organization more or less corresponds in America to what the C.G.T. was in France before the war. The differences between the two are those due to the different economic circumstances of the two countries, but their spirit is closely analogous. The I.W.W. is not united as to the ultimate form which it wishes society to take. There are Socialists, Anarchists, and Syndicalists among its members. But it is clear on the immediate practical issue: that the class war is the fundamental reality in the present relations of labour and capital, and that it is by industrial action, especially by the strike, that emancipation must be sought. The I.W.W., like the C.G.T., is not nearly so strong numerically as it is supposed to be by those who fear it. Its influence is based, not upon its numbers, but upon its power of enlisting the sympathies of the workers in moments of crisis.
The Labour movement in America has been characterized on both sides by very great violence. Indeed, the Secretary of the C.G.T., Monsieur Jouhaux, recognizes that the C.G.T. is mild in comparison with the I.W.W. "The I.W.W.," he says, "preach a policy of militant action, very necessary in parts of America, which would not do in France."[1] A very interesting account of it, from the point of view of an author who is neither wholly on the side of labour nor wholly on the side of the capitalist, but disinterestedly anxious to find some solution of the social question short of violence and revolution, is the work of Mr. John Graham Brooks called "American Syndicalism: the
- ↑ Quoted in Cole, ib. p. 128.
