_Speech at South Chicago, November 24, 1905_
The year now drawing to a close will be memorable in the annals of labor
because of the organization of the Industrial Workers of the World.
For thirty years I have been connected with the labor movement. All of
the years of my young manhood were devoted to the work of organizing my
fellow-workingmen, that by the power of united effort they might do
something to improve their condition as workers, promote their interests
as citizens and advance their general welfare as men. There was a time
when I believed that the trade union was in itself sufficient for this
work. I have been compelled to revise my opinion and to conclude that
something larger, more thorough and comprehensive in the way of
organization is required to meet the demands of modern times.
The trade union, itself the product of industrial evolution, is subject
to the laws of change, and the union that may have served some purpose a
quarter of a century ago is now as completely out of date as the tools
of industry that were then in use.
Now, I assume that most of you are more or less familiar with the
history of the industrial development of the land; that you know in a
general way that in the beginning of industrial society in the United
States, when the tool with which work was done was a simple hand tool,
made and used by an individual, the average workingman could look
forward to the time when he would be an employer instead of an employe;
that, having mastered his trade, he could grasp the few simple tools
with which his work was done, virtually employ himself, own what he
produced and enjoy the fruit of his labor.
At that time one man worked for another, not in the capacity of a wage
worker as we understand that term today, but simply to learn his trade,
and having become the master of this he was in a position to command
most, if not all, his labor produced. It was when the simple tool of the
hand laborer was supplanted by the machine and the workingman lost
control of the tool with which he worked, that the modern industrial
revolution had its beginning. The small employer became the capitalist
and the employe became the wage worker; and there began the division of
society into two distinct economic classes, and we have these classes
before us today, in capitalist society, fully developed.
These two classes, consisting of relatively few capitalists who own
tools in the form of great machines that they did not make and that they
cannot use, and of a vast army of wage workers who did make these
machines and who do use them, but who do not own them—these two classes,
tool-owners and tool-users; that is to say, masters and slaves,
exploiters and exploited; to put it into perfectly plain terms, robbers
and robbed—these two economic forces whose interests ceaselessly clash,
are pitted against each other in a mighty struggle for the mastery. It
is because of this conflict of economic interests between these two
classes into which modern society has been divided in the evolution of
the capitalist system that we have the strike, the boycott, the lockout,
the scab, the strike-breaker and slugger, and countless other evils that
need not be enumerated here, all of which spring from the fundamental
contradiction that inheres in capitalist society; that is, the
individual ownership of the social tool of production and the individual
appropriation of the social product of the working class.
Because of this, the capitalist who does no useful work has the economic
power to take from a thousand or ten thousand workingmen all they
produce, over and above what is required to keep them in working and
producing order, and he becomes a millionaire, perhaps a
multi-millionaire. He lives in a palace in which there is music and
singing and dancing and the luxuries of all climes. He sails the high
seas in his private yacht. He is the reputed “captain of industry” who
privately owns a social utility, has great economic power, and commands
the political power of the nation to protect his economic interests. He
is the gentleman who furnishes the “political boss” and his swarm of
mercenaries with the funds with which the politics of the nation are
corrupted and debauched. He is the economic master and the political
ruler; and you workingmen are almost as completely at his mercy as if
you were his property under the law. It is true that he has no title to
your bodies; but he is the master of your jobs; he controls the
employment upon which your lives depend; he has it in his power to
decide whether you shall work or not; that is to say, whether you shall
live or die. And the man who has the power of life and death over you,
though he may not wear a crown or be hailed a king, is as completely
your master and your ruler as if you were his chattels and subject to
his commands under the laws of the state.
What is your status as a workingman today? You are not in the position
of your grandfather, who could work with tools of his own, and who, when
he produced something, was the master of it. Work is no longer done with
that kind of tools. It is done with the most intricate and costly
machinery, such as you have in this great steel plant here in South
Chicago. That is the twentieth century tool of production. Work is now
done with that kind of gigantic social agencies, made by you workingmen
and used by you workingmen. Nobody but workingmen can make them; nobody
but workingmen can use them.
