strikes and farm labour in italy and hungary

there is one english word which seems to be more widely known and used in europe than almost any other. it is the word "strike." labour strikes, i have understood, had their origin with the factory system in england. but the people on the continent have improved on the original english device, and have found ways of using it of which we in america, i suspect, have rarely if ever heard.

it seems to me that during my short journey in europe i heard of more kinds of strikes, and learned more about the different ways in which this form of warfare can be used, than i ever learned before in all my life. in europe one hears, for example, of "political" strikes, of "general" strikes, and of "agricultural" strikes—harvest strikes—which are a peculiar and interesting variety of the ordinary labour strikes. there are rent strikes, "hunger riots," strikes of students, even of legislatures, and when i was

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in budapest some one called my attention to an account in one of the papers of what was called a "house strike."

this was a case in which the tenants of one of the large tenement buildings or apartment houses of the city had gone on strike to compel the landlord to reduce the rent. they had hung the landlord in effigy in the big central court around which the building is erected; decorated the walls and balconies with scurrilous placards, and then created such a disturbance by their jeers and outcries, supplemented with fish horns, that the whole neighbourhood was roused. the house strikers took this way to advertise their grievances, gain public sympathy, and secure reduction of the rent.

i had an opportunity, during my stay in europe, to get some first-hand information in regard to these continental strikes. i was in berlin just before and after the three days' battle between the striking coalyard men of moabit and the police, in the course of which several of the officers and hundreds of the people were wounded. for several days one section of berlin was practically in a state of siege. the police charged the crowd with their horses, trampled the people under foot, and cut them down with their swords. the soldiers hunted the strikers into the neighbouring houses, where

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they attempted to barricade themselves and replied to the attacks of the police by hurling missiles from the windows of the houses into the streets below. at night the streets were in darkness, because the strikers had cut the electric wires, thus shutting off the lights, so that the police were compelled to carry torches in order to distinguish friends from foes.

at another time, while i was in fiume, hungary, i had an opportunity to see for myself the manner and spirit in which these strikes are conducted, or, rather, the way in which they are put down by the police.

i had gone out one day to visit the emigrant station, which is situated on the outskirts of the city, and noticed, on my way thither, a number of policemen on the car. then, apparently at a signal from a man in charge, they seemed to melt away. half an hour later, while i was at the emigrant station, i was startled by loud cries outside the building. every one rushed to the windows. the street was crowded with men, women, and children, all running helter-skelter in the direction of the city. some of the hands in a nearby factory had gone on strike. i could not at first understand why every one seemed in such a state of terror. very soon i learned, however, that they were running from

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the police, and a moment later the police themselves moved into view.

they were formed in a broad double line across the avenue, and, marching rapidly, simply swept everything before them. at their head, bearing a heavy cane, was a man in plain clothes. i do not know whether he was an officer or the proprietor of the factory, but i was struck with the haughty and contemptuous air with which he surveyed the rabble as it melted away from in front of him. in a few minutes the street was empty and, so far as i could see, the strike was over.

it was a small affair in any case. there was no bloodshed and almost no resistance on the part of the strikers, so far as i could see. it was sufficient, however, to give me a very vivid notion of the ruthless way in which the governments of these stern military powers deal with rebellious labourers. european governments seem to have the habit of interfering, in a way of which we have no conception in this country, in all the small intimate affairs of life. so it is not to be expected that they would be able, like the police in this country, to act as a neutral party or referee, so to speak, in the struggles of labour and capital. that is the reason, i suspect, why in europe strikes almost always turn out to be a battle with the police or an insurrection against the government.

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almost anything may be made the occasion of a strike in europe, it seems. sometimes in austria and hungary, as i learned, members, of the local diets or provincial legislatures go on a strike and refuse to make any laws until certain demands have been complied with by the central government at vienna. sometimes the students in one or more of the national universities go on a strike because a favourite professor has been removed by the government, or because they are opposed to some particular measure of the government. not infrequently, in france or italy, labour disturbances are fomented for political or party purposes, particularly among the employees of the state railways.

strikes are a favourite weapon of the socialists when they are seeking to force some political measure through parliament. until a few years ago it seemed that the "general strike," in which all the labourers of a city or several cities, by suddenly laying down their tools and refusing to return to their work, sought to force some concession by the government, was the means by which the socialists proposed to overturn all the existing governments in europe. since the failure of the revolution in russia and of similar movements on a smaller scale in italy and elsewhere, this form of strike seems to have fallen into disrepute.

