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56 unions. It is this spirit that turns them like one man against "court injunctions" and deepens their suspicion against the courts themselves.

In trying to account for a world impulse like Socialism and even more for one like Syndicalism with its theoretic fascinations and the bravado of its practice, we may save ourselves much trouble if these balked hopes in the history of reform are kept in mind. In the half dozen countries where Syndicalism has made itself really felt—where, as "proletariat" or the "fourth estate," it has made men stop to listen and reflect, we shall find the same story of disappointed expectations. Politicians of every ilk and shade had promised results that did not come. Incoming governments held out hopes that were not realized. Wherever these disappointments reach a certain portion of the wage earners, Syndicalism gets its first expression. It began in France, where labor unions were so organized as to secure political influence, the results of which could be tested:—where very few years were enough to show what politics could do for them and what it could not do. It began when the older unions (craft organizations) had come to see how little they had done or were likely to do for their own uplifting. Many a union had won advantages for itself, but these were always checked by the employer's use of new machinery plus easy access to tenfold larger numbers outside the unions, always there, to keep wages low. The part played by several of these French unions led, moreover, to a momentous discovery that economic forces, transportation and electricity were so safely in the hands