You have made all these marvelous machines and now your employment, your
very lives, depend upon your having access to them. But these large
grown tools, made by labor and used by labor, are not owned by labor in
the capitalist system, but belong to a capitalist or group of
capitalists who live in New York or some other remote point; and when it
suits their pleasure they can order their tool houses locked up and you
workingmen locked out without consulting you and without a moment’s
warning. You have not a word to say. At such a time it is useless for
you to leave here and look for work elsewhere, for when this mill closes
down so do others. You are out of employment and you begin to suffer,
and most of you don’t know what the trouble is. You only know that you
are no longer wanted at the mill; that workers are a drug on the market.
With these wonderful tools with which you now work, every few years you
have produced so much that all of the markets at home and abroad are
glutted, and the capitalists cannot sell what you have produced in such
abundance, and so they stop their machinery, shut up their mills, lock
out their “hands” and paralyze industry, and there you are, idle,
helpless, hungry, hopeless, desperate. And these conditions will come
upon you and become worse, no matter how well you are organized in your
several trade unions; and this will continue as long as you workingmen
allow the idle capitalists to own and control the tools of industry.
Has it ever occurred to you workingmen that if you could make these
tools and use them you can also own them and produce wealth in plenty
for yourselves?
The old trade union is organized on the basis of the identity of
interests of capitalists and wage workers, and spends its time and
devotes its energies to harmonizing these two classes; and it is a vain
and hopeless task. When these interests can be even temporarily
harmonized it is always in the interest of the capitalist class, and at
the expense of the working class.
Most capitalists heartily approve the old form of trade unionism and
encourage and liberally support it, for the very reason that this
outgrown unionism does not truly represent and cannot actually express
the economic interests of the working class.
The simple fact is that industrial conditions have undergone such a
complete change that now the trade union, instead of uniting the
workers, divides them, incites craft jealousy, breeds dissension and
promotes strife—the very things capitalists desire; for so long as the
working class is divided, the capitalists will be secure in their
dominion of the earth and the seas, and the millions of toilers will
remain in subjection.
Now, let me see if I can make myself perfectly clear upon this important
point. In the railroad service there are various organizations of
employes. Some of the departments are pretty thoroughly organized. The
engineers, the firemen, conductors, brakemen, switchmen, telegraphers
and some others are organized in their several craft unions. They have
repeatedly tried to federate these organizations, so as to bring them
into harmonious alliance with each other, but every such attempt has
failed. The selfish spirit of craft autonomy, that is, the jealousy of
each particular branch to organize itself, establish its own petty
supremacy and look out for itself, has made it impossible to federate
these organizations. The members of these brotherhoods have increasing
grievances and try to have them adjusted in the old way. The railroad
corporations are always shrewd enough to enter into contractual
relations with unions representing two or three or four departments, so
that in every emergency they can always control these departments, while
refusing increases, making reductions or discharging without cause
employes in other departments of the service.
It has not been long ago since the union operators on the Missouri,
Kansas & Texas directed their committee to call on the railroad
officials for a small wage concession that had been granted by other
systems. But the company, having contracts with its engineers and
firemen, conductors and brakemen, peremptorily refused the request of
the telegraphers, and about 1,300 of them went out on strike—quit the
service of the company, as a union, to enforce their demands. What was
the result? This large body of union workingmen who thus went out on
strike to enforce a righteous claim all lost their jobs, every one of
them.
It was only a short time after they struck that I happened to go over
the system. I met the strikers at various points and they told me the
story of their defeat by their own fellow employes who belong to other
unions. I understood it all before they told me. When the operators went
out all the others remained at their posts, doing their usual work, and
hauling and delivering scabs, wherever they were needed, to fill the
places vacated by their fellow workers and fellow craft unionists. Union
engineers and conductors took their train orders from scab operators;
all the union men stood loyally by the company in its attack on one of
their number, and so the operators were routed and scattered to the four
winds and their union wiped from the system.