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the most novel and interesting form of labour insurrection which i found while i was in europe was the "strike of the agricultural labourers." in both hungary and italy the agricultural labourers have for some years past been organized into more or less secret societies, and the outbreaks which have been fomented by these secret societies have been, i understand, the most bloody and the most far-reaching in influence of any labour strikes in europe.

the possibility that farm hands might be organized into labour unions, and make use of this form of organization in order to compel landowners to raise wages, had never occurred to me, and i took some pains to learn the conditions in hungary and italy under which these organizations have grown up.

i found that while the situation of the farm hands in hungary differs from that of the farm hands in italy in many ways, there are two important respects in which the situation of each is the same: first, a large part of the land of both countries is held in large estates; second, farm labourers, as a rule, particularly in hungary, do not live, as is the case in america, on the land. on the contrary, they dwell apart in villages, so that they are hardly any more attached to the soil they cultivate than the factory hand is attached to the factory in which he is

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employed. in hungary, for example, it is the custom for a group of labourers to enter, during the spring and summer, into a contract with a landowner to harvest his crop in the fall. a contractor, who either represents or employs the farm hands, will look over the field and bargain with the owner to do the work for a certain per cent. of the crop. at the harvest time the contractor will arrive with his labourers just as he would come with a gang of men to build a house or dig a ditch. while the work is going on the labourers, men and women together, practically camp in the fields, sleeping sometimes in the open or in such scant shelter as they are able to find.

it happened that i was in hungary at the harvest time, and in the course of my journey through the country i have several times seen these gangs of men and women going to their work at daybreak. in this part of the country the strangest costumes are worn by the peasant people, and the women especially, with their bright kerchiefs over their heads, their short skirts and high boots, when they were not barefoot, were quite as picturesque as anything i had read had led me to expect. the labourers go to work at early dawn, because during the harvest season the field hands work sometimes as much as fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and

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then throw themselves down to rest for the night on a truss of straw or under a single blanket. after the harvest is over they return again to their villages.

working in this way in troups of wandering labourers, there was no room for any permanent human relationships between themselves and their employers; such relationships, for example, as exist, in spite of the differences of race and colour, between every white planter in the south and his negro tenants. on the other hand, the labourers, working and living together in the way i have described, come to have a strong sense of their common interest, all the stronger, perhaps, because they are looked down upon by the rest of the population, and particularly by the small landowners with whom they were associated up to the time of their emancipation, in 1848.

about 1890 a series of bad harvests—coming on the heels of other changes which, for a number of years, had made their lives steadily harder—helped to increase the discontent of the farm hands. thus it was that when, about this time, the socialists turned their attention to the agricultural population of hungary, they found the people prepared to listen to their doctrines.

what made socialism the more popular among the lowest farming classes was the fact that it

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not only promised to teach the farm labourers how they might increase their wages, but declared that the state was going to take the land out of the hands of the large landowners and divide it among the people who cultivated it.

what made the situation the more difficult was the fact that the agricultural labourers, as soon as they were thoroughly organized, had the landowners, during the harvest time, at a peculiar disadvantage, because when work in the fields stopped, the standing grain ripened and spoiled and the landowner was ruined.

in the emergency created by these strikes the government came to the rescue of the landowner by establishing recruiting stations for farm labourers in different parts of the country. collecting labourers in those parts of the country where labour was abundant, they shipped it to other parts of the country where, because of strikes, labourers were scarce and crops were in danger. thus, the government had at one time a reserve force of not less than 10,000 strike-breakers with which it was at any moment able to come to the rescue of a landowner who was threatened.

in many cases the government undertook to regulate wages between landowners and their hands. in some cases they even sent troops into the fields, and in the course of the struggle

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there were frequent bloody collisions between the labourers and the troops.

one effect of these disturbances was to greatly increase the amount of immigration to america. in 1904, when the struggle was at its height, no less than 100,000 persons, mostly from the country districts, emigrated from hungary. thousands of others left the country and moved into the cities.

hungary is about half the size of texas, and it has nearly five times its population. those who remember the "negro exodus" of thirty years ago, and the apprehension that was created when some 40,000 negroes left the plantations in mississippi and louisiana, will be able to understand the effect if for a number of years the south should lose annually by emigration to the cities or to other parts of the country 100,000 of its labourers in the cotton fields.

