THE UNREST ON THE CONTINENT. T HE dry bones are stirring
on the Continent in a way which, even if the ultimate result should prove not to be great, should keenly interest all politicians. We write in this country about Continental "Socialists," and Collectivists," and "Radicals," and " riotings," but those familiar words do but obscure the great general movement actually going on. Everywhere, except per- haps in Switzerland, those who work with their hands, in- cluding in all countries the agricultural labourers, and in some a large section of the peasants besides, are express- ing with violence three ideas : one that they are overworked, another that they ought to have, and therefore will have, more physical comfort in their daily lives, and a third that they can alter neither toil nor payment for toil until they become an effective force in the government of the country. The cause of the rapid growth of the first idea is still obscure, for men who are not yet old can remember when the governing notion of the immense majority was that a working man when not eating or sleeping was bound to be at work,—a notion which still rules through- out the greater part of Asia. We fancy the change is one consequence of the small modicum of education which has at last filtered down to the bottom, but of the revolt against the traditional opinion there can be no doubt whatever. The workers are seeking an eight-hour day as an ideal, and insisting by strikes, and even more violent expedients, that nine hours shall be the maximum. The new passion for more comfort, which is the second idea, is easier to understand. The workers see that every other class has got it ; that they are better lodged, have more to eat, are warmer both out of doors and at home ; and being, as another result of education, more nervous and less tough, less of savages in fact, they want to share in those advantages. They demand here better lodging, there cheaper food, in places near forests more warmth, everywhere, as the quick road to these things, higher wages. The upper classes, who do not possess the accumulated mass of capital with which the same classes work in England, refuse these demands, and the consequence is what we see: fighting in Belgium and a demand for universal suffrage; fighting in Italy and a marked growth of Socialism, that is, of Radicalism with social objects ; fighting in Spain, with a cry for the " ex- propriation " of the wealth of the Church, and grave signs of hostility to landlords ; an increase of the Socialist party in Germany from 493,000 voters to 2,107,000; sporadic rioting in Austria, where the racial divisions break all movements ; and the spread in Russia of a discontent which shows itself in urban insurrections, in assassina- tions, and in movements like that which has this week ended in the sacking of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg's chateau. In France, it is true, the fear of M. Waldeck- Rousseau's firmness is so great that external order is maintained, but even there a whole corps d'arnzie was recently moved to prevent a strike, and the addresses put out this week by the Radical party on the eve of the elections are choked with promises of plans for the increase of the workers' physical comfort. In France, as in Germany, the workers, having already universal suffrage, ask for no change in the Constitution ; but everywhere else this is the panacea through which the discontented hope to compel the State, which they think omnipotent, to become friendly to their demands. In each country the grand lever is to be used in a different way, but in each with the same object,—viz., to facilitate a dead upheaval of the working class in the social scale. The workers do not as a mass, we fancy, expect to be masters in their reapective countries, and they care very little, we suspect, for the abstract " doctrines " they profess ; but they insist that they shall not be overworked, and that they shall have a larger share out of the common fund which, as they all maintain, they create. Upon this last subject they are convinced to fatuity, and are almost, or quite, beyond the reach of argument, refusing to admit even that a thousand men in a factory without a chief and capital are as power- s as a thousand men in the field without a general and Without commissariat.
As yet the chances of the workers on the Continent do not appear very hopeful. They have no Poor-law to help them d no mass of savings, and without either they cannot sue- through general strikes. They cannot keep idle for any time, and if they try voting without violence thay are over- borne by the weight of the peasant vote. (The peasant, be it remembered, does not feel overworked, because he settles his own hours, and though he is frightened by the low prices and high taxes, he has nearly as much coarse food and as good a house as he ever had.) As to violence, the workers, though most of them have been drilled and many have revolvers, do not fight well, conscription, we fancy, having increased instead of diminishing the dread entertained by the populace of regular troops, with their weapons of precision. They fight best in Spain, but nowhere do they definitely defeat the Army, and in very few places the armed police. Nor do we see anywhere any sufficient signs that the troops are likely to disobey orders and refuse to fire. There are rumours both from Ruseia and Belgium that this has occurred, but they are not con- firmed, and are in themselves most improbable. The soldiers very likely sometimes sympathise with the rioters, but the shower of stones or scattered fire from revolvers with which an urban riot usually begins always strikes them as an insult, and unless their officers hold them back it is hardly in human nature for armed men conscious at once of irresistible strength and of their own innocence of wrong-doing to abstain from volleys before which the assailants melt away. On the other hand, the Govern- ments are determined not to yield to threats, and the employers have become—probably as an effect of insult— extraordinarily bitter and reluctant to accept compromise. Not one in ten will remedy, as Herr Krupp remedied, even grievances which they acknowledge to be such. The prospect, therefore, is one of a. short, localised, and irregular civil war, ending as a. rule in a sullen return of the workers to their ordinary avocations with appar- ently nothing gained.
Nevertheless, it is probable that considerable changes will result. The " disturbances " are exceedingly incon- venient to employers, who find their " hands " in per- manent opposition, who have to apologise to their customers for breaches of contract, and who, in many cases at least, know that the grievances have solid founda- tion. The Governments, though determined, do not want disorder, and excessively dislike using their conscript troops against the people of their own cities. We can recall, amidst the endless riotings of the last forty years, but one case—under Marshal Prim—in which they employed artillery, though they know it to be a resist- less weapon of defence. Furthemore, the workers have votes, and to arouse the bitter hostility of masses of voters seems to Governments, to party chiefs, and to the whole upper class exceedingly unwise. They are always dreading lest the peasantry should be converted, or should come to terms with the artisans, when there might be a cataclysm most menacing to property. Above all, the great burgesses, who have to live in the cities, and who are held responsible by opinion if authority is overthrown, are most anxious to restore quiet without exciting, it may be for ever, fierce anger among the most numerous section of their constituents. We anticipate, therefore, as an outcome of the existing ferment a distinct development of the desire for compromise, a disposition to increase wages, and a collapse more or leas sudden of the resolution to adhere to the traditional stint of work. It is there that com- promise is easiest. Men have energy which when over- worked they will not put out, and in half at least of the trades of the world as much can be got out of a man in nine hours as he will voluntarily give in twelve. The increase of wages is more difficult, but it will, we believe, be secured in part by the use, as in America, of better machinery, and by a more determined resistance to all taxes on food. At all events, the trend of events is towards a greater readiness to listen to the plaints of the class which everywhere throughout the Continent is showing a growing determination to make its cries more audible.
Previous page