Here we have a perfect illustration of craft unionism in action. Another
example is furnished by the Santa Fe system where but a few months ago
the union machinists went out from one end of the system to the other.
The engineers and firemen, conductors and brakemen, and all the rest of
them holding union cards, remained faithfully at work until a new set of
machinists was employed and broken in, and now everything is running as
smoothly as before.
Still another case of recent date is that of the Great Northern and the
Northern Pacific systems, where the telegraph operators, after having
failed in securing an adjustment of their grievances, went out on strike
in a body, under orders from their union. What happened there? Just what
had happened on the M., K. & T. The engineers, firemen, conductors and
brakemen continued at their posts and discharged their duties with
fidelity while their brother unionists, the operators, were mowed down
and their places filled with scabs.
It is this that is taking place before our eyes every day. Here in
Chicago you have witnessed the crushing defeat of one regiment after
another of the army of organized labor. Indeed, during the last two or
three years all the great strikes have failed. There has not been a
single exception to relieve the rule, not one.
Now, when you see such things as these; when you see workingmen in craft
unions go out on strike again and again and meet with constant defeat,
does it not occur to you that there is something wrong with that kind of
unionism? That that kind of unionism can be improved upon? Doesn’t it
occur to you that instead of fighting the capitalist enemy, who are
always united, who always act together—that instead of fighting them by
squads and companies, the thing for us to do is to fight them as they
fight us, with a united and compact army?
In this respect, if no other, we may well profit by the example set by
the enemy. They unite, because they are conscious of their interests as
a class. When the teamsters struck in this city last summer, the bankers
subscribed $50,000 to defeat them. Now, the teamsters were not striking
against the bankers; but the teamsters were striking against the
capitalist class; and the bankers sprang loyally to the support of their
class. And this brings an important fact to our attention, and that is
that the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and
labor organization, to be of any value to the working class, must be
formed, not along craft lines, but along class lines.
The Industrial Workers is a working class organization, so
all-inclusive, so comprehensive, that it will embrace every man and
woman who works for a livelihood. Certain departments have been
established and certain subdivisions have been made, so that the
identity of the trade, the autonomy of the craft may be preserved within
the organization. Joining the Industrial Workers you take your place in
your proper department. That department which represents your employment
is organized, it has control of craft interests within its jurisdiction,
so that, so far as craft autonomy is concerned, it adjusts itself within
the general organization.
Suppose you join the Industrial Workers as a switchman. You belong to
the transportation department. You have a grievance, as a switchman, and
the switchmen have charge of that grievance. The switchmen, organized in
their respective department, having supervision of their craft affairs,
seek to adjust that grievance. If they fail, then, instead of having to
rely upon the switchmen alone in the support of that grievance, as now
happens, they can call to their aid, not only all the switchmen, but the
firemen, the conductors, the brakemen and engineers. They can call to
their aid the boilermakers, the machinists and the blacksmiths, the
shopmen and yardmen and office men; and, if it becomes necessary, they
can command the combined support of all the organized workers of that
entire system.
That is the kind of unionism required to deal effectively with the
industrial situation of today.
Now, I am well aware that there is tremendous opposition to this
organization. I know that upon every hand you hear it said that we
already have plenty of organizations in the field, and that if they are
not right we ought to set them right instead of starting a new one. This
kind of reasoning may have some effect with the unthinking, but if you
are a student of this great question you know that it is historically
impossible for an old and outgrown and out-of-date labor organization to
adjust itself to a new economic mission.
Reform unions rarely, if ever, become revolutionary bodies. It is
admitted that there are thousands of unions in the field. These unions
all have staffs of officers, whose name is legion and on the payroll.
