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police escort. By August 10th Lon

don was "face to face with a food famine." An extensive rise in prices ensued. Two days later the centre of disturbance shifted to Liverpool. A lock-out of 70,000 dockers was answered by a strike of all transport workers. A brigade of infantry and two regiments of cavalry were moved into the city. Four warships were ordered to the Mersey. Incendiarism, famine, and pestilence threatened the premier seaport of the Empire. By August 17th Liverpool was under the reign of anarchy. Then, on August 18th the great railway strike, dislocating the communications of the entire country, was declared. Manchester, Leeds, and Bradford were isolated; attempted wrecking on the lines was discovered at Sheffield, York, and Newcastle; collisions between the people and the police and troops occurred at Derby, Bradford, Sheffield, Rotherham, Bristol, and Llanelly. In many places food prices rose. And during the night of August 17th 12,500 troops of all arms were poured into London, as fast as the trains of the one line remaining loyal to the State, the London and South Western, could bring them. It was announced on the morning of the 18th that "practically every regiment stationed in Great Britain has now been mobilized at full strength, with every unit equipped under service conditions." It is estimated that 373,615 workmen were out on strike during August. By the end of the month England had learnt the nature of the multiplied strike, and of the sympathetic strike; and the country had come within measurable distance of the third member of the trilogy of Syndicalism, the general strike.

And what of the economic, social, and moral results of this epidemic of conflict? The workers gained, in the majority of cases, increase of wages and relief in the hours of labor. But

at what cost? During June and July the loss to the wage-earners of the country amounted to over two million working days. In July, 189,108 working men and women had withdrawn their labor. In August a further 180,000 workmen were involved, with a further loss of another two million working days. In August, moreover, the disputes already disorganizing the railways and the transport trades were reacting on many industries, and producing unemployment. Thus the transport strikes injured the miners, the cotton operatives (many mills being temporarily stopped for want of raw material); the bleaching, printing, dyeing, and finishing industries; the potteries (the railway strike forced a number of firms to work short time); and the brick trade. The total loss to the national purse, not, be it noticed, to the capitalist's purse, but to John Bull's family purse, due to the strikes of 1911, has not yet been computed; but some idea of their economic results may be gathered from the estimates of the national loss inflicted by the great strikes of 1889. In that one year England experienced 1,145 strikes, involving thirty-two trades. These trades included the textile workers, coal miners, shipbuilders, engineers, dockers, seamen and firemen, transport workers, workers in the provision trade, metal workers, public scavengers, millers, brewers, and builders. The strike area included eighteen counties. The loss in wages to the workmen, due to 930 alone of these strikes, was estimated at more than £1,122,000. Onethird of the strikes resulted in capital of the fixed value of £14,000,000 lying idle. A contemporary rough estimate placed the national loss due to the dock strike alone at £2,000,000. These figures, for the great strike year of 1889.

"Board of Trade Labor Gazette," August and September, 1911.

3"Board of Trade Report on Strikes and Lock-outs. 1889.

will give some clue to the drain on the country's purse made by the strikes of

1911.

The economic loss is, however, but a minor point in the national injury. As that veteran supporter of Trade Unionism, Mr. George Howell, tells us, "In estimating the cost of strikes, the outlay in pounds sterling is the least item to be considered. The social and moral effects are of far higher moment." To gauge these effects, something more detailed is needed than the mere survey of lost wages, strike areas, severed communications, dislocated trade, and the like. Such necessary detail is much to be desired, from every large centre of industrial conflict. Fortunately we have it to hand for Liverpool. It will be remembered that the summer was one of exceptional heat and dryness, and theefore of exceptional danger to the population of insanitary and crowded areas. The Liverpool Health Committee had successfully met this danger in July, by constant street cleansing and by measures for the feeding and care of the children of the workers, threatened with epidemic sickness. Until the beginning of August, throughout the insanitary weather of July, the health of the city remained normal. In the middle of August, however, the Strike Committee gained control of the transport and checked the food supplies of the community. Available food became stale, and here, of course, the poor were the first to suffer. Hundreds of tons of foodstuffs were destroyed; many food shops, including 300 butchers', were closed. The wellto-do could order in supplies by post or private car, or could escape from the threatened city; the workers were helpless. "Many poor people, in their desperate plight, are buying bad meat, rotten fruit, and stinking fish," wrote the correspondent of the Daily Chron

"Conflicts of Capital and Labor," George Howell, p. 350.

