W. ``The I. W. W.,'' he says,
``preach a policy of militant action, very necessary
in parts of America, which would not do in France.''[29]
A very interesting account of it, from the point of
view of an author who is neither wholly on the side
of labor nor wholly on the side of the capitalist, but
disinterestedly anxious to find some solution of the
social question short of violence and revolution, is
the work of Mr. John Graham Brooks, called ``American
Syndicalism: the I. W. W.'' (Macmillan, 1913).
American labor conditions are very different from
those of Europe. In the first place, the power of the
trusts is enormous; the concentration of capital has
in this respect proceeded more nearly on Marxian
lines in America than anywhere else. In the second
place, the great influx of foreign labor makes the
whole problem quite different from any that arises
in Europe. The older skilled workers, largely American
born, have long been organized in the American
Federation of Labor under Mr. Gompers. These
represent an aristocracy of labor. They tend to
work with the employers against the great mass of
unskilled immigrants, and they cannot be regarded as
forming part of anything that could be truly called
a labor movement.
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