They all draw salaries and expense money. They don’t want the working
class united—that would mean an army of jobless leaders. You would be
amazed if you knew how many of such union officials there are; and you
would be still more amazed if you knew the aggregate amount of salary
and expenses, millions of dollars, they draw every year. Now, they, like
you, are looking out for their jobs. It is perhaps too much to expect
them to discharge themselves. It is to their personal interest to keep
the workers of the country divided into a thousand different
organizations, so that a thousand different sets of officials will be
required; so that a thousand sets of officials may draw salary from the
scant wages of the working class. You may be told that the reason I am
in favor of a new union is that I am a discredited labor leader and that
I am trying to create a new job for myself. The truth is that if I had
been inclined to serve the corporations instead of the workers I could
have been drawing a large salary and enjoying to the full the popularity
of what is miscalled successful labor leadership.
You railroad men know that the late P. M. Arthur, grand chief of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, was called by the capitalist press
a very successful labor leader. He was successful only in the sense that
he served with far greater fidelity the corporations than he did the
employes who paid his salary. I can remember the time when most of the
present grand officers of the railroad brotherhoods denounced Mr. Arthur
of the Engineers, because of his conservative and reactionary policy.
All of these grand officers occupy today precisely the same position
that he did, and which they condemned. They are now just as acceptable
to the railroads as was Mr. Arthur. These corporations not only do not
object to, but actually favor the leaders of these brotherhoods. In fact
the corporation officials find these organizations very serviceable to
them, and they would far rather have them than not. They could wipe them
out—and they would if they were a menace to them—but they will not do
it.
A little thing occurred the other day which will prove what I say. I do
not know whether you happen to be aware of it, but the Brotherhood of
Engineers and the Brotherhood of Firemen on the Northern Pacific a few
weeks ago, clashed in the matter of jurisdiction; and that matter is
becoming more and more a plague to crafts unionism. The grand officers
of the two brotherhoods met at St. Paul, and they had quite a heated
controversy, which had a most sensational climax, grand chief Warren
Stone, of the engineers, hotly declaring to Grand Master Hannahan, of
the firemen, that if it came to a “showdown” the engineers would remain
at their posts and if the firemen went out on strike, the engineers
would stay with the corporation and defeat the firemen. Now, the general
manager of the Northern Pacific, had he been so inclined, could have
encouraged these two craft unions to clash and wipe each other from the
system. But the railway official was too wise to allow this to be done.
He kindly interceded and told them that they ought not to quarrel with
each other, that they should in truth love each other; and so he
succeeded in saving the unions and restoring harmonious relations.
The general manager appreciated the value of craft organization and
proposed to preserve it for future use. Note again: the railroads grant
annual passes to all the grand officers of these several organizations.
Why? Because they love you railroad employes? Not at all; but because
they are wise enough to understand their interests as corporations, as
capitalists. So you find that the grand officers of craft unions ride
free over railroads; and when the several brotherhoods hold their
conventions they are provided with trains and Pullman cars and
transported to the convention city and back again free of charge. This
is one of the best investments the railroads could make.
It costs them very little to furnish the delegates with free
transportation; and every penny of it comes out of your earnings. They
know that as you are now organized you can do little for yourselves, but
that you can do much for them. That is why they are so partial to the
old organizations.
Let me point out one of the ways they use you when they need you.
President Roosevelt is championing a measure that is to empower the
Interstate Commerce Commission to fix the rates of railroads in certain
cases. This measure is opposed by the railroad corporations. They do not
want the government to interfere with their right to fix rates to suit
themselves. What do they do? They send for the grand chiefs of the
several brotherhoods and a conference is held. Then the press despatches
announce that the railroad and brotherhood officials are one in their
opposition to the proposed rate-fixing legislation. A few days later a
joint session is held of the standing committees of the several
brotherhoods and they decide to stand by the railroads; and so they call
upon President Roosevelt and serve notice upon him that they and the
unions they represent are opposed to rate legislation.
