SOCIALIST GLASS WORKS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1633, 27 December 1912, Page 9

SOCIALIST GLASS WORKS.

AN EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED. Another failure is to be added to the long list (writes the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph," under date of November 5). Anarchy reigns in the Socialist glass works at Albi. Yet under what rosy auspices, the venture was inaugurated! Not so many years ago the glass works of Albi' were to be a little comer of the Communist millennium, blossoming in the wastes of capitalist industry. Funds wore forthcoming in plenty.M. Jaures delivered his pontifical blessing on an enterprise .in which Jack was to bo as good ns his master, or, rather, in which there were to be no masters, only comrades, working together in. the faith.

For a little while all went well, or moderately well; but very soon there were several rifts, in the lute. Expenses began to go up and profits to go down—a very mysterious thing, when one considers that the happy glass-blowers, of Albi were no longer the slaves of a brutal and grasping capitalism. The governing body became anxious, and met in conference. It was discovered—a painful disillusionthat what was wanted was a little less folk of rights and i little more performance of duties. Something must bo done if the whole enterprise was not to foun<fer. Finally, it was a confession of defeat. Authority was called in in the per. son of M. Spinetta, a "bourgeois," a man who had been known to wear a top hat and was—crowning infamy!—a certificated engineer. M. Spinetta came, saw, anil stood his ground. A weaker man would have thrown.up the sponge long ago, for the atmosphere in which At. Spinetta lives and works is hardly one of sympathy. The brothers havo thrown asido momentarily their individual enmities to fight against the common foe, for 51. Spinetta represents all that is most hated to them— authority, competence, and the old, benighted notion of a fair day's work for n fair day's wnge. Hence confusions and cabals, furnaces # that go out, glass that breaks, adulteration of materials—all the artillery of "sabotage." But, in spite, of it all, M. Spinetta, who is a Corsican, will not lcavo his post, in which the governing body has just confirmed him. Will he in the end bring.authority and order into the communistic chaos? It may- be so, but in any case ths glass works of Albi, as a Socialistic venture, have signally failed.