If that be so, it seems to me there need be no fear, under a free government, where every man is given opportunity to get an education, where every man is encouraged to develop in himself and bring to the service of the community the best that is in him, that racial difficulties should not finally be adjusted, and white man and black man live, each helping rather than hindering the other.
CHAPTER VI STRIKES AND FARM LABOUR IN ITALY AND HUNGARY
There is one English word which seems to be more widely known and used in Europe than almost any other. It is the word "strike." Labour strikes, I have understood, had their origin with the factory system in England. But the people on the Continent have improved on the original English device, and have found ways of using it of which we in America, I suspect, have rarely if ever heard.
It seems to me that during my short journey in Europe I heard of more kinds of strikes, and learned more about the different ways in which this form of warfare can be used, than I ever learned before in all my life. In Europe one hears, for example, of "political" strikes, of "general" strikes, and of "agricultural" strikes—harvest strikes—which are a peculiar and interesting variety of the ordinary labour strikes. There are rent strikes, "hunger riots," strikes of students, even of legislatures, and when I was in Budapest some one called my attention to an account in one of the papers of what was called a "house strike."
This was a case in which the tenants of one of the large tenement buildings or apartment houses of the city had gone on strike to compel the landlord to reduce the rent. They had hung the landlord in effigy in the big central court around which the building is erected; decorated the walls and balconies with scurrilous placards, and then created such a disturbance by their jeers and outcries, supplemented with fish horns, that the whole neighbourhood was roused. The house strikers took this way to advertise their grievances, gain public sympathy, and secure reduction of the rent.
I had an opportunity, during my stay in Europe, to get some first-hand information in regard to these continental strikes. I was in Berlin just before and after the three days' battle between the striking coalyard men of Moabit and the police, in the course of which several of the officers and hundreds of the people were wounded. For several days one section of Berlin was practically in a state of siege. The police charged the crowd with their horses, trampled the people under foot, and cut them down with their swords. The soldiers hunted the strikers into the neighbouring houses, where they attempted to barricade themselves and replied to the attacks of the police by hurling missiles from the windows of the houses into the streets below. At night the streets were in darkness, because the strikers had cut the electric wires, thus shutting off the lights, so that the police were compelled to carry torches in order to distinguish friends from foes.
At another time, while I was in Fiume, Hungary, I had an opportunity to see for myself the manner and spirit in which these strikes are conducted, or, rather, the way in which they are put down by the police.
I had gone out one day to visit the emigrant station, which is situated on the outskirts of the city, and noticed, on my way thither, a number of policemen on the car. Then, apparently at a signal from a man in charge, they seemed to melt away. Half an hour later, while I was at the emigrant station, I was startled by loud cries outside the building. Every one rushed to the windows. The street was crowded with men, women, and children, all running helter-skelter in the direction of the city. Some of the hands in a nearby factory had gone on strike. I could not at first understand why every one seemed in such a state of terror. Very soon I learned, however, that they were running from the police, and a moment later the police themselves moved into view.