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icle. By August 16th it was reported that "the hospitals are already beginning to experience difficulty in obtaining necessaries." Even the milk destined for the hospitals and sick, although the Strike Committee permitted some delivery for hospital uses, was partially destroyed. "As the strike expanded, with entire disregard of the injury which would follow to the poorer sections of the community, even more serious complications ensued; on August 16th the scavenging and cleansing the poorer parts of the City, which had been more or less hampered, were entirely suspended. . . Those who are familiar with the habits and conditions of the inhabitants in certain parts of the City will realize what ensued when cleansing operations of all kinds ceased, and it is unnecessary to dwell upon the indescribable filth which was to be found in the courts and alleys. Between 6,000 and 7,000 tons of trade refuse, garbage from slaughter houses, domestic refuse, &c., had accumulated towards the close of the strike. Wanton damage was done by those on strike, or their allies, by the blocking up of grids and gullies, and other acts of a similar kind." The washhouses of the poor were closed, as the strikers refused to allow coal to be delivered. The Strike Committee also refused to allow means for the medical officer to visit the sick on incoming ships. The skilled feeding and care of the children of the poor, exposed throughout these weeks to the dangers of tropical heat, was no longer possible; and many infants and young children were left starving and neglected at home, while the distracted women were out in the streets." And the results? The mortality returns show the deaths, among the children of the workers, during the tropical days of July, as ranging from 21 to 81 per

5 "Daily Chronicle," August 16th, 1911.

6 Report by the Medical Officer of Health of the City of Liverpool, September, 1911.

week; during the tropical days of August, while the city was under the rule of the Strike Committee, the children died at the rate of 132, rising to 157 per week. The total "casualties" among the children, due to this outbreak of industrial war in Liverpool, must, therefore, be estimated at 500 deaths. And this massacre of the Liverpool children was a massacre of the poor. The unhappy strikers, guided by leaders imbued with the spirit of Continental Syndicalism, were unwittingly sending their own children, and the children of their neighbors, to the grave. The Syndicalist presses forward to his ideals over the bodies of children dying by the hundred per week. But when he addresses the fathers of those same children, his methods shine, in specious words, as the "glorious spirit of solidarity," as the "new spirit of collective revolt," as "splendid manifestations. which revealed thousands of working men risking everything," as a "widening of the area of battle," as the bringing into action, "on a larger scale than ever before, of the powerful weapon of the sympathetic strike." The new Syndicalist Unionism of the multiplied strike, the sympathetic strike, the general strike, is war, but war without the Geneva Convention; it is industrial war conducted by methods hitherto unknown to Englishmen; it is war alien to the very spirit of industrial prosperity; it is an insensate war levied upon all classes of society by that one class which is bound to suffer most heavily; it is a fratricidal conflict so cruel and ignoble that some meaner name than war is needed to describe it; it is war that develops, and develops swiftly, as its promoters intend that it should develop, into social anarchy. During the past summer England approached within sight of such anarchy, her communications held up, her food supplies threatened, her trade and san

itation dislocated, her little children dying by the hundred. The outbreak stunned by its apparent suddenness. In other words, the middle and upper classes, the Press, the Government, had taken little heed to the spirit of Continental Syndicalism silently working, of recent years, among our own industrial population. Struggling with rising food prices, with wages insufficient for bare physical efficiency, with high rents for miserable housing, and left alone in their struggle, our workers have listened to the only voices within their hearing, the ardent voices of the "Industrial Unionists," spreading the theory and practive of Syndicalism throughout the country.

The

What, then, is this new force in the labor world? Briefly, the aim of Syndicalism is the overthrow of the present capitalistic society, and the substitution of Unions of working men, controlling the whole of industry. Syndicalist advances beyond political or constitutional action. He works, not through any Parliamentary group, but through the Class War, waged by the direct action of working men, grouped in Industrial Unions, and employing the triple weapon of the multiplied strike, the sympathetic strike, the general strike. "The pivot of Syndicalism is the general strike." The intoxicatingly new and bold method of the general strike may be represented to the working man (listening too often with an empty stomach) as no more than the development of the sectional strikes with which he has always been familiar. The sympathetic strike appeals to all his finer instincts as an opportunity (as indeed it is) of showing his loyalty to his class, his capacity to suffer hunger and privation in order that his wage-mates may gain some relief. The workman is assured that, once he adopts Syndicalist policy, industrial capital will inevitably be transferred from its present owners to

himself.

The abolition of wages is to form the basis of the Unions of the future. The workman is to control his own labor, producing the necessaries and luxuries of life for himself. Both the Utopia and the methods of Syndicalism are closely allied with the Utopia and the methods of Anarchism. According to the famous exponent of Syndicalism, Georges Sorel, the new movement actually had its birth when the Anarchists entered and dominated the French Trade Unions or Syndicats. "Historians," says M. Sorel, "will one day recognize that this entrance of the anarchists into the syndicats was one of the greatest events which have happened in our time." Both movements aim at re-establishing society, after the necessary cataclysm of the general strike, on the basis of free groups of workmen, controlling the produce of the world. Both aim at the destruction of patriotism, in favor of an international "solidarity" of workers— the substitution of the spirit of class for the spirit of nationality. Both hail the multiplied strike as the first step to the general strike. Thus the anarchist, Arnold Roller, declares that "with strikes ever growing more numerous and larger, the idea of the general strike is spontaneously created." And, again, "soon the working people will gain their demands without the aid of political leaders, directly through the social general strike." Both see in the Trade Unions an organization ready created to their hand-"because strikes are mostly caused by Trade Unionists, the general strike idea is mostly propagated in Trade Unions." In France the Trades Union Congresses, year by year, from 1892, have adopted the method of the general strike by overwhelming majorities. And it is interesting to find the Parliamentary leader of our own Labor

