66

was the first attempt by a great industrial organization to establish the plan of direct action as against arbitration, and the rest of the industrial movement awaited the result with keen interest, because officials realized that upon the issue depended vital decisions of policy by other organizations. Broadly put, the result has been a victory for the seamen, inasmuch as they have been granted a round table conference to deal with their claims by the government, which, at the outset, took up the position that the men must go to the Arbitration Court for the rectification of their grievances.

"The seamen after 101 days' strike, have been able to compel the government to grant a round table conference to consider their claims, the proviso being that the decisions of the conference shall be ratified by the Court.

66

The advocates of direct action have been quick to seize the opportunity, and they have succeeded in getting the Me!bourne Trades Hall Council to authorize a ballot among the unions on the question of whether they favor 'direct action' or arbitration. This ballot is now in progress, meanwhile the Council is debating a motion in favor of the one big union form of organization."

In New South Wales, a new party was formed at this juncture by the advocates of the one big union, after they failed to capture the State Labor Conference. This new party is known as the Australian Industrial Socialist Party. It is really a political wing of the one big union, and its strength at the polls will be tested at the next New South Wales election.

The Broken Hill miners, who are a revolutionary group, struck for a six-hour day, and they declared that they are the pioneers of the coming industrial struggle in Australia. Their propa

ganda is in harmony with the direct action policy of the

seamen,

Since then, in December, the official Manifesto of the Federal Labor Party, has been issued by its leader, Frank Tudor. It includes the repeal of the compulsory clauses of the Australian Defense Act, with the promise of more liberal and efficient clauses. Measures would be introduced to give the workers in industry a better standing and representation in the control of industry, and to provide for a minimum wage, which would automatically vary with the cost of living. National insurance

against unemployment was promised. The laws relating to seafaring labor would be made to conform with modern conditions. An effective tariff would be introduced. Workers in all industries would get their full share of the benefits of protection. The use of Australian products by government contractors and departments would be made compulsory. Primary production was to be stipulated, and the wheat-growers guaranteed five shillings a bushel. A labor system of rural credits was to be arranged. On the question of the amendment of the constitution, the Manifesto says:

"When returned to power, we intend to submit to the people for approval, proposals for the amendment of the constitution, providing for complete Australian self-government, as a British community, and for unlimited legislative powers in Australian affairs to be vested in a Commonwealth Parliament, with devclution of adequate local powers upon subordinate legislatures and municipalities."

One of the prominent politicians of Australia, after visiting America, on his departure in April, left as a message to us that he considered our method of settling industrial disputes by voluntary arbitration preferable and more successful than the Australian method of compulsory arbitration. This feeling seems to be quite universal in Australia, both among employers and in labor circles. The feeling is summarized in the "National Labor Digest" for April, page 29. According to the labor leader of Toronto, in a dispatch from Melbourne, Australian employers now admit that "it is obvious, after an experience of twenty years, that our industrial laws have lamentably failed to secure industrial peace." These words are taken. from a report by a committee of the Central Council of Australia, appointed to study industrial unrest and to establish improved relations between employers and workers.

This report states that:

66

During the six years from 1913 to 1918, inclusive, there were 2,153 Australian strikes, involving 603,716 people, with a direct wage loss of $25,000,000. The workers won 837 of these disputes, while the employers won 706. There were 521 compromises and 89 not definitely settled." In this report it is evident that the employers are not anxious to have the compulsory provisions of the Industrial Relation3

Law continued in force. A similar feeling has grown among the workmen themselves, as we have already noticed.

SOCIALISM AND LABOR IN CANADA

Before the war, Socialism was practically non-existent in Canada. The little that there was of it was an importation from the United States a branch of the American Socialist Party. The war stimulated the growth of a more independent Socialist group, especially in western Canada, with its center at Winnipeg.

The result of this movement was to cause the trade unions of this part of Canada to declare their separation from the American Federation of Labor, and to declare themselves in sympathy with the one big union, or the I. W. W. On March 16, 1919, the Western-Canadian Labor Conference declared in favor of the one big union. As a consequence, it declared in favor of immediate action of Soviet control, and of the overturning of the government. Its declarations were partly as follows:

"Industrial Soviet control by selection of representatives from industries is more efficient and of more value to producers than the present form of Canadian political government, and we accept without alteration the principle of proletarian dictatorship, as a means of transforming society from a capitalistic to a communal basis."

Among the demands made by this Conference was "Six-hour day and five days' work a week.”

NOTE. See Addenda, Part I, for further information on Canadian problems.

CHAPTER XIII

European Socialism and the War

The crucial question before the Socialist parties even for several years before the war broke out was the attitude of the party toward militarism and war, and it was on the rock of nationalism at the time of the outbreak of the war that the ship of international socialism temporarily split. This fact and the attitude and acts of the Socialists of different countries have already been discussed in this report, but this should be supplemented by a notice of the official pronouncements of International Socialism. At the very beginning of the Second International in 1889 the demand was made at the opening Congress that standing armies should be abolished, that international arbitration tribunals should be formed, and that the people should have a voice in the question of peace and war. These general demands were stated at each successive congress. They are best typified by a resolution offered by the French Socialist leader, Jaurès, at the Paris Congress of 1900:

"1. That it is necessary for the Labor Party in each country to oppose militarism and colonial expansion with redoubled effort and increasing energy.

"2. That it is absolutely necessary to reply to the alliance of the bourgeois classes and the governments for the perpetuation of war by an alliance of the proletarians of all lands for the perpetuation of peace that is to say, to give up more or less platonic demonstrations of international solidarity and adopt energetic international action in the common struggle against militarism.

"The Congress suggests three practical courses for carrying this out

"1. The Socialist Parties everywhere shall educate the rising generations to oppose militarism tooth and nail.

"2. Socialist members of Parliament shall always vote against any expenditure for the army, the navy, or colonial expeditions.

"3. The standing International Socialist Committee shall be instructed to organize uniform movements of protest

against militarism in all countries at one and the same time, whenever there shall be occasion to do so."

It will be remembered that it was the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 with the participation of the masses of both peoples in the war that was one of the causes for the breaking up of the First International. But since then the tremendous increase of all national armies was making any future war the war of whole nations in arms instead of a comparatively small-armed minority. This was what led to an ever greater detemination of the Socialist parties to vote against increasing armaments and to take every occasion to weaken nationalist sentiment. The most dramatic scene at the Amsterdam Conference in 1904 was the hand clasp of the representatives of Russia and Japan, then at war. The use of the general strike as a means to prevent wars was discussed at the Stuttgart Congress of 1907.

The efforts of the Socialist parties during the period before 1914 to prevent declarations of war, for instance; at the time of the Fashoda incident between England and France, at the time of the Morocco crisis between France and Germany, at the time of the separation of Sweden and Norway, to prevent a Scandinavian war. All these occasions were utilized by the Socialists to diminish the frictions that might lead to hostilities. The Stuttgart Congress, besides emphasizing the use of the strike to prevent wars, emphasized the probability that future wars would be due to economic ambitions and causes. Its resolution is more radical by far than that of Jaurès at the Paris Congress of 1900:

"The Congress reasserts the resolutions adopted by former International Congresses against militarism and imperialism and declares afresh that the war against militarism must proceed hand in hand with the general class war. Wars between nations are as a rule the consequences of their competition in the world market, for each state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones. This means the subjugation of nations and lands, and, therefore, spells war. But wars result furthermore from the continual attempts of all lands to outstrip their neighbors in military armaments one of the chief supports of the capitalist class supremacy, and therefore of the economic and political oppression of the proletariat.