This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
IV
THE PRESENT ISSUE
41

unionists had passed by, and had left to the economic elements.

Nevertheless, the low grade labourer, when he came to listen to the socialists, had no particular love for them either. If the industries of the country were nationalised, they would only be managed by a big bureaucracy in Whitehall, who were nothing but aristocrats to the docker and his fellows. So casual labour turned to Tom Mann and those who were with him.

And then, in the rapid haste of events, Tom Mann himself, with his idea of "perfect organisation," was left behind by the labourer. The latter had no idea as yet of any such thing as organisation; so, when his opportunity arose, he struck hastily, irregularly, and hard, with consequences that were startling for everybody. He left behind all his advisers, trade unionists, socialists, and syndicalists together, and went out "on his own."

The first immediate result of this rising of low grade labour was that many other allied grades in the country, and many grades immediately above it, contemplated striking too, or did strike.

So far, then, an endeavour has been made to explain the course of events up till now. What of the future?

It is evident that, to the minds of those who seek to control the labour world, all that we have hitherto witnessed, from the downfall of trade unionism up to the rise of occasional anarchy, is but a foretaste of what is to come in the future.