en that to allow
government employees the use of such an instrument was to recognize
revolution as a lawful means of securing an increase in
compensation for one class, and that a _privileged class_, at the
expense of all the public....

"The government employees are a privileged class whose work is
necessary to carry on the government and upon whose entry into the
government service it is entirely reasonable to impose conditions
that should not be and ought not to be imposed upon those who serve
private employers."

Here the Socialists join issue squarely with the almost universally
prevalent non-Socialist opinion. They do not consider government
employment a "privilege" nor any strike whatever as "mutiny," "treason,"
or "rebellion." Socialists believe that the only possible means of
maintaining democracy at all in this age when government employees are
beginning to increase in numbers more rapidly than those of private
industry, is that they should be allowed to maintain their right to
organize _and to strike_--no matter how great difficulties it may
involve. To decide the question as President Butler wishes, or as
President Taft implies it should be decided, Socialists believe, would
mean to turn every government into a military organization. The time is
not far distant when in all the leading nations a very large part and in
some cases a majority of the population will be in government
employment. If even the present limited rights of organization are done
away with, and the military laws of subordination are applied,
Socialists ask, shall we not have exactly that military and autocratic
bureaucracy, that "State Socialism" which Spencer so rightly feared? The
fact that these perfectly legal and necessary strikes may some day lead
to revolution is capitalism's misfortune, which society will not permit
it to cure by turning the clock back to absolutism. The question of the
organization of government employees, one of the most important to-day,
will, as President Butler says, be the crucial question of the near
future.

It is in France that the question has come to the first test, not
because the French bureaucracy is more numerous than that of Prussia and
some other Continental countries, but because of the powerful democratic
and Socialist tendency that has grown up along with this bureaucracy and
is now directed against it. Especially interesting is the fact that
Br