The Universal Congress of Socialists at Ghent is disappointing, not
because the delegates talked a little nonsense, but because their nonsense was not good nonsense, There was some unfruit- ful, fiery talk about "tyranny of capital" and "interested class legislation," and there were profoundly misty controversies between the "Authoritarians," who follow Karl Marx, the " Anarchists," and the " Collectivists," into whom the Congress is hopelessly divided. But as a means of giving light on the views of Continental workmen on social ques- tions of the time, it was useless, a mere patrolling of the clouds. The only interesting episode was the reading of a long communication from the Working-Men's party of the United States, which stated, with reference to the late strikes, that they were premature outbreaks on the part of the firemen and switchmen, and that had the minor labourers 'only waited, as was intended, an organised strike on the part of all the engineers in the land, which would have stopped every railroad for an indefinite period, would have been carried out.
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