THE BELGIAN STRIKE

[The mass strike of the Belgian workers was carried to an issue last week. The motion of the Liberal member which brought the strike to a close, while it does not specifically grant the reform asked for by the Socialists, is considered such a lien on government action as to amount to a victory for them. These interpretations of the larger significance of the strike from different angles were, of course, written while the struggle was going on.

Mr. Walling, who is a member of the radical wing of the Socialist party, is a student of international Socialism, his most recent book being The Larger Aspects of Socialism. He was in Russia during the Revolution, and knew intimately the details of the great Russian general strike of 1905.—Ed.]

The nation-wide strike for manhood suffrage in Belgium which paralyzed the industries and almost suspended the normal life of the people was foreshadowed in a spectacular demonstration in Brussels two years ago.

On August 15, 1911, the streets of that gay, medieval capital witnessed scenes which every American who looked on knew were making history. Over 60,000 men, from larger and smaller places throughout Belgium, took a day off without wages and paid their way to the capital of their country, in order to voice their protest against the unjust inequalities of the suffrage. The show of force by the extraordinary police and military precautions betrayed the furtive apprehension of both the municipal and national governments as to what might happen. With no sign of timidity or intimation of being overawed, this vast industrial army marched ten abreast for hours—silent, grim, determined, united, unarmed—between long files of armed soldiery which lined the curbs, and past stronger detachments of all arms of the service massed at strategic centers.

The great procession assembled at the Socialist headquarters, a large and impressive building bearing the significant nameMaison de Peuple, the House of the People. The permanent background of the stage in the assembly hall of that building is a colossal head of Jesus of Nazareth, the reverent work of a Belgian Socialist. This House of the People is the most practical expression, or perhaps demonstration, of the co-operative commonwealth in miniature, which is to be found anywhere in the world. Starting with a sack of potatoes and a bag of flour, these wage-workers in ten years erected a building costing $250,000. Of this sum, which was loaned by the national bank, they had then paid $100,000 and had assets worth three times as much as the balance due on the mortgage, which they continue to reduce by annual payments.

In this four-story semi-circular building, at one of the principal business centers, ample accomodations are provided for a great variety of practical agencies. A café, which paid a profit of $2,400 in three months, shares the front of the ground floor with a large co-operative department store, where dry goods, house furnishings, clothing, meats, groceries, butter and milk, hats, hosiery and shoes are sold. A bakery, with a capacity of 125,000 loaves of bread a week;a coal depot, with twenty-nine delivery carts; a laundry, and a clothing manufactory are among the business enterprises conducted here.

The 19,000 co-operating families receive as their share of the profits 12 per cent of the money they pay for bread, 6 per cent of what their groceries cost them and 5 per cent of the purchase price of their clothing. Among the protective features are an employment bureau for men and women, a pharmacy and a corps of thirteen physicians rendering free service to all members of one year’s standing, and a sick benefit society with 8,000 members. Singing and ethical classes are maintained for children and a well-trained orchestra and choral club for adults. Small halls adequately provide for the meetings of the trade sections, and a great auditorium, seating 2,436 persons, rallies the festival gatherings and supplies room for political mass meetings.

From this national center the procession of mid August took up its line of march, carrying banners which took the keynote of their inscriptions from the following figures emblazoned everywhere:

993,070 have 1 vote;

395,866 have 2 votes;

704,549 voters, having two, three or four votes, cast 1,717,871 votes, a majority of 88,523 over those having one vote;

One man one vote!

In Belgium a man over twenty-five years of age gets an extra vote if he owns property. He is granted another vote if he has a university diploma. He casts a fourth vote if he is over thirty-five years of age, is the father of a family and pays taxes on more than a certain amount of property. The majority of the industrial population thus have only one vote, while the rural, well-to-do and richer people outvote each wage earner by two, three or even four votes. The rural population thus controls the city industrial population and the church is charged by the Socialists with controlling the rural vote.

Against this rule of the minority, this great demonstration of 1911 was a protest. But to the onlooker from abroad it then seemed to be a patriotic proclamation of Belgium’s one great hope of national evolution without revolution. The primary cause of the movement which has culminated in the present national strike was the defeat of the liberal and Socialist coalition in parliament by a combination of the government and clerical forces in the elections of 1912. The Socialist congress summoned to meet the issue brought to a crisis by that event decided upon a general strike as a last resort if all other means of obtaining manhood suffrage failed. But before resorting to that measure a general suffrage bill was introduced into parliament by the Socialists and supported by the liberals. As serious consideration of it was refused by the clerical and government authorities, a general strike was voted on April 14.

Whatever the full effect of this national political strike may be, those who are the keenest observers concede that the making of history is in the movement of Belgian labor for one man one vote suffrage.

Certain it is that a movement of the people capable of maintaining and increasing for so many years a labor vote in parliament until it numbers more than one-third of the total must be reckoned with. If now the tolerance of this Belgian Socialist Party toward those who honestly oppose its principles and methods, at this supreme crisis in its history and the national development, grows with its strength and equals its determination, it will improve the greatest opportunity the Socialist cause has ever had in the sphere of practical politics to demonstrate and promote its co-operative commonwealth.

If the Belgian strike is a world-event of the first magnitude for the general public, it has a still greater significance for the world’s ten or twenty million Socialists. The two wings of the Socialist movement are equally interested; the reformers and conciliators, because the strike aims at a purely political reform, and involves co-operation with a part of the capitalists, both in order to win success now and in order to get immediate use out of the suffrage after it is won; the revolutionists and advocates of class struggle because the strike forces a large loss on many unwilling employers and gives training for later and more aggressive strikes for the purpose of raising wages, cutting down profits, and paving the way to social revolution.

