Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/130

118 whenever occasion demands— namely, that of making the capitalist suffer. Now there is only one way to do that; that is, to strike him in the place where he carries his heart and soul, his center of feeling—the pocketbook. And that is what those strikers did. They began at once to make the railroads lose money, to make the government lose money, to make transportation a farce so far as France was concerned. Before I left that country, on my first visit—and it was during the time that the strike was on—there were 50,000 tons of freight piled up at Havre, and a proportionately large amount at every other seaport town. This freight the railroaders would not move. They did not move at first, and when they did it was in this way: they would load a trainload of freight for Paris and by some mistake it would be billed through to Lyons, and when the freight was found at Lyons, instead of being sent to the consignee at Paris it was carried straight through the town on to Bayonne or Marseilles or some other place—to any place but where it properly belonged. Perishable freight was taken out by the trainload and sidetracked." This is thought to have added value because of its illustrative details. It offers practical suggestions that may serve as models to the younger pupils of the I. W. W. The event in France was very bracing to Mr. Haywood. "That," he says, "is certainly one splendid example of what the general strike can accomplish for the working class."

Much use is made of the strike on the Italian railways as specially informing because the employes had but one union card,—stenographers,