Socialism and Democracy in Europe

by Samuel Peter Orth

In one week the soldiery, under the determined minister, had done its work. The strike was over. The government refused to reinstate about 2,000 men employed on the state railway.

The strike committee issued a manifesto excusing the failure of the strike, assuming the full responsibility for calling it, and affirming that the government had "lowered itself to the level of the most barbarous employer."

The strike was hastily conceived, never had the sympathy of the public, and the destruction of property was deplored even by the labor unions, which, when it was all over, passed resolutions condemning sabotage. The leaders of the Syndicalists, the plotters of the strike, no doubt believed that the time was opportune. The Prime Minister and two of his cabinet, Viviani and Millerand, were Socialists, and a third member, Barthou, was a Radical who had as a private member of the Chamber, a short time before his appointment to the cabinet, vigorously defended the railway men's "right to strike." But official responsibility had its usual effect.[17]

Now began a series of dramatic events in the Chamber. The united Socialists maintained that the men had a legal right to strike and that the government had denied to French citizens their legal privileges. Briand replied (October 25) that the strike had nothing to do with the labor problem. The government, had been confronted with "an enterprise designed to ruin the country, an anarchistic movement with civil war for its aim, and violence and organized destruction for its method"; and he had treated it as a rebellion, not as a strike. The government, he said, had evidence of a well-laid plot for sabotage; and the Syndicalist idea of liberty he characterized as a "hideous figure of license."

Millerand (October 27) characterized the strike as a "criminal enterprise," and the saboteurs as "criminals" guilty of "a revolutionary mobilization with a political object." For the Socialists Bouveri, a miner, replied. He defended bomb-throwing and sabotage; asked the Minister of War if, in case of invasion by a foreign foe, he would not blow up the bridges; and said the strikers were engaged in a social war and had the same excuse for destroying property.

The climax of the debate came October 29, when Briand, turning to the Socialists, said: "I am going to tell you something that will make you jump (que vous faire bondir). If the government had not found in the law that which enabled it to remain master of the frontiers of France and master of its railways, which are the indispensable instruments of the national defense; if, in a word, the government had found it necessary to resort to illegality, it would have done so."

No words can describe the disorder of the scene that followed this challenge. Cries of "Dictator!" "Resign!" were mingled with catcalls and hisses. Finally Jaurès was heard in bitter rebuke of his former comrade. Viviani answered Jaurès; they had fought together the battles of the workingman and would do so still "if Socialism had not adopted the methods of sabotage, of anti-patriotism, and of anarchy."

A few weeks later Briand and his cabinet resigned, although sustained by a majority of the Chamber. But President Fallières immediately requested the dauntless Prime Minister to form a new cabinet. In his new program he included measures that would greatly strengthen the arms of the government in times of strikes, punishing sabotage by heavy fines and penalties, penalizing the public railway servant for striking, and contemplating an elaborate system of conciliation boards patterned after Millerand's plan.

These rigorous suggestions increased the flame of hatred against him, and his life was threatened. Nothing daunted, he proceeded in his warfare against the C.G.T., which he denounced as a handful of plotters exercising a wicked tyranny over Socialists and workingmen. Finally, February 27, 1911, he resigned, refusing to hold office by the sufferance of the reactionary Right. The Socialists voted with their enemies to dethrone their first Premier, whom they considered a traitor to the course.[18]

So ended one of the most significant episodes of modern political history. Every government, especially every democratic government, will within the next few decades be compelled to meet the railway problem and the question of the relation of the government to its state servants.