These essential facts are being widely understood. Take, for example, the following editorial paragraphs from the influential and progressive, but by no means radical,Chicago Tribune:

“For years the thinkers of the movement in Europe were building up theories about the ‘political mass strike.’ These theories have now been put into practice in Belgium with remarkable precision.

“The strike in Belgium is not a precipitated strike. For months the Socialists of that country have been making preparationsfor it. They have been collecting money, storing provisions, and, what is even more important, educating the workingmen to their theories, training them to respond to the strike call like drilled soldiers. It is not an emotional, not an impulsive strike, therefore, but a coolly thought out, shrewdly calculated battle....

“As a result of this careful planning and training by the leaders 400,000 workingmen responded to Socialist colors with the precision of a trained army. The strike is both a battle and military review. The Socialists now have a clear and adequate view of their strength and numbers. The issue involved in this strike, which is uniform as opposed to plural voting, may be lost. The strike may even be called off by the Socialists themselves after a week or so if the government does not yield by that time. But the advantages which Socialism has gained by this census of its army is incalculable. It knows how much of the Belgian public is behind it and to what extent. This time the general strike is used to combat a single abuse of the government. In the future the same working masses may be directed against the present régime as a whole. It is a strike now. It may be a civil war or revolution the next time.”

But while the capitalisticTribuneis so sympathetic and optimistic, the leading labor union paper of this country, theUnited Mine Workers’ Journalhas been highly sceptical and pessimistic:

“The strikers say they are ready and have the means to hold out six weeks.

“What if the other class should elect to hold out for twelve weeks; that is, if the strike should become a ‘lock-out?’

“There is no doubt but that the class against whom they are striking, the propertied class, who hold the unfair political advantage over them, could store more per member than the workers.

“We wish our brothers every success. Hope they will obtain what is undoubtedly theirs by right. But, in our opinion, unless the strike results in a test of force instead of passive endurance (and this same is more than probable) the workers’ needs will drive them back to their tasks before those who have been enriched by their labor will consent to give up the political advantages on which their economic advantages are based.”

Why this remarkable reversal of the opinions that might have been expected? Why have some of the richest Liberals in Belgium supported the strike?

The Belgians are striking for a right the French obtained in 1876—equal suffrage. Yet who are the chief beneficiaries of the political democracy of France? The condition of the laborers is about the same as in Belgium. The only difference is that in France the industrial and urban capitalists now hold the balance of power between the laborers on the one hand and the reactionary agrarians, landlords and employing peasants on the other; while in Belgium the latter classes, which control the Catholic Party, have a Parliamentary majority over the laborers and urban middle classes combined. The Belgium Liberals then have had everything to win by a strike, which aims at establishing the French situation in that country. As for the Socialists, equal suffrage would undoubtedly have the effect of driving the Liberals and Catholics together into the same government, as in Germany, thus making the Socialiststheopposition party. It would also result ultimately in whatever social and labor reforms the Liberals might feel it to their interest to grant. But this is all.

This is why thoughtful Socialists the world over, including several of the Belgian leaders (Vandervelde, Huysmans, De Brouckère and Bertrand) have been so dubious about the strike. They have seen that the burden of the contest will fall about equally on employers and employes. But the Liberal employers are playing for a splendid stake—Belgium; while the Socialists are playing only for such incidental and secondary benefits as will accrue to them from Liberal control of the country. Naturally they have had far more dread of the costs and risks which the strike involves.

But whether the strike was to be lost or won it has been clear that it would interest the world’s millions of Socialists more deeply than ever in the possibilities and the limitations of the general strike.

All Socialists favor the political general strike, most Socialists favor the general strike against war—including the conservatives like Keir Hardie and Jean Jaurès. The moderate Swedes had an economic general strike a few years ago and this form is favored also by the majority of French and Italian labor unionists. And now the British unionists are voting on the question whether they will all quit work each day after eight hours—which would mean a general lock-out, or practically a general strike.

Whether the Belgians win or lose will not affect the momentum of the movement. If they win, general strikes for a few years will take a predominantly political character, and we shall see the general political strike resumed in Hungary within a few months and doubtless declared in Prussia before many years. If they lose these British, French and Italian movements toward economic general strikes will have the field.

The historian of the future when writing of our generation will have to give a central position—perhapsthecentral position—to the general strike.

1. SeeThe Surveyfor October 5, 1912.

2. It is now reported that the opponents of the law, which goes into effect August 1, have started an effort to secure the 19,535 signatures necessary for a petition to have the law submitted to a referendum vote.

3. Drawn from a case record of the New York Charity Organization Society.

4. Number based not on total number of cases but on scholarship, conduct and attendance cases, respectively.

5. Most of the quotations here given are taken from Songs from the Ghetto. By Morris Rosenfeld. Translated into prose by Leo Wiener. Copeland & Day, Boston. 1898. Price $1.00.

6. Rosenfeld’s poetry in this respect is the antithesis of that of Arturo Giovannitti. SeeThe Surveyof November 2, 1912.

7. Pendulum.

8. I work and work and work—without end; I am busy and busy and busy at all times.

9. The Counting—the forty-nine days of the Feast of the Seven Weeks.

10. My Little Sister. By Elizabeth Robins. Dodd, Mead and Co. 344 pp. Price $1.25. By mail ofThe Survey$1.37.

11. Of 478 defendants, fifty-three women are involved or implicated. Of those, eighteen are found not guilty, are dismissed, or cases are pending.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESTypos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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