Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Socialism and Politics (1903).djvu/14

 14 few days in the daily telegrams that in Arragonia the nine hours' day, now in force there, is to undergo a further reduction. Does it not compare favourably with the promised legal nine hours' day in Germany?

Happily enough, the German workers begin to lose faith in the promises of the politicians. Their trade unions, which were formerly so bitterly opposed by the Marxists, are meekly courted by them now, since they number over 1,000,000 men (this is the figure given by the Reformer's Year Book), and they seem to be so little under the influence of the Social-Democratic leaders that, after all they have heard from them about the uselessness of strikes and the wickedness of a general strike, they sent the other day their hearty congratulations and promises of support to their Dutch brothers who had proclaimed the general strike in Holland. As to the intellectual and social movement which is going on in connection with the more advanced trade unions in Germany, it seems to be a subject of deep interest.

Striking facts could be mentioned from the labour history of France, to show how the young labour organisations, the strikes, and the labour revolts were instrumental in wresting from the middle class rulers a number of concessions; but space forbids us to mention more than one fact.

Up to 1883, trade unions and all sorts of associations of more than nineteen persons were strictly forbidden in France. Only in 1883, the restriction was abolished by the law of the syndicates, and from that time began the present labour movement, the agricultural syndicates (1,500,000 members now), the Labour Exchanges, and the rest. And if you ask any politician. What induced, in 1883, the Opportunist Ministry to take this far-reaching step? you will be told that it was the Anarchist movement at Lyons (for which fifty of us were imprisoned in 1882), the unemployed processions in Paris under the black flag, during one of which Louise Michel "pillaged" a baker's shop, and perhaps above all that, the secret labour organisations which sprang up and rapidly spread among the miners of Montceau-les-Mines and in all the mining basin, and resulted in a series of explosions. …. Guesde and his friends, at that time, were