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2 3 o VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
meaning, and almost immediately it made the tour of the
world as a unique and dreadful revolutionary philosophy.
It became a new "red specter," with a menacing and
subversive program, that created a veritable furore of
discussion in the newspapers and magazines of all countries.
Rarely has a movement aroused such universal
agitation, awakened such world-wide discussions, and
called forth such expressions of alarm as this one, that
seemed suddenly to spring from the depths of the underworld,
full-armed and ready for battle. Everywhere
syndicalism was heralded as an entirely new philosophy.
Nothing like it had ever been known before in the world.
Multitudes rushed to greet
it as a kind of new revelation,
while other multitudes instinctively looked upon it
with suspicion as something that promised once more to
introduce dissension into the world of labor.
What is syndicalism Whence came it and why The
has been answered in a hundred books
the mean-
first question
written in the last ten years. In all languages
ing of this new philosophy of industrial warfare has been
made clear. There is hardly a country in the world that
has not printed several books on this new movement,
and, although the word itself cannot be found in our
dictionaries, hardly anyone who reads can have escaped
gaining some acquaintance with its purport. The other
question, however, has concerned few, and almost no one
has traced the origin of syndicalism to that militant group
of anarchists whom the French Government had endeavored
to annihilate. After the series of tragedies which
ended with the murder of Carnot, the French police
hunted the anarchists from pillar
to post. Their groups
were broken up, their papers suppressed, and their leaders
kept constantly under the surveillance of police
agents. Every man with anarchist sympathies was