SOME PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL LABOR 86$ 



prietors felt the impossibility of employing many workmen under the 

 conditions imposed upon them. And partly from necessity, partly 

 in retaliation, they dismissed many of the workmen they had engaged, 

 and left hundreds of day labourers without work. When they con- 

 sented to re-engage them, it was at a lower rate. 



The question for the syndicalists was then to insure respect for 

 the agreements already made, and to obtain new concessions, unat- 

 tainable without further struggles. So the question was put to the 

 congress at Narbonne, whether the time had not come for a general 

 strike of vinedressers. The idea was approved, but referred to the 

 Federal Council which proclaimed the strike on December ist, 1904. 



It proved a failure, and was fatal to the prestige of syndicalism 

 in the country districts of the south. A rapid diminution in the num- 

 ber of syndicates and syndicalists was soon observed. In 1904 the 

 Vinedressers' Federation comprised 145 members and 14,084 sub- 

 scribers; the year 1905 closed with 157 syndicates and 5,551 members; 

 the year 1906 with 143 syndicates and 3,366 members; at the end of 

 October, 1907, there were only 109 syndicates and 1,721 members. 

 At the same tune, the surviving organizations seemed to lose interest 

 in the movement. 



Southern workmen are less tempted by strikes, because much can 

 be obtained without them. Since the increase in the price of wine 

 many proprietors willingly pay their workmen 50 centimes per hour, 

 a sum formerly regarded as a maximum, and there are often special 

 indemnities, either on account of the high cost of living or for per- 

 forming specially hard work. Another cause is that the small pro- 

 prietors are rapidly increasing in numbers. Before the phylloxera 

 crisis they were very numerous, but owing to that calamity they almost 

 entirely disappeared. 



In spite of the more systematic character of the new mode of 

 cultivation a labour conquest of the land was begun, but interrupted 

 by the frost of 1903 and still more afterward by a failure of demand. 

 At the present time subdivision is reappearing. The employers are 

 more energetic, and though they have no organizations comparable 

 to those of the forest proprietors described by M. Souchon, yet more 

 than once strikers have been met by a well concerted opposition. In 

 1912, at Ouveillan, in Aude, there was an attempted strike. The 

 employers collected all the men who were willing to work, and formed 

 them into strong gangs, thus frustrating all efforts at intimidation. 

 Then they hired all the habitations in the village as the leases expired, 



