Chapter I: Graham Taylor

The nation-wide strike for manhood suffrage in Belgium which
paralyzed the industries and almost suspended the normal life of
the people was foreshadowed in a spectacular demonstration in
Brussels two years ago.

On August 15, 1911, the streets of that gay, medieval capital
witnessed scenes which every American who looked on knew were
making history. Over 60,000 men, from larger and smaller places
throughout Belgium, took a day off without wages and paid their
way to the capital of their country, in order to voice their
protest against the unjust inequalities of the suffrage. The show
of force by the extraordinary police and military precautions
betrayed the furtive apprehension of both the municipal and
national governments as to what might happen. With no sign of
timidity or intimation of being overawed, this vast industrial
army marched ten abreast for hours—silent, grim, determined,
united, unarmed—between long files of armed soldiery which lined
the curbs, and past stronger detachments of all arms of the
service massed at strategic centers.

The great procession assembled at the Socialist headquarters, a
large and impressive building bearing the significant name _Maison
de Peuple_, the House of the People. The permanent background of
the stage in the assembly hall of that building is a colossal head
of Jesus of Nazareth, the reverent work of a Belgian Socialist.
This House of the People is the most practical expression, or
perhaps demonstration, of the co-operative commonwealth in
miniature, which is to be found anywhere in the world. Starting
with a sack of potatoes and a bag of flour, these wage-workers in
ten years erected a building costing $250,000. Of this sum, which
was loaned by the national bank, they had then paid $100,000 and
had assets worth three times as much as the balance due on the
mortgage, which they continue to reduce by annual payments.

In this four-story semi-circular building, at one of the principal
business centers, ample accomodations are provided for a great
variety of practical agencies. A café, which paid a profit of
$2,400 in three months, shares the front of the ground floor with
a large co-operative department store, where dry goods, house
furnishings, clothing, meats, groceries, butter and milk, hats,
hosiery and shoes are sold. A bakery, with a capacity of 125,000
loaves of bread a week; a coal depot, with twenty-nine delivery
carts; a laundry, and a clothing manufactory are among the
business enterprises conducted here.

The 19,000 co-operating families receive as their share of the
profits 12 per cent of the money they pay for bread, 6 per cent of
what their groceries cost them and 5 per cent of the purchase
price of their clothing. Among the protective features are an
employment bureau for men and women, a pharmacy and a corps of
thirteen physicians rendering free service to all members of one
year’s standing, and a sick benefit society with 8,000 members.
Singing and ethical classes are maintained for children and a
well-trained orchestra and choral club for adults. Small halls
adequately provide for the meetings of the trade sections, and a
great auditorium, seating 2,436 persons, rallies the festival
gatherings and supplies room for political mass meetings.

From this national center the procession of mid August took up its
line of march, carrying banners which took the keynote of their
inscriptions from the following figures emblazoned everywhere:

993,070 have 1 vote;

395,866 have 2 votes;

704,549 voters, having two, three or four votes, cast 1,717,871
votes, a majority of 88,523 over those having one vote;

One man one vote!

In Belgium a man over twenty-five years of age gets an extra vote
if he owns property. He is granted another vote if he has a
university diploma. He casts a fourth vote if he is over
thirty-five years of age, is the father of a family and pays taxes
on more than a certain amount of property. The majority of the
industrial population thus have only one vote, while the rural,
well-to-do and richer people outvote each wage earner by two,
three or even four votes. The rural population thus controls the
city industrial population and the church is charged by the
Socialists with controlling the rural vote.

Against this rule of the minority, this great demonstration of
1911 was a protest. But to the onlooker from abroad it then seemed
to be a patriotic proclamation of Belgium’s one great hope of
national evolution without revolution. The primary cause of the
movement which has culminated in the present national strike was
the defeat of the liberal and Socialist coalition in parliament by
a combination of the government and clerical forces in the
elections of 1912. The Socialist congress summoned to meet the
issue brought to a crisis by that event decided upon a general
strike as a last resort if all other means of obtaining manhood
suffrage failed. But before resorting to that measure a general
suffrage bill was introduced into parliament by the Socialists and
supported by the liberals. As serious consideration of it was
refused by the clerical and government authorities, a general
strike was voted on April 14.

Whatever the full effect of this national political strike may be,
those who are the keenest observers concede that the making of
history is in the movement of Belgian labor for one man one vote
suffrage.

Certain it is that a movement of the people capable of maintaining
and increasing for so many years a labor vote in parliament until
it numbers more than one-third of the total must be reckoned with.
If now the tolerance of this Belgian Socialist Party toward those
who honestly oppose its principles and methods, at this supreme
crisis in its history and the national development, grows with its
strength and equals its determination, it will improve the
greatest opportunity the Socialist cause has ever had in the
sphere of practical politics to demonstrate and promote its
co-operative commonwealth.