Syndicalism at its best has got far beyond this naïve proposal that miners are alone to own and dispose of the product; that railway employees, textile workers and shoemakers are each to have exclusive possession of the industry in which they happen just then to be working. Little reflection is needed to show that this would leave us with the same old difficulties of privileged and parasitic groups. While one finds plenty of youthful Syndicalists who have not got beyond this artless conception, the more mature thought is of a "federated administration" that shall distribute unearned increment and advantage to the social whole. Here in some form is the "Grand Lodge" of Owen's days.
In contagious enthusiasm and rapidity of growth, this forerunner far outmatches anything yet accomplished by modern Syndicalism. More than four hundred thousand workers were grouped into fellowship fired with expectation of some great oncoming event. So quick was the exhaustion, that the story is one of the most pathetic in labor annals.
Of the real power of capitalistic industry, there seems to have been, even among the leaders, no slightest intimation, and quite as little sense of the law and its influence over property rights. This over-heated movement left its own priceless legacy of coöperative impulse, though with only faintest resemblance to the expected reformation.
Adequately to fill out these origins, Chartism also would claim notice. This is usually described as a political uprising and, therefore anti-Syndicalist. But it had also its outcry against politics. There was direct onslaught against actual politicians; the
