The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 263 pages of information about The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3.

The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 263 pages of information about The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3.

* * * * *

At first sight it may seem that, after all, the experiment in syndicalism was on a small scale, and that its lesson can hardly be of great value to a country like America.  A little consideration may correct such a misapprehension.  New Zealand was deliberately selected by the Syndicalists as a test case, for two reasons.  In the first place it was the only country that had for years adopted a policy of justice according to law for both workers and employers, and from the syndicalist’s point of view it was therefore the only country that seriously attacked their own policy by showing that it was unnecessary.  In the second place New Zealand was the only country with a population of British origin that could be dealt with practically by itself.  With the aid of an Australian boycott it seemed as if her people must be helpless in the hands of the Federation.  The result proved to be not only the defeat of the principle of lawless syndicalism, but the destruction of the industrial association that represented it in the country.  No compromise was accepted, and except it may be in name, no Union attached to the Federation of Labor remains at work.  The question, of course, suggests itself:  What was the reason?  Minor reasons may be found, no doubt, to account for failure where success was so confidently expected; but there can be little doubt that the real cause is the policy pursued by the Legislature and people of New Zealand for the last twenty years.  Syndicalism, like all plans for the over turn, or reform, as their advocates would perhaps prefer to call it, of existing institutions, depends for success on the existence of wrongs by which part of the people is impoverished, while another, and very small part, has more than enough.  The workers of our own race, at any rate, have enough common-sense to understand, at least when they are not hysterically excited, that imaginary wrongs are not a sufficient reason for great sacrifices.  New Zealand’s legislation has not created an ideal society, it is true; but for twenty years it has proceeded step by step in the direction of righting the wrongs of the past, and giving opportunity to that part of its people that needed it most, on the single condition that they would use it, and respect the rights of others.  To such a people, increasing steadily, year by year, in all that makes for well-being, the wild denunciations, and if possible wilder promises, of paid agitators can have little attraction.  It may be possible by careful generalship to stir a small section of such a people to the hysterical excitement of an industrial war, but the mass of the people would be certain to resent it, and the movement will be doomed to a speedy collapse.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.