Apart from its political uses, the "general strike" has been found to be a weapon so dangerous to labor that no instance can be shown of its economic triumph. No one has seen this so clearly as the socialist leaders in every country. If Jaurès, Kautsky, Vandevelde flirt with it, they make it clear that its uses are political. Able studies like that by Henriette Roland-Holst,[1] are not lacking in radical exposition, but it is the political possibilities that are given weight. These leaders feared the very thing that has happened in Sweden, France, and England since the Swedish "general strike" in 1909—namely, its increasing uncontrollable economic disorders.[2] Never was a great strike conducted with less lawlessness than that in Stockholm: never one with more restraint on the part of the State. So careful were the strikers, that they kept their men at work at many points (as lighting and water works) where the public would too keenly suffer. The men coöperated with the police and against open saloon traffic. With more than a quarter of a million men on strike, the opportunity was never fairer for a real trial of this device. When from every source "the rich, the half-rich and their hangers-on" went heartily to work at every sort of job, the leaders said this was to be expected. But this "social uprising" against the strike spread rapidly be-
- ↑ See also General-Streik und Sozialdemokratie, Dresden, 1906.
- ↑ See also Der Politische Massenstreik, by Eduard Bernstein, Breslau, 1905.
talists into submission they are very likely to beat us at the game. They are able to lay up provisions and to buy up what provisions there are on the market, while we are not." The writer expresses the hope that workingmen's coöperation may develop an economic strength on which labor may at last rely for its own support.