7 Reflexion sur la violence, p. xlii. "The Social General Strike." Arnold Roller. 2d.

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The first instance of the general strike in actual practice has been accredited to Spain. In 1874 the Spanish branch of the famous "International" conducted a general strike in Alicante, not, be it noticed, for industrial benefits, but for "social reconstruction." 10 Twelve years later, in 1886, the idea was attempted in America, 260,000 men throughout the States, 40,000 of whom were in Chicago, withdrawing their labor. "Direct action" by means of a bomb resulted in the speedy suppression of this attempt, and the execution of the Anarchists known as the "Chicago martyrs," Parsons, Spies, and their colleagues. Two years later, in 1888, at a Trades Union Congress in France, a resolution was unanimously carried to the effect that “This Congress, recognizing that the partial strike can only be a means of agitation and organization, declares that the general strike only, i.e., the complete stoppage of all work, or a revolution, can bring emancipation to the toilers." In this same year, 1888, an Anarchist workman of Paris named Tortellier advocated the general strike at a London Congress of combined British and Continental Trade Unionists. Tortellier is described as a strange, uncouth figure, who from his appearance and language might have been a companion of Marat. It is significant, in view of recent events, that in the year following this combined Congress, 1889, there occurred in England the greatest outbreak of strikes known to this country 9 "The Socialist Review," Nov. 7, 1911, p. 189 The Genera Strike," Arnold Roller, p. 28.

until the events of the past summer; that the chief of these strikes, the historic London Dock Strike, culminated in the issue of a manifesto calling on the workers of London to join in a general strike:" and that the author of this proposal, Mr. Tom Mann, is now the leading exponent of Syndicalism in England. A few years after our own great outbreak of strikes in 1889, we find M. Briand ardently supporting the cause. "The general strike," declared M. Briand, in those his revolutionary days, "is a principle which by its own force has quickened the propaganda and strengthened the solidarity of the working classes," and he proudly claimed the paternity of the idea. To M. Briand we owe further the illuminating utterance, "It is impossible, at least from the economic point of view, not to be in favor of the general strike, if one is in favor of the trades-union organization." Coming down to recent history, M. Sorel tells us, in words identical with those of the Anarchist writer, that all partial strikes are interesting and important because they are attempts, on a smaller scale, to prepare for the final overthrow. Three years ago, in 1908, the Spanish leader Iglesias pointed out that in Spain it is the Anarchists who favor the general strike; and that they have "consistently sought to broaden out and extend every partial strike; they have opposed peace negotiations." In precise accordance with this view, we have the notable French Syndicalist, Professor Lagardelle, emphasizing that it is war, and war only, that the new industrial movement desires. "The Syndicalists would welcome with their whole heart," he writes, in 1908, "the creation of a fighting organization of the employers. The leader of Industrial Unionism, or Syndicalism, in America,

11 "No Work" Manifesto of the General Committee of the Dock Strike, August 29th, 1889, cited in "The Story of the Dockers Strike," with an introduction by Sydney Buxton, M. P.

William Haywood, addressed, a year ago, a like message to English workers: "No contracts, no agreements, no compacts; these are unholy alliances, and must be damned as treason when entered into with the capitalist class." Our English Syndicalists teach our working men the same doctrine: "it is entirely wrong for the Unionists to enter into agreements with the masters. The object of the Unions is to wage the Class War." 12 In the propaganda of the Class War, Syndicalist and Socialist, by the way, join hånds. In 1910, again, the English Syndicalist was exhorting his fellow workmen that "the sturdiness of their industrial battles should be based on the open and persistent declaration of the Class War," adding that "the Industrial Union movement itself is a declaration of the Social War." 13 To the Spanish Syndicalist, Lorenzo, we owe a definite expression, couched in Anarchist phraseology, of the subversive aim of the general strike-the italics are our own: "The general strike appears to us like a vast, united, spontaneous, act on the part of the workers. Its object is not to demand better conditions from the masters; but to do away with mastership, by expropriating the expropriators of social wealth, and by exchanging the present system of wages for a system of solidarity and general well-being." In Holland the Congress of 1904 approved the general strike as a political weapon. Professor Lagardelle, writing in 1908, finds one of the most encouraging signs of recent years to be the many industrial strikes that have broken out. M. Lagardelle must have been enchanted with England's record last year of one hundred strikes per month. Finally, in 1909, we have the general strike in Sweden; and in 1910 we see France astonishing the world by her

12 "The Industrial Unionist," "Forging the Weapon," September, 1910.

13 "Ibid," "All Hail Solidarity," October, 1910.

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