The impact of the war upon industry, and the reverberation of its social results abroad, for some time stimulated this latent feeling in American workmen. For the first time in decades the competition of the unemployed and the immigrant was virtually removed, and the wage-earner began to feel secure enough to assert his personality. He was necessary to the community in an immediate way. The policy of the government was to recognize this fact, and to prevent an unduly rapid increase in wages and in the power of organized labour by compromising with it on certain simple issues like collective bargaining and the eight-hour day. But larger aspirations arose in the rank and file, and when the Russian Revolution sent a word of emancipation around the world, they were ready to listen. In spite of the crushing force of the whole ruling propaganda machinery, which had been so successful in arousing hatred against Germany, countless American workmen sensed the approach of a new order as a result of the success of the Bolsheviki. A secondary impulse of the same sort, felt even more strongly in some quarters, arose from the Nottingham programme of the British Labour Party. But affairs moved slowly, hope was deferred, and at length the new spirit lost much of its freshness and power. The very acrimoniousness and volume of the controversy over what had or had not been done in Russia wearied most people of the whole matter. The many expected revolutions in other countries, which missed fire so many times, caused disillusionment. The doctrinaire and even religious adherents of the Russian Communists began to make trouble for every radical organization in the country by their quarrels and divisions. At length, the war being over, the American labour movement itself began to display a weakness in the face of renewed attack on the part of its opponents, which showed how illusory had been many of its recent gains and how seriously its morale had been injured. Economic radicalism never looked--on the surface--weaker than it does in the United States to-day. On the strength of statements by Mr. Gompers and some other leaders of the trade unions, we are likely to assume that organized labour will have nothing to do with it. The professed radicals themselves have been weakened by dissensions and scattered by persecution. Yet a brief survey of the formal groups which now profess radical theories will indicate why the future of American radicalism should not be assessed on the evidence of their present low estate.