the exodus of the farm labourer from hungary threatened, in spite of the rapid increase of the population, to permanently check the rising prosperity of the country. it was soon found that the great landowners could not rely upon repressive measures alone to solve their labour problems. something must be done to redress the grievances and to improve the condition of the agricultural population. as a matter of fact, a very great deal was done by the state for

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agriculture, and something was done for the agricultural labourers. for example, relief funds were organized in sixty-four counties and boroughs to aid temporarily disabled workmen. public prizes and diplomas were offered to labourers who were faithful to their masters.

something was done to brighten the monotony of the agricultural labourer's life and to strengthen the ties between the labourers and their employers. at the suggestion of the minister of agriculture, an attempt was made to revive the harvest feasts, which brought the farmer and his labourers together. workingmen's clubs, libraries, friendly and coöperative societies were encouraged by the government. a popular weekly paper, printed in seven different languages, was started for the benefit of agricultural labourers and as a means of agricultural education. a bill for insurance against accidents and old age for the benefit of agricultural labourers provided that if a labourer loses more than a week's time he shall receive, in addition to the expenses of doctor and medicine, a sum amounting to about 25 cents a day for sixty days. in case of death of an agricultural labourer, his family receives a sum amounting to something between $40 and $50.

in italy, the socialistic movement among the agricultural classes took a somewhat different

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course. for one thing, it was not confined merely to the poorest class—namely, those labourers who live in the villages and go out at certain seasons to assist in the work on the farms—but extended to the small proprietors also, and those who rented land. in many cases the large estates in italy are not managed as in hungary, by the proprietor, but by middlemen and overseers, who pay a certain amount of rent to the proprietor and then sublet to tenants. sometimes, particularly in southern italy, lands are sublet a second and third time.

in many cases the terms upon which the land was held and worked by the small farmer were terribly oppressive, even in northern italy, where conditions are incomparably better than in the south.

although the peasants in northern italy were nominally given their freedom in 1793, their condition, until a few years ago, has been described by one who was himself a large land proprietor as "little better than if they were slaves." in addition to the high rents, the tenant farmer was compelled to furnish the overseer with a certain number of chickens and eggs, and a certain amount of peaches, nuts, figs, hemp and flax, in proportion to the amount of land he rented.

the overseer claimed, also, just as the

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overlord did in the days of feudalism, the rights to the labour of the peasant and his ox-cart for a certain part of every year. his children were expected to work as servants in his household at a nominal price. the overseer sold the crop of the tenant farmer, and, after deducting all that was coming to him for rent and for other charges, returned the remainder to the tenant farmer as his share of the year's work.

in one case where, as a result of the revolt of his tenants the middleman was driven out, the tenant farmer, under the direction of the socialist leaders, undertook to rent the land directly from the landowners, it was found that the middleman had been appropriating not less than 48 per cent. of the profits, which, under the new arrangement, went directly into the hands of the man who tilled the soil.

for a number of years there had existed among the small farmers numerous societies for mutual aid of various kinds. after the socialists began to turn their attention to the agricultural population they succeeded in gaining leadership in these societies and used them as a means of encouraging agricultural strikes. it was from these same societies also that they recruited the members of those organizations of farm labourers and tenants which have attempted to form large estates on a coöperative basis. by this means

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the small farmer has been able to do away with the middleman and still retain the advantages which result, particularly in harvesting and marketing the crops, from conducting the operations on a large scale.

in recent years coöperative organizations of all kinds have multiplied among the small farmers of northern italy. there are societies for purchasing supplies as well as for disposing of the products of the small farmers; the most important of these societies have been, perhaps, the coöperative credit organizations, by means of which small landowners have been able to escape the burden of the heavy interest charges they were formerly compelled to pay.

i was interested to learn that both the government and the socialists were at different times opposed to these coöperative societies, although for different reasons. the socialists were opposed to coöperation because by removing the causes of discontent it sapped the revolutionary spirit of the farming classes. the government, on the other hand, was opposed to the coöperative societies because their leaders were so frequently revolutionists who were using the society to stimulate discontent and organize the movement to overthrow the government.

the great general strike of september, 1904, which resulted in practically putting an end, for

