In March, 1909, the post-office clerks and telegraph operators went out on strike. The government promptly discharged thirty-eight of the ringleaders and arrested eight of the strikers in Paris on the charge of resisting the police. In the course of a few days over 800 out of 15,000 employees were discharged. Soldiers were introduced into the service, and with the help of local chambers of commerce and other civic bodies the postal service was renewed. The strikers were then willing to make terms. They stipulated that the dismissed employees be reinstated and that M. Simyan, the Under-Secretary of Posts and Telegraphs, be dismissed. The first request was conceded, the second was denied. The ostensible cause of the strike had been the attitude of the under-secretary; the men asserted that he was arbitrary and had imposed petty political exactions upon them. The government refused to allow the men to dictate its affairs, the under-secretary remained, and the men went back to work.
The Socialists censured the government for not being considerate with the men, and placed the entire blame upon the ministry for refusing the national employees a right to organize as other workmen. To this Simyan replied: "We are in the presence of an organized revolutionary agitation ... this is blackmail by strike." The Minister of Public Works said: "Over our heads these officials have revolted against you and against the entire nation. These are serious hours when the government needs perfect facilities of communication with its ambassadors and consuls [the Balkan question was in the pot], and in such hours a strike is an attack upon the national sovereignty. In these circumstances I cannot re-enter into negotiations with the general postal association. If I did so that would mean abdication."[12] The Socialist deputies voted against the government's resolution "not to tolerate strikes of functionaries."
The general strike committee was not discharged when the men returned to work. When it became evident that the government did not intend to ask the under-secretary for his resignation the post-office employees organized a trade union, unauthorized by law. The government refused to meet representatives of this union, on the ground that state employees had organized for one purpose only, namely, to have the right to strike, and the government would not concede that right.
On May 12 a second general post-office strike was called. The government immediately dismissed over two hundred of the strikers. The Socialists in the Chamber began a demonstration against the government. One of their number started the "Internationale," the Socialist war-song. After the first blush of indignation had passed, the whole Chamber sprang to its feet, there were shouts of protest, a Republican started the Marseillaise, and the two revolutionary hymns, bourgeois and proletarian, were blended for the first time in a parliamentary chamber.
Now the general confederation of labor (C.G.T.) took charge of the strike, and soon plots began to be carried out in various parts of the country. There were indications of violence everywhere. The general committee of the C.G.T. declared a general strike. The situation threatened to become serious, but the soldiers distributed over the affected territory had a tranquilizing effect. Men in other trades were reluctant to follow the orders of the committee. A few electric workers succeeded in cutting some wires in Paris, leaving the city in darkness a few hours. There were desultory acts of sabotage, but there was more terror than enthusiasm, and in two days the general strike was over.[13]
Here was an attempt to place the 800,000 French state employees into the revolutionary current of the C.G.T. The real question at issue was this: Is striking an act of mutiny? Barthou, a member of the ministry, said in the Chamber of Deputies that "the more solemnly you denounce the strike as a crime against the state, the greater the victory of the Syndicalists." The Syndicalist journal, Le Voix du Peuple, the day after the first strike was settled proclaimed "the victory which our comrades of the postal proletariat have won over their employer the state." This, they said, showed that the state conceded the main contention of Syndicalism—that it is not different from a private employer. And the Syndicalists gloried in the fact that the government, instead of treating the strikers as mutineers, parleyed with them and reinstated them.
Clémenceau brought in a bill designed to relieve the situation by fixing the status of the state employees. The men were to be given the right of association for "professional" purposes only,—i.e., for improving their efficiency,—but were absolutely prohibited from striking and from joining other unions. A comprehensive civil-service reform was embodied in the bill, aimed to prevent the men from becoming victims of political abuse.
Before the bill could be thoroughly considered the Clémenceau ministry fell and a new Prime Minister was called to the helm. This was none other than Aristide Briand, the first Socialist Prime Minister in European history. His former comrades had long before this disowned him, and he was soon to participate in events that would forever alienate them. He had been a furious Socialist, an anti-militarist, and defender of the general strike. In the Socialist congress at Paris, 1899, he said: "The general strike has the seductive advantage that it is nothing but the practice of an intangible right. It is a revolution which arises within the law. The workingman refuses to carry the yoke of misery any farther and begins the revolution in the field of his legal rights. The illegality must begin with the capitalist class, if it allows itself to be provoked into destroying a right which they themselves have professed to be holy." At the same meeting he expressed himself on the soldiery as follows: "If the command to fire is given, if the officers are stubborn enough to try to force the soldiers against their will, then the guns might be fired, but perhaps not in the direction the officers thought." Briand repeated these sentiments at the Amsterdam congress in 1903.
This was the man whom destiny had chosen to lead the French government against the organized revolt of government employees.
On assuming the premiership he announced his program: