into instructive material from which labor is to learn its lessons. The Spanish strike in Alcoy in 1874 was not for any added pittance to the wage, but for "the construction of a free society." To be sure, it was at once put down by the troops but it is a part of the great pageant of reconstruction.[1]
Our American strike for eight hours in 1886 is noticed because politics was ignored and "direct action" substituted. Oddly enough, Roller couples with this a general strike in Belgium in 1893, which met with some success, but it was political in its aim. Nine years later, Belgian socialists rose again, but leaders like Vandervelde and Anseele are blamed by this writer because they call off the use of revolvers. The strike of the Amsterdam dockers in 1903 is called "a brilliant victory," because it began with such high hopes. Its final "failure" was owing to "social parasites," a term he fixes upon socialists who "posted proclamations which declared the strike off," and thus prevented it "from spreading over the whole country and becoming general and consequently was lost." The truth is that a very reckless anarchist leadership frightened the socialist party into a use of its strength to save a situation that had become impossible. It was necessary to reach the farm laborer, who proved to be beyond the reach of the anarchist appeal, though Mr. Roller tells us in the following words how
- ↑ Another general strike to which Syndicalists point is that which silenced scores of industries in Australia and New Zealand in the summer of 1890. Few strikes have been followed by consequences so momentous. It was revolutionary in the strictest sense because it shifted the political powers of the state. It has one advantage over Russian, Spanish, and other obscure strikes which serve as syndicalist patterns, because the facts are much more clearly before us.
