Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/149

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"DIRECT ACTION"
137

a writer for the French La Bataille Syndicaliste. It has the more value, as it was "passed upon" by Haywood, Bohn and Ettor—the two former associate editors on the International Socialist Review. The writer, Mr. André Tridon, shows at once how difficult it is to distinguish direct action from sabotage. Both alike are schools of solemn and vigorous instruction for the destruction of capitalism. Syndicalists, he assures us, "do not recognize the employer's right to live any more than a physican recognizes the right of typhoid bacilli to thrive at the expense of a patient, the patient merely keeping alive." He shows the importance of studying market conditions so that the blow may fall when the employer is "rushed with orders." Two syndicalist veterans, Pouget and Faure, have recently dealt with "technical instruction as revolution's handmaid" which Mr. Tridon offers us for up-to-date suggestiveness.

"The electrical industry is one of the most important industries, as an interruption in the current means a lack of light and power in factories; it also means a reduction in the means of transportation and a stoppage of the telegraph and telephone systems.

"How can the power be cut off? By curtailing in the mine the output of the coal necessary for feeding the machinery or stopping the coal cars on their way to the electrical plants. If the fuel reaches its destination what is simpler than to set the pockets on fire and have the coal burn in the yards instead of the furnaces? It is child's play to put out of work the elevators and other automatic devices which carry coal to the fireroom.