this analysis,--this being the situation which it is sought to correct
both in government and within political parties by such means as direct
legislation and the recall,--Lagardelle does not seem to see that
exactly the same problem exists also in the labor unions. For among the
most revolutionary as among the most conservative of labor organizations
the leaders tend to acquire the same relative and irresponsible power as
they do in political parties. The difficulty of making democracy work
inheres in all organizations. It must be met and overcome; it cannot be
avoided.

Lagardelle's distrust of political democracy goes even further than a
mere criticism of representative government. He thinks the citizen
to-day unable to judge general political questions at all,--so that in
his view even direct democracy would be useless. It is for this reason,
he says, that parties have it as an aim to act and to think in the
citizen's place. Lagardelle's remedy is not the establishment of direct
democracy in government or in parties, but the organization of the
people to act together on "the concrete things of life"; that is, on
questions of hours, wages, and other conditions closely associated with
their daily life and in his view adapted to their understanding. He does
not seem to see that such questions lead almost immediately, not only to
such larger issues as are already presented by the leading political
parties, but also to the still larger ones proposed by the Socialists.

Others of the syndicalists' criticisms, if taken literally, would
undoubtedly bring them in the end to the position occupied by
non-Socialist and anti-Socialist labor unionists. Lagardelle frankly
places labor union action not only above political action, which
Socialists, under many circumstances, may justify, but above Socialism
itself. "Even if the dreams of the future of syndicalistic Socialism
should never be realized,--none of us has the secret of history,--it
would suffice for me to give it my full support, to know that it is at
the moment I am speaking the essential agent of civilization in the
world." Here is a labor union partisanship which is certainly not
equaled by the average conservative labor leader, who has the modesty to
realize that there are other powerful forces making for progress aside
from the movement to which he happens to belong.

The syndicalists, or those who act along similar lines in other
countries, have brought new life i