guess how far either the organization or the ideas of the Syndicalists will remain intact at the end of the war, and everything that we shall say is to be taken as applying only to the years before the war. It may be that French Syndicalism as a distinctive movement will be dead, but even in that case it will not have lost its importance, since it has given a new impulse and direction to the more vigorous part of the Labour Movement in all civilized countries, with the possible exception of Germany.
The organization upon which Syndicalism depended was the Confédération Générale du Travail, commonly known as the C.G.T., which was founded in 1895, but only achieved its final form in 1902. It has never been numerically very powerful, but has derived its influence from the fact that in moments of crisis many who were not members were willing to follow its guidance. Its membership in the year before the war is estimated by Mr. Cole at somewhat more than half a million. Trade Unions (Syndicats) were legalized by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1884, and the C.G.T., on its inauguration in 1895, was formed by the federation of 700 Syndicats. Alongside of this organization there existed another, the Fédération des Bourses du Travail, formed in 1893. A Bourse du Travail is a local organization, not of any one trade but of local labour in general, intended to serve as a Labour Exchange and to perform such functions for labour as Chambers of Commerce perform for the employer.[1] A Syndicat is in general a local organization of a single
- ↑ Cole, ib. p. 65.
