body of workers who were impatient of the conservatism of the A. F. of L. and desired somehow to build up a strong revolutionary (this meaning for them a Marxian socialist) organization. The Western Federation of Miners--stronger than all the others put together--was not excelled by any of them in its revolutionary zeal. It had the power as well as the enthusiasm. Moreover, it represented revolutionary industrial unionism more completely than did the smaller unions in the West and the Alliance in the East. The Alliance, in fact, was a revolutionary union without the industrial character and without much real appreciation of the meaning and importance of the idea of _industrial_ as opposed to _craft_ organization. The miners, however, had a big, powerful union of an emphatically industrial character and their experience had made them very militant.[76] Much of this hard experience consisted in a gradual process of disillusionment about the virtue and goodness of the state so far as its relations with labor were concerned. The long series of violent and protracted strikes between the Western Federation and the mine operators and the rôle played therein by the state government convinced the miners that they would be more successful in gaining their political ends if they had more economic power to back up their requests. The miners were convinced, therefore, that the imperative need of the hour was for the extension to other industries of their type of industrial organization inspired by socialist aims. This would make solidarity possible, not only between skilled and unskilled in the metalliferous mines but also in all mines, all shops, all industries. They felt that then indeed would an injury to one be the concern of all.[77] FOOTNOTES: [3] _Cf._ Brooks, _American Syndicalism_ (New York, 1913), ch. vi and Tridon, _The New Unionism_, 4th printing (New York, 1917), p. 67. [4] _Cf._ C. Osborne Ward, _A history of the ancient working people, from the earliest known period to the adoption of Christianity by Constantine_ (_The Ancient Lowly_), Washington, D. C., Press of the Craftsman, 1889, p. 140. [5] "Stellen wir also vor allem fest, das die syndikalistische Bewegung ... in ihren Tendenzen and ihrer Taktik als eine Volksbewegung, eine Bewegung in den Arbeiterkreisen selbst, entstanden ist, deren geschichtlichen Ursprung man ... bis in den Anfang der neunziger Jahre, ja selbst in die Zeit der alten Internationale zurück verlegen muss." (Ch. Cornélissen, "Ueber den internationalen Syndikalismus"--_Archiv für Sozial Wissenschaft und Sozial-Politik_, vol. xxx (1910), p. 151.) [6] Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_ (London, 1902), new ed., pp. 144-5. [7] _Ibid._, p. 404. In ch. iii, the Webbs give an interesting description of this "revolutionary period" in English unionism.