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ANARCHISM
177

is a sinister comment that Syndicalists have made upon that event. The government relaxed its severities against "organizations," prompting such utterances as these: "Violence is said to be very wicked by the praying bourgeois, but we all now see that it is the only language to which the watch dogs of private property will listen. Let us not forget the lesson." Here is poverty with conscious discontent "that can be organized" into fighting trade unions. In northern industrial centers, the unions were federated into "Labor Bureaus." It was these latter (Bourses du Travail) in France that gave Pelloutier his chance to turn internal political feuds to his advantage and guide these federated bodies into the gathering current of revolutionary, anti-political Syndicalism with anarchist tendencies.

In Italy Anarchists proud of the title were prominent in the Labor Party at its formation in 1885. From this beginning, there never was a day's peace until six years later when Anarchists and Socialists separate because of incurable dissensions. The socialist is now the conservative; the "anarchist-syndicalist" is the revolutionary radical, shouting his contempt at every measure of "reform."

It seems to me to have the utmost significance that in this conflict, we see socialists in Italy within five or six years, shift their activities to the creation and strengthening of coöperative banks and distributive associations for the help of small farmers and wage earners. This was due in part to the growing conviction that small farming was not after all to be swallowed up, in any known time, by the big capital-