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 themselves to this. But under no circumstances could they reconcile themselves to the appointment and dismissal of workers by the factory committees and the control of factories. On the outcome of the struggle they staked their all. This was a violation of the most fundamental right of the employers and the sharpest conflicts during the course of the first period of the Russian Revolution revolved round the question as to who was the master of the factory. The employers were led by the metal works owners. In vain did the Provisional Government, in the sharpest period of the social conflict, attempt to reconcile the hostile sides. When the Minister for Trade and Industry asked the representatives of the management of the Bogolovsky Mining region (Ural) where a conflict was proceeding between the workers and the administration, whether the management were willing to dismiss employees and workers through the conciliation boards, the representative of the employers, Zeidler, declared that "the management does not and will not recognise any committee or board; it is the master of the works and therefore will do as it desires. As to the State Public Control the industrialists do not and will not recognise any such thing." The metal works owners were not alone in this aggressive attitude towards the workers. The union of Baku petroleum owners declared that the masters would never agree to the hiring and dismissing of workers through the factory committees. The same declaration was made by the union of the united industries of the central industrial regions, who would not even permit the thought that the textile workers could control the uncrowned cloth kings. The attitude of the mine owners' union of the South of Russia and other employers' organisation was no less stern against the "criminal claims" of the workers.

In August, 1917, an All-Russia conference of employers' organisations took place in Petrograd on the initiative of the Petrograd manufacturers' association, at which the largest employers' associations representing 2,000 businesses and 1,500,000 employees were represented. At this conference an All Russia League of Manufacturers' Associations was formed. The object of this new League, as Mikhin, the chairman of the council of the metal industry conference, explained, was to "unite the employers in defence of their interests," and to establish "guarantees for the execution of the orders of the League by its branches." Bimanoff, the chairman of the conference, declared that the league will work out "guiding rules for the abolition of interference of the factory committees in factory management."

The employers and their organisations raised their heads particularly high after the defeat of the Petrograd workers in July, 1917. This defeat gave birth to the conviction in the employers' circles that the most dangerous period of the Russian Revolution was over and that it was possible to pass from the defensive to the offensive. July, August, September and October were months of colossal economic conflicts, when hundreds of thousands of workers (the leather workers of the Moscow Government, the miners of the Don Basin, the textile