Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/77

 Rh no process of reasoning which can resolve such a problem, wiseacres suggest recourse to arbitration; Rabelais would have suggested recourse to the chance of the dice. When the strike is important, deputies loudly demand an inquiry, with the object of discovering whether the industrial leaders are properly fulfilling their duties as good masters.

Certain results are obtained in this way—which nevertheless seem absurd—because on the one hand the large employers of labour have been brought up with religious, philanthropic, and civic ideas; and on the other hand because they cannot show themselves too stubborn, when certain demands are made by people occupying a high position in the country. Conciliators stake their vanity on succeeding, and they would be extremely hurt if industrial leaders prevented them from making social peace. The workmen are in a much more favourable position, because the prestige of the peacemakers is very much less with them than with the capitalists; the latter give way, therefore, much more easily than the workers, in order to allow these well-intentioned folk the glory of ending the conflict. It is noticeable that these proceedings very rarely succeed when the matter is in the hands of workmen who have become rich literary, moral, or sociological considerations have very little effect upon people born outside the ranks of the middle classes.

People who are called upon to intervene in disputes in this way are misled by what they have seen of certain secretaries of syndicates, whom they find much less irreconcilable than they expected, and who seem to them to be ripe for a recognition of the idea of social peace. In the course of conciliation meetings more than one revolutionary has shown that he aspires to become a member of the middle class, and there are many intelligent,