government employer, which had been maintaining toward them exactly the same relationship as any private oppressor and exploiter. Since that event, the movement among government workers in France has become more general, embracing in its scope such categories of employes as teachers, prison wardens, employes in the mints, and even those working in the supply and commissary departments of the army. Some of these, and other divisions of state and municipal employes in France, recently signed a manifesto protesting against the attempts of the Clemenceau ministry to suppress the movement toward organization of government employes, a movement which asserts the right to strike, as well.
The government employes of France are also taking steps to bring about affiliation of their bodies with the unions of private industry organized in the General Confederation of Labor. These events in France, together with comments by union speakers and papers, show that the syndicalists of that country recognize no vital distinction between employers, public or private[1].
Wherein, we may then inquire, does the extension of capitalist governmental functions to industry in European countries constitute a "step towards socialism?"
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- ↑ The revolt against government employes is not confined to France. In far away New Zealand, the "paradise of workingmen" and the "land of government ownership," we note the same thing. A recent issue of the Weekly Herald, of Wellington, N. Z., has this interesting item:
"Much is being made of the strike at the State coal mine. Apparently it has been assumed that the employment of workers by the State deprives men of the right or inclination to strike. A purely fallacious assumption. The State is very often a worse master than the majority of private employers, and under the State, as under a private employer, the worker has a right to sell his labor to the best advantage. That's what the miners at the State coal mine are doing. They know the Arbitration Court, as at present constituted, to be Dead Sea fruit. They cut themselves clear of the Act, and set out to get a better return for their labor."
Since the above appeared (1910) numerous writers and investigators, notably the socialist, Charles Edward Russell of the United States, have pointed out in detail the essentially capitalist character of "government ownership" in New Zealand.
