SOCIALISM IN ACTION.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4709, 9 June 1924, Page 3

SOCIALISM IN ACTION.

A COMMUNIST EXPERIMENT. instructive object lesson. An instructive object lesson concerning Socialism in action in the industrial sphere is provided by the events at the large glassworks of Alb, Paris, which are (says the “Daily Telegraph”) owned and managed entirely by workers’ organisations. The board of directors consisted of representatives of the three trade unions, to one or another of which all the workmen belong, but some little time ago a dispute arose between the directors and the workmen concerning the pensions'scheme. As the negotiations seemed to drag on indefinitely the workmen, growing impatient, took the drastic step of turning out the directois and replacing them by an administrative committee, on which only two of the three trade unions were represented. This committee took possession. and its flr.st act was to dismiss all the workmen who did not belong to one of the two largest unions concerned. It then applied to a civil tribunal for the factory to be placed under sequestration, the object being to secure legal possession of the funds and property previously in charge of the deposed board. But the original directors prevented any legal decision benig reached by applying Cor a postponement, in order that they might raise the question of competence. Upon this the workmen’s administrative committee withdrew their application, on the ground that the original board of directois had made a continuance of work impossible by causing the payments due for goods already sold to be held up pending a settlement. A mass meeting of the workers decided on the immediate application of a certain order of the day, and, “in consequence of the tragic events which might follow its execution,” they appointed a second administrative committee, having first passed a resolution declaring that, rather than give way oh what they held to be their rights, they would perish in the ruins of their factory. Within a few hours flames were seen to burst out from one of the factory buildings, and the fire was spreading rapidly when the police, firemen, and troops were hurried to the scene. They found sitting round the blazing buildings members of the first administrative committee, which had turned out the directors, and who spontaneously declared that they had set fire to the factory. They were all arrested, amid a demonstration, in which a body of the workers testified approval of their action.