World of Labour

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Any book about the Labour Movement written before 1914 must necessarily date itself to a considerable extent. The position of Trade Unionism both at home and abroad has been fundamentally changed by the war. When I wrote in 1913, there was no Trade Union movement in Russia, apart from secret and persecuted political societies. To-day, Trade Unionism and Co-operation are almost the only live forces, except purely political and military organisations, in Soviet Russia. When I wrote, German Trade Unionism was the submissive handmaid of German Social Democracy, pursuing strictly constitutional courses under a militaristic and autocratic Empire. To-day, it is swinging from left to right and from right to left, under the alternating impulses of Spartacism and unrepentant Imperialism. Since I wrote, the Belgian movement has been shattered by the war, and to-day, amid the ruins of Belgian industry, the work of rebuilding it has hardly begun.