Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/53

Rh soften these revolts. Arbitration, conciliation, sliding scales, trade agreements,—each in its time has been hailed as peace bringer. Each has done its little work, but, tearing through them all, the gathering unrest makes its way as if these buffers had no existence. Human tenacities like these have no explaining, except in terms of structural changes in society. A letter describing mere glimpses of this suffering in the recent English coal strike adds, "There are such depths of it, that three days were all that I could physically stand merely to observe it, and yet among those suffering most the determination to face it out was almost fierce."

This is a part of the "quiz." Why? Behind all perversities, blunders, betrayals and defeats,—why do these multitudes continue to load themselves with sacrifices so heavy? No copy-book answer can be given to these questions, but a larger answer is possible in terms of changing social and economic experience.

In the second quarter of the last century an Austrian Minister thought it an adequate account of the democratic uprising in Italy, that it was "a mere disease of envy and irreligion." He was sure that a little wholesome severity would at once restore these disturbers to the ways of obedience and common sense. This explanation and the remedy proposed now satisfy only our humor. But it is a bit of history that may well serve us as a mirror. In that feudal explanation and remedy, we may see ourselves in presence of our own industrial rebels. We now know that those early nineteenth century strikers, sick with "envy and irreligion," were fighting for political