In this the unions appear for the railroads; the brotherhoods being the
puppets of the corporations; and in the meantime the railroad magnates
announce through the press that the employes are up in arms and will
assert the political power of their unions in opposition to the
rate-fixing measure.
Not that there is anything of interest in rate legislation so far as you
are concerned, but there is a vital point involved. When the railroads
find it necessary to use the brotherhoods as breastworks, or as weapons
with which to fight their battles, they issue their orders and the grand
officers and unions fall in line to the tune “our interests are mutual
and we must stand together.” The unions then are made the active allies
of the corporations in robbing and defying the people.
It is just because the corporations find these organizations exceedingly
useful that they make petty concessions to them. I recognized this fact
a number of years ago, and concluded then that what was needed for the
employes was a real working class union embracing them all. The American
Railway Union was organized. There are those present who were in the
great strike of 1894, and you know how bitterly we were fought by the
railroad corporations. You remember that they were not satisfied with
merely defeating us—and they never would have beaten us had they not
been in control of the government. But for this the victory would have
been won for the working class. They were defeated, completely; and when
they realized this they had their 3,600 thugs and thieves and convicts
sworn in as deputy United States marshals, and they incited the riots
and led the mobs, and then the courts issued their injunctions, while
the capitalist press flashed the lurid reports over the wires that
Chicago was at the mercy of a mob. The rest followed as a matter of
course.
But they were not satisfied with mere defeat of the strike. They must
crush the life out of the union. For two years after I was released by
the courts—after being eighteen months in their custody—I was followed
by their detectives, to prevent organization; and those who were
reported as joining, or even as being friendly, were instantly
discharged.
They defeated us, but they didn’t destroy us. We are stronger today than
we ever were, and we are coming again. We are on the main track. We are
not after a few pennies more a day this time. We are after the whole
works.
Yes, for two years after I was finally released, they followed me from
one end of the country to the other. They kept their detectives at my
heels. And the order preceded me everywhere that the employes who had
anything to do with Debs would be discharged.
I concluded to go into those sections where the American Railway Union
had not been organized, and where there had been no strike; and I
started south. When I reached Louisville, the morning paper contained
press despatches with startling headlines reporting a series of
resolutions passed by the railroad employes of that section, saying:
“Whereas, we are advised that E. V. Debs, the anarchist, of Chicago, is
on his way south to disrupt the pleasant and harmonious relations that
exist between the railroad employes and the companies; therefore, be it
resolved, that we hereby serve notice on said anarchist, Debs, that we
repudiate him and that we have nothing to do with him nor the anarchist
organization he represents.”
After these resolutions appeared I had a number of letters from the poor
slaves who were employed upon these railroads, apologizing for the
resolutions, and saying that the railroad officials had prepared and
submitted them to the employes for their signatures, and then given them
to the press.
But even this was not sufficient. They discharged those who attended our
meetings. They had their special men at the doors of meeting places to
take the names of those who attended. They were determined to annihilate
the union and stamp out the last spark of its life. And they did succeed
in crushing the organization, but they could not kill the spirit of the
American Railway Union. That still lives.
A far greater organization has come to take its place—as much greater as
the American Railway Union was greater than the old union—and that
organization is the Industrial Workers of the World. This great union is
organized on the basis of the class struggle. It makes its appeal to the
intelligence of the working class. It commands you workingmen to open
your eyes and see for yourselves; to use your brains, and think for
yourselves; to cultivate self-reliance and learn to depend upon
yourselves. That is your only safety.
You have been taught in the old union school to look to some leader; to
depend upon some master. You have been trained to submit; to follow and
obey orders. You have not developed your own capacity for thinking; you
are lacking in the essentials of sturdy manhood. Many of you have become
satisfied to blindly follow where others lead; and so you are often
deceived, betrayed; and when the smoke of battle clears away you find
yourselves defeated and out of jobs. You have often felt disheartened;
you have quit the union in despair and disgust, and some of you have
turned into scabs.
