Page:The Social General Strike - Arnold Roller (1912).djvu/28

 that all hope lay in the election of the candidates of their party. They even stated so quite openly and cynically in an article in the Neue Zeit in which they first blamed the Anarchists for the failure of the strike, and further on declared that the defeat also had one good side to be looked upon: "that it had weakened the belief in the General Strike" and ruined confidence in the "Anarchistic trouble-makers." Think of it, the grand old man Nieuwenhuis, the father of the Labour movement in Holland, "a trouble-maker"!

Lastly, there is no reason for being surprised about this, because all those for whom the Labour movement is nothing but a means to become prominent in politics, to gain wealth and power (a fitting name for them is "social parasites"), always were against revolutionary movements by which their political position was put in danger, or by which they could be personally injured.

In October, 1903, the revolutionary General Strike in Bilbao again commanded general attention; 25,000 miners were on strike in order to do away with the truck system and to gain sanitary improvements in the mines. When, after a period of two weeks, the prospects still seeming to be in favour of the strikers, the mine owners began to evict the strikers from their houses, 65,000 working men of other trades declared a sympathetic strike, and the General Strike with this attained a real revolutionary character. The working men took provisions from the warehouses and destroyed the railway tracks by the use of dynamite and gun cotton. Even the mines were greatly damaged. When, after the third day, other cities joined in the strike and the miners began to completely demolish the mines, the mine owners became frightened and quickly gave in and consented to all demands in question. This strike had a double value, because Bilbao was the only city in Spain where the Social Democrats had a strong influence, and where they so far had assured the miners that the truck system could be removed only by Parliament, and that for this reason they should elect as many Socialist candidates as possible, and they would attend to the matter for them.

In April, 1904, occurred a General Strike of the railway employees of Hungary, which surprised the world through its unexpected outbreak. Without any organisation whatever 50,000 employees quitted work at the same time. At 12 o'clock midnight prompt all trains stopped on the road, and all station masters, of whom a large number were officers of the reserve troops, took part like a man. The Government, however, could help itself by calling in the reserves, of whom 11,000 were amongst the strikers, and they succeeded in forcing them in this manner to perform their duties as soldiers. This again proves that the propaganda of the General Strike must be supplemented by anti-military propaganda.

In September, 1904, there occurred a General Strike in Italy. Inside of two days the General Strike broke out in a hundred cities as a protest against the use of soldiers and firearms in Labour troubles. Again, without any organisation, against the will of the Social Democratic leaders, propagated and managed by the Anarchists, the General Strike was declared in Milan, and later on all large cities and industrial centres joined in with unanimous enthusiasm.