[193] _Mouvement Socialiste_ (Nov., 1904), p. 61. Proportional representation was defended by the delegates of the Typographical Union, of the Machinists and of the Railway Workers. They criticised the statutes adopted at Montpellier which gave every organization, regardless of its numbers, one vote only in the Confederal Committee. This system, they declared, vitiated the character of the Confederation, and gave predominance to the minority. They claimed that the delegates in the Confederal Committee expressed the opinions shared by a small proportion only of the organized workingmen and that the Confederation was, therefore, a tool in the hands of a few "turbulent" individuals. They demanded that some system of proportional representation should be adopted which should give every organization a number of votes in the Confederal Committee proportional to the number of its members. The opponents of proportional representation argued that this system would stifle the small syndicats; that all syndicats were of equal value from the point of view of the economic struggle, because small syndicats often achieve as much, and even more, than large ones; they pointed out that proportional representation would make necessary continual changes in the number of delegates in the Confederal Committee, because the effective force of the syndicats is in constant flux and that it would be impossible to find out the true figures. They claimed that proportional representation could not be applied to economic life, because it was no fault of any one trade or industry if only a few thousand workers were employed in it, while other industries required hundreds of thousands of workingmen. Even from the point of view of strength, they argued, a small syndicat may have more value than a large one because it may embrace a larger proportion of workingmen employed in the trade. The opponents of proportional representation repudiated the assertion that only the small syndicats were with them and pointed out that some of the largest federations, as the Metallurgical Federation with 11,500 members, the Federation of Marine with 12,000 members and others, were against proportional representation. The opponents of proportional representation carried the day and the proposition of "reformist" delegates was rejected by a vote of 822 against 388 (one abstained). The Congress of Bourges thus sanctioned the revolutionary character of the Confederation. The "reformists" frankly admitted that they had suffered a defeat and attributed it to the fact that two-thirds of the delegates were new men in the movement and under the influence of the anarchists.[194] The revolutionary syndicalists triumphed, and extolled the historical significance of the Congress of Bourges which, in their opinion, was a "landmark" in the history of syndicalism. [194] A. Keufer, _Le Mouvement Socialiste_ (Nov., 1904), p. 93.