Thousands who once belonged to unions have become, not only non-union
men, but scabs and strike-breakers, and in their desperation have turned
upon the union and become its most bitter enemies. If you will call the
roll of the strike-breakers who gather here in Chicago and elsewhere
when union workers are out on strike, you will find that nearly all of
them are ex-union men; men who once wore the badge of union labor,
believed in it and marched proudly beneath the union banner.
What do you think of a unionism that creates an army for its own
overthrow? There is something fundamentally wrong with that kind of
unionism.
Long since, and after years of study and experience, I became convinced
that the old unions are not fit to cope successfully with the enemy of
the working class, and that a new organization was an imperative
necessity.
In the Industrial Workers we have a union large enough to embrace us
all; a union organized upon democratic principles recognizing the equal
rights of all and extending its benefits equally to all.
Industrial unionism is the principle upon which the Industrial Workers
is organized. This means actual unity of purpose and action. It means
the economic solidarity of our class. It means that the grievance of one
is the concern of all; and that from this time forward craft division is
to be eliminated; that we are to get together and fight and win together
for all. Industrial unionism means that such a plant as you have here in
South Chicago, in which ten or twelve thousand men are employed, shall
be thoroughly and efficiently organized.
What is the condition there today? You have innumerable unions
represented there, but no unity. You have this great body of workers
parceled out among scores of petty and purposeless unions, which are in
ceaseless conflict with each other, jealous to preserve their craft
identity. As long as this great army of workers is scattered among so
many craft unions, it will be impossible for them to unite and act in
harmony together.
Craft unionism is the negation of solidarity. The more unions you have,
the less unity; and here, in fact, you have no unity at all. In this
state you can do nothing to improve your working condition. You are
substantially at the mercy of the corporation.
What you need is industrial unionism and you will have it when you get
together in the Industrial Workers.
When workingmen join the one economic working class organization that
unites them upon the basis of the class struggle they can do something
to better their working condition; not only will they have the economic
power to do this, but they will represent a new and a vital force to
which they are now total strangers—the revolutionary force that
industrial unionism generates in the body.
There is something far different between a strike on the part of unions
in which men are ignorant, blindly striking against something that they
only vaguely understand, with no comprehension of the class
struggle—there is something vastly different between that kind of a
strike and the strike of the body of class-conscious, revolutionary
workingmen, who, while they are striking for an immediate advantage, at
the same time have their eyes clearly fixed upon the goal. And what is
that goal? It is the overthrow of the capitalist system and the
emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery.
The Industrial Workers is essentially an educational organization—and
one of the vitally important things it will teach the workers is the
complete operation and control of the industry in which they are
employed. Have you ever thought about that? Has it ever been brought to
your attention in craft unions?
I have already reminded you that you workingmen have made all the
machinery there is in operation everywhere; that only you can use it.
Now, why should not you own it?
Why shouldn’t you be your own employers? Why shouldn’t you be the
masters of your own jobs? Why depend upon the capitalist for a chance to
work? Why clothe him with the power to discharge and starve you at his
will? Why engage him to take from you all you produce except enough to
keep you at work? That is all that remains for you.
You get a wage, and that wage suffices to keep you working for the
capitalist. The tool you work with has got to be oiled, and you have got
to be fed. The wage is simply your lubricant. The wage oils you and
keeps you in working order.
The capitalist doesn’t intend that you shall ever be anything but his
wage-slave. He would scout the suggestion that you are his equal. He
doesn’t associate with you. He belongs to another class; and the class
to which he belongs is called the upper class. You, as a workingman,
belong to the lower class. The working class has always been the lower
class, and is today; and you will be the lower class as long as you are
content to be that class. It is in your power to make yourselves the
upper class, and in fact the only class. You are in an overwhelming
majority. There are only a few capitalists as compared to you. And yet,
they own practically everything and rule the land; and will keep on
owning and ruling the land as long as you workingmen allow them to; and
you will allow them to as long as you persist in remaining divided in
trade unions and being used against each other, instead of uniting and
acting solidly with and for each other and against the capitalists.
