Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/183

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THE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE
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prospered, more than one politician has cast languishing eyes on their cash-box, and would like to see the party supported by the income from the bakery and the grocery, as the Israelite consistories in many countries live on the dues from the Jewish butchers.[1]

The syndicates may be very useful in electoral propaganda; a certain amount of skill is needed to utilise them profitably, but politicians do not lack lightness of finger. Guérard, the secretary of the railway syndicate, was once one of the most ardent revolutionaries in France; in the end, however, it was borne in upon him that it was easier to play with politics than to prepare for the general strike;[2] he is to-day one of those men in whom the Direction du Travail has most confidence, and in 1902 he went to a great deal of trouble in order to secure the return of Millerand to Parliament. There is a very large railway station in the constituency which the Socialist minister sought to represent, and, without the support of Guérard, Millerand would probably have been defeated. In the Socialiste of September 14, 1902, a Guesdist denounced this conduct, which seemed to him doubly

  1. In Algeria the scandals in the administration of the consistories (the administrative councils of the Jewish community), which had become sinks of electoral corruption, compelled the Government to reform them; but the recent law respecting the separation of the Churches and the State will probably bring about a return to the old practices.
  2. An attempt to organise a railway strike was made in 1898; Joseph Reinach says this about it: "A very shady individual, Guérard, who had founded an association of railway workers and employees which had a membership of 20,000, intervened (in the conflict with the navvies of Paris) with the announcement of a general strike of his syndicate. … Brisson authorised search warrants, had the stations guarded by soldiery, and placed lines of sentinels along the track; nobody came out" (Histoire de l'affaire Dreyfus, tome iv. pp. 310–311. Nowadays the Guérard syndicate is in such good odour with the Government that the latter has granted it permission to start a big lottery. On May 14, 1907, Clemenceau spoke of it in the Chamber as a body of " sensible and reasonable people," opposed to the goings-on of the Confédération du Travail.