TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DAY OF DEMONSTRATIONS. THE Day of Demonstrations ended, as we ventured last week to predict that it would end, without any disturb- ance of order on the Continent, peace being maintained for precisely the reasons which were suggested in our columns. The disorderly workmen were cowed by the perfect readi- ness of the Governments, and their evident determination to inflict death on the spot on all emeutiers, and the orderly workmen—the immense majority—insisted that there should be no outbreak of any sort. We do not say or think that there was no danger. It is probable, from the action of all Ministers of the Interior, that there was danger, and that in every capital fanatical groups intended to provoke collisions, in the hope that if order were broken, the body of half-skilled workers who are underpaid might accept the fighting as a signal for insurrection. The revolutionists of Western Europe, however, though willing to risk imprisonment or to take their chance in a street battle, are not, like Russian Nihilists, ready to accept death, if only they may hurry on changes which they will neither profit by nor see. Once aware that the Governments will defend order by rifle- volleys, they shrink from the hopeless contest ; and this time the Governments left no room for doubt as to their decision. M. Constans' able speech about Paris explains the situation from Boulogne to Bucharest. Everywhere the ruling authorities felt that opinion would support them in severe measures of repression, and everywhere the troops were posted as if in an enemy's country, with orders to act at once, and to use ball-cartridge. In Paris, M. Constans did his best to avoid a sanguinary conflict by the " preventive arrest " of all Anarchist leaders, and of fifteen hundred dangerous characters—foreigners usually—and by dis- playing bodies of cavalry, which no mob not resolved on fighting will face ; but he also arranged with General Saussier that the infantry should be posted so as to act at once—the Tuileries Garden. for instance, was filled with troops—and should be Applied with seventy-four rounds of ammunition. That meant the execution of rioters on the spot ; and there were no riots. In Germany, it was thoroughly understood that the Emperor had made up his mind to the same course ; in Italy, the troops were ready, and, owing either to their experience of Southern mobs, or, as we rather believe, to Piedmontese tradition, Italian soldiers use their arms on very slight provocation ; while in Austria the whole army was on foot, and at Biela only a week before had shown what its orders were by killing and wounding twenty rioters. In the presence of such forces, wielded with such determination, revolt became hopeless ; and, moreover, the pressure of opinion lay heavy on revolutionists. In every country the solid body of honest workmen, without whose aid, direct or tacit, the violent section are powerless for anything but useless outrage, had decided that there should be no dis- order, and that if there were, they would acquiesce in its suppression. In Paris, they stopped by a direct use of force the only serious attempt at violence. In Berlin, they either remained at work, 90 per cent. adopting that course, or turned to their ordinary amusements, leaving the streets unusually quiet. In Italy, they kept festival ; and in Austria, whether in Vienna or Buda- Pesth, though they appeared in immense numbers, they ate and drank in the public parks, just as they are accustomed to do. Everywhere, probably, they were not displeased that a " demonstration of Labour " should wake up the upper classes to a new perception of their existence ; but nowhere did they desire, much less attempt, to organise a revolutionary movement. Everywhere, except in Austria, they have the vote, and even in Austria they either doubt the result of violence—which is not doubtful, for they cannot defeat the troops, or suspend labour for any length of time—or they see their way to get what they want through the trade strikes, of which fifty-eight have been officially reported in one month.
Indeed, one great effect of the First of May on impartial lookers-on must be to diminish the social panic. The possibility that the whole labouring population of Europe may fall into a conservative mood, and rely on bargains instead of threats, seems nearer, not farther off. The numbers on the side of order are visibly overwhelming. There is not a trace of mutinous feeling, or evert of hesitation, perceptible among the soldiery; and in the existing organisation of Europe, this means that the entire armed youth of the Continent, be their motive what it may—respect for discipline, for example— are ready under legal command to slay their " brethren " rather than suffer the order of society to be upset.. The peasantry outside Galicia, where the feud between them and the proprietors is chronic, being a sur- vival from a thoroughly bad system of serfage, are on the same side, as they prove by their permanent choice of representatives. The immense majority of artisans who. are in work, though not sympathising with the peasants in political ideas, and desiring more wages, shorter hours, and greater dignity of treatment, are, to say the very least, distrustful of violence as a means to obtain their ends, and would, if civil combinations were only as free as in England, rely almost exclusively upon them. There remain the fanatics of social change ; those who, through fault or mis- fortune, are unemployed ; the members of some underpaid but intelligent trades, like the glass-workers of Belgium, who- feel a savage resentment at their lot, not wholly unjustified by the facts ; and, we fear, a vast proportion of the whole body of miners, who undoubtedly, from Silesia to Normandy, are furiously discontented. That seems a large crowd of the dissatisfied ; but we doubt if it amounts to 10' per cent. of those who work all day ; and if the miners could be detached from it, which must be possible —though, we take it, men of the Southern temperament will never take kindly to labour underground—it would not be 5 per cent. Nothing can cure the Anarchists and a small section of the Socialists, for theirs is not a new industrial view, but a new religion—a worship of evil, we- fear, in some instances, though in others it is a worship of Pity, as at once the supreme good and the supreme passion —but if wages could be raised one-fifth and hours reduced one-fourth, the average twelve hours becoming nine, the anti-social force would, considered as a physical force,. be small indeed, probably smaller than the force of those who could, if they pleased, live without working,— viz., the universal body of rentiers, which is tA, a man pledged to the support of order. It may be deemed impossible that such a dead-heave should be given to the condition of workmen within a reasonable time ; but they are advancing fast, especially as regards hours—the point at which cultivated opinion is most in sympathy with them—and a demonstration like that of Thursday helps to clear a great obstacle out of their path. If labour throughout Europe moves together, the main economic difficulty in the way of shorter hours and better wages- is removed at once. It is not wholly removed, as some workmen fancy, for it will leave a much more dangerous competition untouched, that of the workmen of Southern Asia, to whom climate gives, as it were, clothing, fuel, and to an immense degree rent ; but in all the higher branches of industry it reduces or extinguishes inter- national competition. Everybody preaches about the social war, and no doubt trouble may come, for we under- rate neither the strength of fanaticism nor the weakness of authority ; but it would not surprise us twenty years hence to see industrial Europe sunk in a slightly apathetic calm, such as already marks the classes who toil on their own land.
As to English opinion on the whole movement, it is to us a never-failing source of surprise, or would be, if we did not believe that a large portion of what is called " public opinion " is nothing but the opinion of the literary class, which somehow fails to see that every general rise in wages on the Continent, and every reduction of hours, makes for the British artisan. The weight on him, so far as Europe is concerned, is the competition of men content with a lower standard of comfort than his own—it is not Western Europe, mind, which grows his food—and if the Continent to-morrow adopted eight hours as the legal day, and twenty francs a week as the minimum wage, he would be better-off. In any equal contest, his energy and thoroughness are certain to prevail; and he alone among European men is unburdened by that wretched system of taxing the consumer known as " Protection," and now once more attracting the Conti- nent like an intellectual mania. In a really equal contest, therefore, the Briton must prevail, and it is towards equality in the conditions of competition that the Con- tinental proletariat, with its " sentiment of solidarity," is driving so fast, and with such noisy " demonstration."
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