Manufacturers, in explaining to his constituents the meaning of the agreement, said:
"Even in the early October days the real situation was clear. The question was this: how could we save industry? How could we protect the employing class from the sweeping socialization of all branches of industry, from nationalization, and the threatening revolution?"[1]
The answer, of employers and trade union leaders alike, to the menacing problem of revolution, was the Stinnes-Legien agreement. And events proved it an effective solution. After the 15th of November, when it was signed, the task confronting the two groups of capitalists and workers was to confine the great upheaval to the terms and stipulations of this agreement. And both co-operated together successfully to that end. In the industrial field, the union officials and employers, acting jointly, established the shop committees, the "Arbeitsgemeindschaft," and other reforms, and then stopped dead; while in the political field, the "revolutionary" government, dominated by the Majority Socialists, obediently enacted the provisions of the trade union agreement into law, one after the other, with rubber-stamp precision, and there it, too, halted, giving the workers nothing more in legislative way except equal suffrage and one or two other political rattles and tin whistles.
Nor could all the stormy opposition of the Independents and the Communists force either the trade unions or the Socialist Government one step further than this agreed-upon program. Thousands of militant workers died trying to break the infamous trade union pact and to force the situation into real revolution! But all in vain: the agreement prevailed even to its minor details. When, during the tumultous days of January, 1919, it seemed that the radical elements might succeed in their purpose and upset it, Noske, by building up volunteer regiments of reactionaries and by reinstating the Imperialist officers in the army command, simply called in the other party to
- ↑ "Enstchung, Bedeutung, und Ziel der Arbeitsgemeindschaft," P. 6.
