DECLINE IN FRENCH SYNDICALISM.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 17 November 1913, Page 2

DECLINE IN FRENCH SYNDICALISM.

Revolutionary syndicalism (says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph), which is, in other words, revolutionary socialism, seems to have eeen its day. The great Labor Confederation of France is alleged to be breaking up. The syndicate of navvies, which was the bulwark of syndicalism in this country, has lost half its members. There \vas a suspicion that something had gone wrong when two weeks ago the ''C.T.G." suddenly announced that it would no longer encourage antimilitarist and anti-Government demonstrations. For the future, the leaders said, we shall leave politics severely alone, and we shall devote ourselves only to economic questions. Strangely enough, last Saturday evening the military tattoos were not interfered with by socialist or communist demonstrators. Paris suddenly wondered whether its anarchists and revolutionaries had gone to the seaside for a holiday. The explanation now is that the leaders have discovered that their anti-mili-tarist and anti-Government campaigns since the days of the postal and the railway strikes, when lens of thousands of workmen were disgusted with their leadership, have caused a constant decline in the number of their adherents. A congress of the building trades has just been held, and there it nas been publicly admitted that there has been a falling-off of 50 per cent, in the unions of unskilled labor. The decline has been 25 per cent, in all the unions of skilled labor, and the number of malcontents who are leaving the syndicates is daily increasing. Syndicalism, we are told, is dying, and the blame.is thrown on the anti-militarists and the revolutionary and anarchistic elements, which have been leading and misleading the workmen for the last three years or more.