The government has, however, countenanced some infringements. A few syndicates of municipal and departmental employees are allowed; but they are mostly workmen, not strictly functionaries. There are several syndicates of elementary school teachers. But they have not been allowed to federate their unions. At Lyons the teachers formed a union and, according to law, filed their rules and regulations with the proper official, who turned them over to the Minister of Justice, and after a cabinet consultation it was decided that the union was illegal, but would be ignored. They then joined the local _Bourse du Travail_ (federation of labor), and Briand, then Minister of Education, vetoed their action. Then a number of branches in the public service, including post-office and customs-house employees, teachers, etc., united in forming a committee "_pour la défense du droit syndical des salaries de l'état, des départements et du commerce_." This "Committee of Defense" petitioned Clémenceau on the right to organize, and intimated that the great and only difference between the state and the private employer is that the former adds political to economic oppression. This is pure Syndicalism. Under the individual political jugglery that takes the place of the party system in France, the problem is not made any the easier. 2. PROGRAM OF THE LIBERAL WING OF THE FRENCH SOCIALISTS, ADOPTED AT TOURS, 1902, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF JAURÈS _I.--Declaration of Principles_ Socialism proceeds simultaneously from the movement of democracy and from the new forms of production. In history, from the very morrow of the French Revolution, the proletarians perceived that the Declaration of the Rights of Man would remain an illusion unless society transformed ownership. How, indeed, could freedom, ownership, security, be guaranteed to all, in a society where millions of workers have no property but their muscles, and are obliged, in order to live, to sell their power of work to the propertied minority? To extend, therefore, to every citizen the guarantees inscribed in the Declaration of Rights, our great Babeuf demanded ownership in common, as a guarantee of welfare in common. Communism was for the boldest proletarians the supreme expression of the Revolution. Between the political régime, the outcome of the revolutionary movement, and the economic régime of society, there is an intolerable contradiction. In the political order democracy is realized: all citizens share equally, at least by right, in the sovereignty; universal suffrage is communism in political power. In the economic order, on the other hand, a minority is sovereign. It is the oligarchy of capital which possesses, directs, administers, and exploits.