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244 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
where the trade-union organization is
exist. (15)
feeble or does not
Still another factor forces the French trade unions
to rely upon violence, and that is their poverty. The
trade-unionists in the Latin countries dislike to pay
dues, and the whole organized labor movement as a result
lives constantly from hand to mouth. "The fundamental
condition which determines the policy of direct
action," says Dr. Louis Levine in his excellent monograph
on "The Labor Movement in France," "is the poverty
of French syndicalism. Except for the Federation
du Livre, only a very few federations pay a more or less
regular strike benefit the rest have
;
barely means enough
to provide for their administrative and organizing expenses
and cannot collect any strike funds worth mentioning.
The French workingmen, therefore, are forced
. . .
to fall back on other means during strikes.
Quick action,
intimidation, sabotage, are then suggested to them by
their very situation and by their desire to win." (16)
That this is an accurate analysis is, I think, proved by
the fact that the biggest strikes and the most unruly are
invariably to be found at the very beginning
of the
attempts to organize trade unions. That is certainly
true of England, and in our own country the great strikes
of the seventies were the birth-signs of trade unionism.
In France, Italy, and Spain, where trade unionism is
still
in its infancy, we find that strikes are more unruly and
violent than in other countries.
It is a mistake to believe
that riots, sabotage, and crime are the result of organization,
or the product of a philosophy of action. They are
the acts of the weak and the desperate; the product of
a mob psychology that seems to be roused to action whenever
and wherever the workers first begin
faintest glimmering of solidarity.
to realize the
History clearly proves