866 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



and succeeded in forcing the ringleaders to go away by refusing to 

 take them as tenants. At Thegan-les-Beziers, in Herault, there were 

 strike-breakers who went in succession to all the lands abandoned by 

 the workmen. At Vauvert in Card there is a company for mutual 

 insurance against sabotage, which seems to have been the means of 

 considerably diminishing the number of acts of violence. At Marsil- 

 largues in the arrondissement of Montpellier harmony was restored 

 through the constitution of a co-operative society for the warehousing 

 and sale of wines. All the workmen proprietors have an interest in 

 joining it to secure a better sale of their produce, and they are thus 

 withdrawn from the workmen's syndicate which moreover does not 

 admit any members of the co-operative society. Doubtless, these are 

 only isolated facts, but M. Souchon does not hesitate to regard them 

 as symptomatic of a new era. 



Rural syndicalists are for the most part vinedressers, wood- 

 cutters, and gardeners. In their ranks may also be found metayers of 

 the Bourbonnais, day labourers of Ile-de-France, and even some farm 

 servants of the Cemtre, but these form only a small minority in the 

 whole or rural syndicalism. In all there may be 642 workmen's syn- 

 dicates in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and cattle-rearing, comprising 

 60,724 members, that is, only 2.22 per cent of the whole number of 

 wage-earners. M. Souchon believes that taking into account the 

 continued excension of syndicates of factory workers we may conclude 

 that there are between the two forms of labour great differences which 

 throw difficulties in the way of the extension of syndicalism among 

 rural workers. 