The Industrial Workers is organized—and we declare it boldly—to fight
the capitalist class. We want it distinctly understood that we claim
nothing in common with that class. They have economic interests separate
from and opposed to the economic interests of the working class. And we
propose that the working class shall be organized economically and
politically to retire the capitalist class from business.
Our business is to put the exploiters of labor out of business.
You, Mr. Workingman, don’t need a capitalist; and if you think you do,
it is because you are ignorant. It is because you don’t understand your
own interest. You don’t need him. You imagine that he gives you a job;
but he does nothing of the kind. You give him a job. You employ him to
take from you what you produce; and he faithfully sticks to his job.
Why, the capitalist could not exist a second without you. Can you
imagine a capitalist without workingmen?
Capitalism is based upon the exploitation of the working class; and when
the working class ceases to be exploited, there will no longer be any
capitalists.
Now, while the capitalist could not exist without you, you would just
begin to live without him. He is on your back; he rides you, and he
rides you even when he rides in the automobile that you make. You make
it. You never knew of a capitalist that ever made an automobile. The
capitalist doesn’t make it but rides in it; the workingman does make it
but does not ride in it.
If it were not for you the capitalist would have to walk, and if it were
not for him you would ride.
You don’t need the capitalist; he is, in fact, a curse to you. What has
the capitalist owner of a modern plant to do with its operation?
Absolutely nothing. He might as well live in the moon, as far as you are
concerned. There may be a group of them, but they have nothing to do
with the mill. They simply get what is produced there, because you will
have it so. You are organized on that basis. In your moss-covered old
unions you say, “Our interests are mutual.” Certainly, if you can stand
this arrangement the capitalist can. He has no grievance.
He does nothing and gets everything, and you do everything and get
nothing.
If you can stand this he can; and if you don’t put an end to it he
won’t. And why should he? And why shouldn’t you? Mr. Workingman, you are
a man. You ought not to be satisfied to be a mere wealth-producing
animal. You have a brain, and you ought to develop it. You should aspire
to rise above the animal plane. If you can work in a mill and produce
wealth for a capitalist, who holds you in contempt, you can also work in
that mill as a free man and produce wealth for yourself and your wife
and family to enjoy. If not, why not?
It is upon this basis that the Industrial Workers is organized. It is
for this supreme mission that the Industrial Workers has entered the
field.
We have declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist
system. We are of the working class. We say: Arouse, you workingmen! It
is in your power to put an end to this system. It is your duty to build
up this great revolutionary economic organization of your class, to
seize and control the tools with which you work, and make yourselves the
masters instead of being the slaves of industry.
Wipe out the wage system so that you can walk this earth free men!
Not only is it your right, not only have you the opportunity, but it is
your solemn duty to do this, unless you are base enough to be guilty of
treason to yourself, to your class and humanity.
Let me say to you, my fellow workers, that the hour has struck for a
great change in the world of organized labor. Long enough have we been
divided into quarreling factions. Long enough have we suffered ourselves
to blindly and stupidly follow a leadership that has misled and deceived
and betrayed. Long enough have we been clubbed by the police, and it may
be pertinent to observe that when the club of a policeman descends upon
the head of a workingman he hears an echo of the vote he cast at the
preceding election.
It is only necessary for us to do a bit of serious reasoning on our own
account to satisfy ourselves that the Industrial Workers is the only
working class organization in the field. It requires but little
intelligent reflection to satisfy ourselves that we have got to build up
this organization, unless we have given up in the struggle and succumbed
to defeat and despair. Is it possible that we could for a moment make up
our minds that we and those who are to come after us are forever doomed
to wage slavery? The very suggestion is abhorrent to every worker with a
spark of manhood, with a drop of manly blood coursing in his veins. Why,
you men, you workingmen, are more than the salt of this earth. Without
you society would perish. Society does not need the idle capitalists.
