Revolutionary spirits for half a century have speculated upon the strike and the logic to which it leads. An Egyptian scholar tells me he could make a book on strikes in Ancient Egypt. It is one of the oldest weapons with which labor has tried to defend itself against demands or conditions no longer felt to be endurable. It still has uses sacred as liberty, but never was this strong-sword so costly or so dangerous; never did it require higher skill and caution to wield it wisely than it does today.
The guild-life of the Middle Ages was filled with strikes. Like a shadow they followed the whole history of the trade union through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nor were they by any means confined to labor organizations. Organization gave them a dreaded power with which employer and the law have to reckon.
The danger of the strike has increased (especially for those who use it) with every tightening of the social and industrial organism.[1]
Syndicalism revives the strike and seeks a new significance in the logic of this labor agency. If a little strike brings some bit of industry to a standstill and a large sympathetic strike paralyzes a lot of industries, is it not obvious that the "strike-universal" would stop every wheel and every productive activity in the world's workshop? It would be as effective as Tolstoi's cry to the millions of his countrymen—"just stop paying taxes—all of you together—and Government is at an end." If "all together" they would re-
- ↑ Some one should do for industrial warfare what Norman Angel has done for war between nations, in "The Great Illusion."
