Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/47

 manifestations organized in the factories to support their claims were the immediate cause of the events that followed.

During the first days of the new era, in the intoxication of victory, the putting forward of economic claims was scarcely thought of. A Belgian employer told us that he had at once assembled his numerous staff to propose to them that a common agreement on certain points should be drawn up, on the basis of which they would eventually proceed to a revision of the scale of wages which the high cost of living had rendered necessary. But his staff had stopped him before he had well begun his speech, protesting that there could be no question of discussing such a matter, that since the Revolution all were brothers, and they only asked leave to do for their brother what they had heretofore done for their employer.

Nevertheless, Russian workmen were not long in arriving at a somewhat less idyllic conception of the social question. During the early days after the Revolution the workman was still in the streets, or if he happened by chance to go to his factory