makes clearer to us what it is likely to do and what not to do.
There is not a spot where the Syndicalist fight has been waged in which the persisting and unavoidable conflict between the anarchistic and the social principle does not appear. An impetuous individualism cannot endure organic relationships.
In Italy if the tenant farm hands (mezzadria) wish to enter co-partnership with landlords and share the gains, the anarchist type in the movement wars against this, precisely as our I. W. W. attack all "labor contracts" or agreements with employers; precisely as they now fight the admirable "protocol" in the New York garment industry. These alliances with capitalism are an impediment to anarchist activity. With labor often less than thirty cents a day[1] and with the direct sympathy of small métayer farmers, the condition is perfect for Syndicalism, if it has developed the social as distinct from the anarchist feeling. Nowhere better than in Italy can we watch this conflict between the two types.
As the twentieth century came in, there were hundreds of strikes each year among these people. At the great agricultural strike in Italy with the help of Consul Jarvis at Milan, I saw the effects of this uprising. It was waged with incredible bitterness. On the industrial side, as in Milan, more than one hundred were shot and between two and three thousand imprisoned. As in our own western country, the authorities were paralyzed by numbers. Two years later King Humbert was murdered and it
- ↑ In 1898 I found men at work in the fields for 20 cents a day.
