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"The soil was brought on men's backs; terraces were made and planted with chestnut trees, peach trees, and orchards, and water was brought for irrigation in canals two or three miles long." Just now they have dug a new canal, eleven miles in length. To the same spirit is also due the remarkable success lately obtained by the syndicats agricoles, or peasants' and farmers' associations.
In France local unions or syndicats were legalized as early as 1884 but 1895 is the important landmark, being the date of the foundation with which Syndicalism is associated to-day, the Confederation Generale du Travail, popularly known as the "C.G.T.," the central trade-union organization in France.
In an able critique upon Bodley's France Madame Darmesteter, writing in the Contemporary Review, July, 1898, points out that even so well informed an observer of French life as the author of that remarkable book failed to appreciate the steadying influence exercised upon the French body politic by the network of voluntary associations, the syndicats agricoles, which are the analogues and, to some extent, the prototypes, in France of our agricultural societies in Ireland.
Great international socialist congresses were now the natural outgrowth of powerful and extensive national movements. Up to that time syndicalism signified nothing more than trade unionism, and the French syndicats were merely associations of workmen struggling to obtain higher wages and shorter hours of labor.
The result was an organization in which the local Syndicat was fed- erated twice over, once with the other Syndicat in its locality, forming together the local Bourse du Travail, and again with the Syndicats in the same industry in other places. ``It was the purpose of the new organization to secure twice over the membership of every syndicat, to get it to join both its local Bourse du Travail and the Federation of its industry.
They deprecate the making of agreements with employers, and acknowledge no duty in the keeping of agreements. The year 1911 will be remembered among word-historians as the year when the word "syndicalism" became an everyday English word. It had its origin in the French word "syndicalisme," which is French for trade unionism, just as French and Belgian trade unions are "syndicats."
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