessary for the proper effective managing of the railways, and

They

now they seek to get control over their administration, so as to manage the railways for the nation. propose to do this as a co-operative society, which would be made up of the members of their union.

The administration would dispense with bureaucratic control. The highest positions would be occupied by men chosen for their knowledge, initiative, and capacity by the workers themselves, while at present they are held by men who have political influence or have automatically risen to them. Being free from political ties, the co-operative railways could suppress the thousands of clerical jobs, and increase the number of productive workers, securing a safer, prompter, cheaper service.

The workers would receive a certain minimum wage, and would share in the net profits as well. Necessary capital would be obtained from profits, from shares subscribed for by the men themselves, and from issues of preference shares. The State would retain in some simple form the right of supervising the administration without directly interfering with details. It would establish the tariffs and regulate the necessary service of trains, and would, if necessary, contribute part of the cost of alterations if imposed.

So severe is the breakdown of the State railway system in Italy, so clearly have the railway men shown their professional keenness and capacity, that even conservative economists of world-wide reputation and experts such as Vilfredo Pareto have declared that the one practical solution of the trouble is, since private ownership is a public nuisance, and State ownership a veritable disaster, to entrust the State railways to the co-operative enterprise of the organized railway

men.

The State itself made a step in this direction with the Railway Law of April 13th, 1911, which recognizes the

union of the railroad-men by giving to every trade within its organization a voice, through an elected representative, in the technical development of the railways, and in the discussion of all administrative problems connected with them. The Government thus proved its recognition of the fact that it cannot run the railway industry efficiently without the direct co-operation and advice of the employés, or without considering the lessons of their daily practical experiences.

The gist of Syndicalist theories and action lies in their dogma, "The social revolution is a practical problem." It is a practical problem, and a vast practical work, which changes men and institutions, succeeding in proportion as men and institutions change nationally and internationally. For though some organizations of workers may be more advanced than others, though some may even begin to put their powers in motion, the Syndicalists claim that the movement will realize itself completely only when it becomes international and universal.

Accordingly, they endeavor to make their work international. They have a practical programme: first, to secure national industrial unionism, the amalgamations of trade unions into industrial bodies capable of taking action at all points of an industry; secondly, to bring into closer relations the different industrial organizations of every country, and at the same time to bring about an international affiliation and co-operation.

Then there are the open fights, through which, whether they win or lose, the workers learn their powers and their shortcomings, and how to extend or counteract them.

Out of all this intense continuous activity comes the formulation of the Syndicalist theory of social progress: that the world of the future is for the workers, and that to prepare for this

future world the workers must organize themselves into harmonious, compact, professionally conscious unions, individually increasing their technical knowledge and efficiency, collectively fitting themselves for the successful management of their industries. They maintain that the problems of social evolution reduce themselves to probThe English Review.

lems of organization; that progress does not operate independently of man's will, but is created by virtue of his conscious desires and organized action. According to the Syndicalist, progress towards his ideal society will only be realized by the organized will of the working-class.

Odon Por and F. M. Atkinson.

CHAPTER XXV.

HOPE AND THE RIVER.

He was roused by the return of the horses and of the men's voices. Painfully he rose and straightened himself up until when two feet short of his height his head touched the roof. The horsemen approached through the mist like night phantoms gradually assuming day and substance. They seemed to be for going by when one of them, the groom conjecturably, stopped and said:

"I belave that's one o' them little hidy-holes I meant. Ho'd my hoss; I hae a feeling like as he were theer. Anyhow I'll goo an' mope for him from one end on't to tother."

Roland stooped more and moved up the dark cavern hands first, feeling his way by the dripping walls, and the sound of his footsteps was covered by the groom's noisy dismounting and approach. Still as he went the cave became lower and narrower. He had to come to a stop before he was jammed in. He felt like a rat in a trap, caught. But his imminent peril gave his faculties the spur. At that last step he struck one of his feet against a loose stone. With a desperate intention he stooped and raised it; it was about as big as a man's head. He met the groom, who was blundering up the cave head foremost, stooping more

than need was, and using the stone as a battering-ram he smote him on the crown. The groom staggered back to the mouth of the cave half-stunned. "Drawed a damned blank," he said. "To'd thee so," answered the whipper-in.

"Not that nayther awtogether, for I got to t' end on't sooner nor I tho't an' joled my yed again t' floor."

"Again t' roof, thou manes."

"Both, mon; my feet again t' roof an' by yed again t' floor. It mun be as hard as a Hathersage mill-stun not to a cauved in."

As the groom mounted again the whipper-in whistled and said, "The 'duke'll mak a fine to-do I doubt."

"Yo mun find him a fox, or that failin' a hare."

They rode away, the groom rubbing his sore head, the whipper-in humming the refrain of a popular song, "And was not, was not that a pity?" As soon as he dared Roland came forth from his cramped position, and hastened down hill at something as near a run as he could manage. As he rapidly descended the mist thickened. A pallid light went about in it but with the furtiveness of a stray; it made the mist itself visible and little else. On either side rose the cliffs, unsubstantial, apparent only for a portion of their height, like the beginnings of