Untitled

VISIONS OF VICTORY
3Z'6
are laws to prevent both picketing and boycotting, and
even some forms of strikes. The most extraordinary
despotic judicial powers are exercised to crush the unions,
to break strikes, and to imprison union men. And, if
paid professional
armies of detectives deal with the
unions, so paid professional armies of politicians deal
with the socialists. By every form of debauchery, lawlessness,
and corruption they are beaten back, and, although
it is absolutely incredible, not a single representative
of a great party polling nearly a million votes sits
in the Congress of the United States.
Nevertheless, the American socialist and labor movement
is
making headway, and the day
is not far distant
when it will exercise the power its strength merits. Although
somewhat more belated, the various elements of
the working class are coming closer and closer together,
and it cannot be long until there will be perfect harmony
throughout the entire movement. In many other countries
this harmony already exists. The trade-union, cooperative,
and socialist movements are so closely tied
together that they move in every industrial, political, and
commercial conflict in complete accord. So far as the
immediate aims of labor are concerned, they may be
said to be almost identical in all countries. Professor
Werner Sombart, who for years has watched the world
movement more carefully perhaps than anyone else, has
pointed out that there is a strong tendency to uniformity
in all countries— a "tendency," in his own words, "of
the movement in all lands toward socialism." (i) Indeed,
nothing so much astonishes careful observers of
the labor movement as the extraordinary rapidity with
which the whole world of labor is
becoming unified, in
its
program of principles, in its form of organization,
and in its methods of action. The books of Marx and