epic of hope, reflecting upon every page his own generous spirit. But labor there today shows a surly disposition. In some of the severer conflicts, the act is so feared that settlement is sought outside the act. Yet Mr. Reeves, its author, told a Boston audience that the act was conceived to meet this very class of strikes.[1]
After watching the workings of the act for several years, trade unions in England and the United States bluntly and stubbornly refuse their approval, while Socialists of prominence like Charles Edward Russell have only boisterous ridicule for the act.
Let it be said again that these reforms have "paid their way." Utter failure is not to be charged against them. As in Emerson's poem, these reforms, like the Dervish, have not brought diadems; their offering was only homely and useful fruits. It is our habit to exclaim, "But if men do not expect diadems, they will not give themselves greatly and pluckily to their tasks." For herbs and apples, they will not suffer as Mazzini suffered. Hauntingly before him he must see the shining towers beneath which dwells his "cleansed and perfected Republic." One wonders if he would have starved and risked his life an hundred times for the actual Italy of 1912, with its war against Tripoli. Would those who bore all the weary buffeting in early trade union organization have done it for the existing American Federation of Labor? One chief source of I. W. W. rebelling is the embittered sense
- ↑ Recently a New Zealander, W. D. Stewart, and an American economist, Professor Le Rossignol, have given us the sobered estimate of this act in their volume, State Socialism in New Zealand.
