Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/211

Rh Thus far we have to do with the syndicalist purpose and idea. Through the word "coöperative" we pass from the idea to its proposed applications in practice. This constructive suggestion touches anarchistic and communist ideals long familiar to us. These seek to develop local autonomous groups, federated "as necessity arises," but united in their loathing of a centralized bureaucratic State. These decentralized activities are to preserve for the individual "the utmost freedom consistent with conditions set by these voluntary associations."

This suggestive idealist counts upon the renaissance of democratic coöperation to further this end. He illustrates it by two instances, one in industry and the other upon the land:

"The Bottle Blowers' Industrial Union of Italy has discovered the material, technical, commercial, and moral capacities for getting hold, within a comparatively short period of time, of the biggest share of the Italian bottle industry, and sooner or later it will undoubtedly rim the whole industry through its coöperatives."

"The force which these workers have substituted for individual and associated capitalist initiative, namely, the collective effort and efficiency of their organized class, foreshadows to Syndicalists the future, with its economic progress and continuously growing moral improvement."

In agriculture, the basic industry of Italy, the same factors are at work on a much larger scale. Here he tells us some 200,000 acres have passed into the hands of the farm laborers organized into unions and