Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/31

 it still continued its agitation policy against the bourgeoisie with unwearied zeal. Strikes broke out one after the Other. Their purpose was to introduce the eight-hour working-day. This demand was quickly acceded to in several industries, but new causes for strikes were continually found. The worst confusion was brought about In the agricultural world. During the busiest seed-time strike upon strike was organised among the farm hands. They too demanded an eight-hour working-day, a claim which it would be most difficult to give general sanction to within this sphere of activity. A lot of the strikes were started out of pure spitefulness. It was dissatisfaction with a foreman and the demand that he should be discharged, or there was something the matter with the food or the houses; often a strike was proclaimed against the food crisis. The farm hands refused to belabour the soil and sow, thinking by this refusal to enforce bigger rations.

The strikes often assumed a violent character. The strikers prevented the people on the farms from milking or feeding the cows. The farmers were locked up and threatened with death if they did not agree to the demands of the "people," the dairies were closed by force, and there were conflicts, with stone-throwing, stabbing and shooting with revolvers.

The leaders of the Labour Party might, of course, have done much to stop this movement which, for every week that passed, assumed more plainly the character of arbitrariness and violence. But they did not. The reasons for this were many. In part they were not able, and in part they were not willing to interfere with the violent agitation of the masses. This would have demanded co-operation with the bourgeoisie, and such co-operation was not desired. It would have demanded the established of an active native police force—a Government