In what way, Mr. Railroad Slave, is your interest identical with that of
“Jim” Hill, your master?
He owns the railway system that you workingmen built and now operate.
He pulls every dollar of profit out of it for himself he can, and leaves
you not one dollar more than he must.
* * * * *
If you don’t suit him, he discharges you, and you then have to pull up
stakes and hunt another master. He gets the lion’s share, you get what’s
left; and in the aggregate that is fixed by what is required to fill
your dinner pail, cover you with overalls and maintain a habitation
where you can raise more wage-slaves to take your place when you are
worn out and go to the scrap heap.
The “Jim” Hills live out of your labor—out of your ignorance—for if you
were not densely stupid you would not be their dumb-driven cattle.
Now they and their politicians and preachers and “labor leaders” tell
you how bright and smart you are to flatter your ignorance, and keep you
from opening your eyes to your slavish condition, and above all, to the
wage-system, which lies at the bottom of your poverty and degradation.
Your interests as wage-slaves are not only _not_ identical with, but are
directly opposed to, the interests of the “Jim” Hills and the railroad
corporations, and I challenge any of your “grand chiefs” to deny it in
my presence on any public platform.
You have got to get rid of the capitalist leeches that suck your hearts’
blood through the quill of “identity of interests.”
They are in the capitalist class; you are in the working class. They
gouge out profits; what’s left you get for wages. They perform no useful
work; you deform your bodies with slavery. They are millionaires; you
are paupers. They have everything; you do everything. They live in
palaces; you in shanties. They have abundance of leisure and mountains
of money; you have neither. Finally, they are few; _you are legions_!
Poor, dumb giant, you could in a breath extinguish your pigmy exploiter,
were you only conscious of your overmastering power!
The workers made and operate all the railroads; the capitalists had and
have nothing to do with either. They pocket the proceeds on a basis of
watered stock and other “stock,” in the form of employes, and then issue
fraudulent reports to show on what a small margin of profit they are
actually doing business.
In this connection it should be said that the railroads pad their
“operating expenses” outrageously to deceive their employes and the
general public, and their reports can be shown to be full of duplicity
and fraud. They are not required to itemize their “operating expenses”
in their reports to the interstate commerce commission; this they only
do in the reports of the directors to the stockholders, and an
examination of these will disclose the swindle and show how much
reliance can be placed in the public reports of private grafters.
* * * * *
Mr. Railway Slave, to resume our interview, you are not in the same
class with the “Jim” Hills of the railroads. You don’t visit their
homes; nor they at yours. You don’t ride in their private cars and
yachts and automobiles. Your wives don’t wear the same kind of clothes
and jewelry and move in the same circle with theirs. You don’t join them
in their luxuriant travels to Europe when they are received by the
crowned heads and other parasites and given a private audience by the
pope. You stay at home and sweat and suffer to foot all the bills; they
do all the rest.
To sum up: They are in the capitalist class; you in the working class.
They are masters; you slaves. They fleece and pluck; you furnish the
wool and feathers.
* * * * *
That is the basis of the class struggle.
Upon that basis you have got to organize and fight before you can move
an inch toward freedom.
You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political
party and _strike and vote together_, and the hour you do that, the
world is yours.
The railroads will oppose this; they want to keep you divided and at
their mercy. Your grand officers will oppose it; they want to keep you
divided and continue to draw their salaries.
When you have a little time figure out the amount annually paid to the
grand officers of the railway unions in salaries and expenses, and you
will be amazed; you will also understand why railroad employes will
never get together as long as their grand officers can prevent it.
By the way, why do you persist in calling your officers “Grand Chiefs”
and “Grand Masters”? Are they “grand” because you are petty?
The working class, the rank and file, are _grander_ than all the labor
leaders, good and bad, that ever lived.
A “Master” implies slaves. It is bad enough to be slaves without
glorying in it. A “Master” is bad enough; a “Grand Master” is the limit,
especially if the title is voluntarily conferred by the slaves.
There was a time when I did not realize this and many other things I now
do. The difference is that I have learned to think and can now see these
things as they are.
* * * * *
_The capitalist class! The working class! The class struggle!_ These are
the supreme economic and political facts of this day and the precise
terms that express them.
* * * * *
These are the grim realities in the existing capitalist system, and the
sooner you drop your brotherhood toys and deal with the labor question,
to which most of you are strangers, the better will it be for you.
What is the labor question?
It is the question of the working class organizing to overthrow the
capitalist class, emancipating itself from wage slavery and making
itself the ruling class of the world.
Can this be done?
Anything can be done by the working class.
Labor has but to awaken to its own power. Then the earth and all its
fullness will be for labor. Now the exploiters of labor have it; and
they must be put out of that business and into useful service.
First of all, you railroad workers, you million and almost a half of
slaves, must wake up; realize that you are a part of the working class
and that the whole working class must unite, close up the ranks and
present a solid front, every day in the year, election day especially
included.
As individual wage-slaves you are helpless and your condition hopeless.
As a _class_, you are the greatest power between the earth and the
stars. As a _class_, your chains turn to spider-webs and in your
presence capitalists shrivel up and blow away.
The individual wage-slave must recognize the power of class unity and do
all he can to bring it about.
That is what is called _class-consciousness_, in the light of which may
be seen the _class struggle_ in startling vividness.
* * * * *
The class-conscious worker recognizes the necessity of organization,
economic and political, and of using every weapon at his command—the
strike, the boycott, the ballot and every other—to achieve his
emancipation.
