ircles of Europe.

However, something in addition to personality is needed to explain the
rise of syndicalist socialism in France. Like anarchism, syndicalism is
a natural product of certain French and Italian conditions. It is not
strange that the Latin peoples have in the past harbored the ideas of
anarchism, or that now they harbor the ideas of syndicalism. The
enormous proportion of small property owners in the French nation is the
economic basis for a powerful individualism. Anything which interferes
with the liberty of the individual is abhorred, and nothing awakens a
more lively hatred than centralization and State power. The vast extent
of small industry, with the apprentice, journeyman, and master-workman,
has wielded an influence over the mentality of the French workers.
Berth, for instance, follows Proudhon in conceiving of the future
commonwealth as a federation of innumerable little workshops. Gigantic
industries, such as are known in Germany, England, and America, seem to
be problems quite foreign to the mind of the typical Latin worker. He
believes that, if he can be left alone in his little industry, and freed
from exploitation, he, like the peasant, will be supreme, possessing
both liberty and abundance. He will, therefore, tolerate willingly
neither the interference of a centralized State nor favor a centralized
syndicalism. Industry must be given into the hands of the workers, and,
when he speaks of industry, he has in mind workshops, which, in the
socialism of the Germans, the English, and the Americans, might be left
for a long time to come in private hands.

In harmony with the above facts, we find that the strongest centers of
syndicalism in France, Italy, and Spain are in those districts where the
factory system is very backward. Where syndicalism and anarchism prevail
most strongly, we find conditions of economic immaturity which
strikingly resemble those of England in the time of Owen. In all these
districts trade unionism is undeveloped. When it exists at all, it is
more a feeling out for solidarity than the actual existence of
solidarity. It is the first groping toward unity that so often brings
riots and violence, because organization is absent and the feeling of
power does not exist. Carl Legien, the leader of the great German
unions, said at the international socialist congress at Stuttgart
(1907): "As soon as the French have an actual trade-union organization,
they will cease discussing