Syndicalist Lagardelle has recently cried out for a "revision of the facts and the ideas" of his order. "After a glorious beginning," he says, "we find ourselves faced with what generally results from forced marches—complete exhaustion." English Syndicalism, since the pitiable failure of the dockers' strike, is eating the same bitter fruit. The over-stimulated activity of the strike will enfeeble the I. W. W. as it did the Knights of Labor. The power of the strike is in its restraint, not in its profusion.
But the greater lesson is that the Knights of Labor, like the I. W. W., brought to the front an ideal relationship of labor that does not stand the strain put upon it. It is pleasant to say that the interests of Western lumbermen are one with those of New Jersey Glass Blowers, but a conflict with employers in the lumber camp may prove within a week that, for the fighting moment, they have nothing in common with far-off glass blowers or with labor in an hundred other removed industries. Soon after 1880, this actual conflict of interests between craft unions and the Knights of Labor set in with increasing violence. It was found that "craft autonomy" had its own sturdy vitality. In the first high enthusiasms, organizers were sent broadcast to create new unions.[1] They were chartered and set on their way irrespective of any grievance with employer, past or present. One or two years passed when it slowly became clear to the members that their