He, therefore, joins the union of his _class_ and the party of his
_class_ and gives his time and energy to the work of educating and
lining up his _class_ for the struggle of his _class_ for emancipation.
You railroad men may think you are doing this now, but you are not. You
are wasting most of your time and money for that which will bring no
returns.
* * * * *
Let me tell you a few things the railroad corporations and your leaders,
between whom there is an “identity of interests,” are having you do to
occupy your time and keep you chained to the kennels of your masters.
_First_—They have you divided into petty groups, each trying to be it,
and not one having any real power for working class good.
_Second_—They have you quarreling about jurisdiction and about an “open
door,” and the corporations smile serenely while you play with these
toys.
Your jurisdiction squabbles never will be settled, but grow worse. At
places the B. L. E. and B. L. F. are at swords’ points, and the O. R. C.
and B. R. T. are ready to fly at each others’ throats; and so intense is
the petty craft jealousy that they are ready to scab on one another.
And if they ever go out on strike, particularly the B. L. E., their own
former members, victimized by them, will rise up to smite them.
The other day I met a man who had an official position that paid him
$5,000.00 a year. Said he to me: “I will quit this job for but one
thing, and that will be to take an engine when the B. L. E. go out on
strike.” He used to be a member.
There are any number of men scattered over the country—most of them its
own former members—waiting for the B. L. E. to strike, and the day is
not distant when that union will reap the harvest it has sown.
_Third_—You are kept apart from other workers, for it would be dangerous
if you affiliated with them and got an idea above the round-house or
caboose or cab you work in. Besides, you might get class-conscious and
that would endanger your slavery.
_Fourth_—You spend hours in the lodge room, “riding the goat,” getting
the secret work “down fine,” giving “passwords” and “signs,” and
unpacking job-lots of “secret work” that any railroad official in the
country can have any day he wants it.
These are but bibs and rattles for mental babies, and the more time you
amuse yourselves with them the less danger there is of your thinking
about anything that will break your chains and set you free.
These are a few of the things; I have not space for more. The hundreds
of columns of stale stuff rehashed for years in your journals that might
be called goose gossip would, perhaps, be excusable in the official
organ of some feeble-minded asylum, but it is woefully out of place in a
working class publication.
Now let me say a few more things—and space will allow only a few of the
many that might be put down—that you may think about at your leisure.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is forty-two years old and has
never won a strike of any consequence in all its career.
It is called a success because the corporations make some concessions to
it so as to use it as a battering ram against other employes in the
service; and this is substantially true of all the “brotherhoods.”
* * * * *
Then, again, the brotherhoods are used against each other.
The union switchmen on the Denver and Rio Grande, at Pittsburg and other
places; the engineers on the C., B. & Q.; the telegraph operators on the
A. & P., M., K. & T., Great Northern and Northern Pacific; and the
machinists on the Santa Fe are but a few of the long list of victims of
the “dog-eat-dog” unionism, a quarter of a century behind the times.
But the grand officers of the several unions attend one another’s
conventions and join in solemn chorus in telling the delegates of each
other’s union what wise grand officers they have, how kind the
corporations are to them, and how proud they ought to be of their noble
brotherhoods.
In the next few years locomotive engineers will become motormen and
firemen will disappear. It is safe to say that in another twenty years
locomotive firemen will be practically of the past. They can then cling
to their last straw—their insurance policy—and that is the main thing
that holds them together today. But for that they would soon cave in,
and that is true of them all. They are then, primarily, coffin clubs and
not labor unions. They care for the sick and bury the dead—a good thing,
incidentally, for the corporations. To get the full benefits, it is
necessary to be maimed or killed.
* * * * *
It is well to bury the dead, but the living are infinitely more
important.
One effective blow to break the chains of wage slavery is better than a
century of attention to dead bodies.
Class-consciousness is better than corpse-consciousness.
* * * * *
A good deal more that should be said must be omitted for the want of
time and space.
It is my hope that the facts here presented may lead the railroad
workers to study the real labor question. A few of them only know what
Socialism is, and they are Socialists. The rest are opposed to it
because the little they know about it is not true.
* * * * *
No honest workingman understands Socialism without embracing it.
* * * * *
The railroad workers, if they want their eyes opened, must read class
struggle literature.
The Appeal to Reason, with a circulation of over three hundred thousand
copies, can be obtained for a trifle—fifty cents for a whole year—and if
they can’t afford that, they can send ten cents for a trial
subscription.
They cannot afford to remain in ignorance of the class struggle, or of
what Socialism really means.
* * * * *
A mighty social revolution is impending—it is shaking the earth from
center to circumference, and only the dead may be deaf to its rumblings.
Revolutionary education and organization is the vital need of the
working class.
Let every railroad employe who is alive enough to want to know how the
working class can emancipate the working class and walk the earth free,
and enjoy all its manifold blessings, subscribe for a revolutionary
paper and read it for a year; and he will then find himself with the
rest of us, in class-conscious array, in the struggle for freedom.
The Appeal to Reason, already suggested, will make an excellent
beginning. There is a long list of other papers and magazines that can
be read with profit.
Drop a card to J. Mahlon Barnes, National Secretary Socialist party, 180
E. Washington street, Chicago, asking him to send you printed matter in
regard to this working class party, and also to send you a list of
Socialist papers and magazines, and a catalog of working class books and
pamphlets.
* * * * *
Great is the privilege we enjoy in being permitted to take part in this
mighty historic struggle.
The base and cowardly will sneer and sneak to the rear, but the brave
and true, though hell itself gape, will do battle with all the blood in
their veins, and write their names in living letters on the shining
scroll of LABOR’S EMANCIPATION.