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five days, to all kinds of business industries in the city of milan, was provoked by the state police firing upon some peasants who were holding a meeting to pay their shares and take their lots in an agricultural coöperative society.

i have attempted to describe at some length the character of the socialistic movement as i found it in hungary and italy, because it represents on the whole the movement of the masses at the bottom of life in europe. through this party, for the first time, millions of human beings who have had no voice in and no definite ideas in respect to the government under which they lived are learning to think and to give expression to their wants.

few people, i venture to say, have any definite notion to what extent the most remote parts of europe, from which the majority of our immigrants now come, have been penetrated by the ideas and the sentiments of the socialistic party. there are, for example, some five or six different branches of the party in bohemia. socialism, i learn, has made its way even into such countries as roumania, servia, bulgaria, and dalmatia, where perhaps three fourths of the population are engaged in agriculture.

there are, however, as i discovered, various kinds and types of socialism. i think i saw during my journey across europe as many

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different kinds of socialists as i did kinds of jews, which is saying a good deal. in denmark and italy, for example, i met men of the very highest type who were members of the socialist party. in copenhagen i was entertained by the editors of the socialistic paper, the politiken, which is perhaps the most ably edited and influential paper in denmark. in italy many of the most patriotic as well as the most brilliant men in the country, writers, students, and teachers, are members of the socialist party.

in poland, on the other hand, i met other socialists who had taken an active part in the revolution in russia and who, for aught i know, were members of that group of desperate men who are said even now to be plotting from cracow, austria, a new revolutionary movement among the agricultural classes in russia.

in short, i found that where the masses of the people are oppressed, where the people at the bottom are being crushed by those who are above them, there socialism means revolution. on the other hand, where governments have shown a liberal spirit, and especially where the socialists have had an opportunity to participate in the government, or have been able, by means of the coöperative societies i have described, to do constructive work for the benefit of the masses, they have ceased to be revolutionists, have no

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longer sought to overturn the government, but have patriotically striven to strengthen the existing order by freeing it from those defects that were dangerous to its existence.

in saying this, i do not mean to imply that i in any way favour the socialistic programme of reform. i live in the southern states, a part of the country which, more than any other part of the civilized world, still believes that the best government is the government that governs least; the government that you can wear like an old coat, without feeling it. more than that, i believe that the best and only fundamental way of bringing about reform is not by revolution, not through political machinery that tries to control and direct the individual from the outside, but by education, which gets at the individual from within; in short, fits him for life but leaves him free.

there is much in the history of the agricultural labourers of hungary and italy that is interesting to any one who has studied the condition of the negro farm labourer in the south. in many respects their history has been the same. there is, however, this difference: when the serfs were freed in hungary, as in most other parts of europe, provision was made to give them land, though to a very large extent they were denied the political privileges enjoyed by the upper classes.

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in italy also it was intended, in giving the serfs freedom, to give them likewise land. again, when the vast estates of the church were taken over by the state, an attempt was made to increase the class of small owners and to give the land to the people who tilled it. in both cases, however, it was but a few years before the greater portion of the peasant owners were wiped out and their lands absorbed into the large estates. at the present time the small landowners, under the influence of education and agricultural organization, are gaining ground, and both countries, in the interest of agriculture, are seeking to encourage this movement.

the case of the negro was just the opposite. when the masses of the negro people were turned loose from slavery they carried in their hands the ballot that they did not know how to use, but they took no property with them. at the present time, i believe, by a conservative estimate, that the negroes in the south own not less than twenty million acres of land, an area equal to the five new england states of vermont, new hampshire, massachusetts, rhode island, and connecticut.

on the other hand, the negroes have largely lost, at least temporarily, many of the political privileges which were given them at emancipation. the experience of the peasants of europe,

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just as the experience of the negro in america, has served to confirm an opinion i have long held—namely, that it is very hard for a man to keep anything that he has not earned or does not know how to use. and in most cases, the best way and, in fact, the only way to insure any people in the possession either of property or political privileges is to fit them by education to use these gifts for their own good and for the highest good of the community in which they live.

the peasants were given land without effort on their part and soon lost it. the masses of the negroes were given the ballot without effort on their part and they soon lost it. the peasants are now gradually gaining the land through their own effort and are keeping it. the masses of negroes are gradually gaining the ballot through their own effort, and are likely to keep it when so gained.