wned railways to force them to take back dismissed strikers. In the
next ministry, that of Caillaux, the Minister of Labor, Augagneur, the
former Socialist, pursued the same policy of pressing for the
reinstatement of a large part of the discharged employees of the private
railroads while insisting that the employees of government railroads
could not be allowed to strike. And again, at the end of 1911, the
government secured only 286 votes in favor of this policy, to 193
against it.[276]

France is by no means the only country where the question of strikes of
government employees has become all-important. When the railways were
nationalized in Italy there was considerable Socialist opposition on the
ground that the employees were likely to lose a part of such rights as
they had had when in private employment, and it turned out just as was
feared. The position of the Italian Socialists on the subject is as
interesting as that of the French. The Congress at Florence in 1908
resolved that "considering the fact that a strike of municipalized or
nationalized services represents, not the struggle of the proletariat
against a private capitalistic enterprise, but the conflict of a class
against the collectivity, whence the difficulty of its success, the
employees in public service ought to be advised not to proclaim a strike
unless urged on by the most compelling motives and when every other
means have failed;" but "taking it into consideration at the same time
that in the present condition of society the working people in public
service have no other means to guarantee the defense of their rights,
and that in critical moments of history the suspension of public
services is among the most efficacious arms of which the proletariat can
avail itself to disorganize the defense of the government, any
disposition to bring into legislation the principle of the abolition of
the right to strike is dangerous" and "any attempt in that direction"
must be defeated.

The gulf between those who consider the collective refusal of the
organizations of government employees to work under conditions they do
not accept, as being "treason" and "mutiny," and those who feel that
such an organization is the _very basis_ of industrial democracy of the
future and the sole possible guarantee of liberty, is surely
unbridgeable.

The clash between the classes on this question of livelihood and liberty
is already momentous, but its full significance can o