They are parasites. They are worse than useless. They simply take what
you make, leaving you in poverty; thousands of you idle; if not now,
when the times become hard. And every few years the times become hard in
the capitalist system, for reasons you can easily understand, but I have
not the time to fully explain this evening.
A panic comes, industry is paralyzed, because with machinery you can
produce so much more than your paltry wage will allow you to consume.
You make all things in great abundance, but you do not consume them. You
can only consume that part of your product which your wage, the price of
your labor power, will buy. If you cannot consume what you produce, it
follows that in time there is bound to be overproduction, because the
few capitalists cannot absorb the surplus. The market is glutted,
business comes to a standstill and mills and factories shut down.
At such a time Chicago is hit, and hit hard; and you workingmen find
yourselves out of employment, a drug on the market. Nobody wants your
labor power, because it cannot be utilized at a profit to the capitalist
who owns the tool, and when he cannot use your labor power at a
satisfactory profit to himself he doesn’t buy it. And if he doesn’t buy
your labor power you are idle, and when you are idle you don’t draw any
wages, and you can’t buy groceries and pay rent; you can’t buy clothing
and shoes, and you begin to look seedy and shabby. By degrees you become
a vagrant and a wanderer and lose what little self-respect you had. And
then you hear that your wife has been evicted, and that is a thing that
happens every day in the week. Your child is now upon the street and
your former cottage home is deserted and you start out on what proves to
be a never ending journey. The road you are now traveling stretches
wearily on, and from the hedges bark the dogs of civilization. You are a
tramp.
Are there not thousands and thousands of tramps all over this country
today? There were none half a century ago. There is a great army of them
now. They have been recruited in capitalist society; they are the
products of the capitalist system.
A man is out of work a good while and he gets hungry; he still has a
little self-respect and steals rather than beg. That is how men become
tramps and thieves and criminals; that is why we have an army of tramps;
that is why all the penitentiaries are crowded; why the insane asylums
are overflowing and why thousands commit suicide. All these shocking
evils are the outgrowth of the capitalist system, to which the
Industrial Workers proposes to put an everlasting end.
If you think that these horrors ought to be; if you, as a workingman,
think that you ought to have a master—just as the ignorant chattel slave
on the plantation in the South used to think that he had to have a
master to rob him of what he produced—if you think that you are so
helpless that you would die unless you had a master to give you a job
and take from you all except just enough to keep you working for him; if
you think that workingmen ought to fight each other; if you think that
unity, the unity of the working class, would be a bad thing for the
working class; if you think that your interest is identical with the
interest of the capitalist who robs you; if you think that you ought to
be in slavish submission to the capitalist who does nothing and gets
what you produce; if you think that, then certainly you ought to stay in
the old trade union and keep out of the Industrial Workers.
But if you have a bit of intelligence, just enough to realize that you
are a workingman, and that, as a workingman, you are a human being; if
you are capable of understanding that you have the inherent power of
self-development, that the brain you have can be developed so that you
can think clearly for yourself; if you will use that intelligence just
enough to satisfy yourself that you ought to be the master of your own
job; then, instead of being a wage slave, you will soon be a man among
men, and if you have intelligence enough to conceive and to express that
thought, then let me say to you, a revolutionary light will be kindled
in your eyes and you will feel the thrill of a new-born joy, and for the
first time in your life you will stand perfectly erect and know what it
is to be self-reliant and touch elbows with your fellow-workers
throughout the world.
Remember that no matter who or what a worker may be, if he works for
wages he is in precisely the same economic position that you are. He is
in your class; he is your brother; he is your comrade.
As an individual worker you cannot escape from wage-slavery. It is true
that one in ten thousand wage-workers may become a capitalist, to be
pointed out as a man worth a million who used to be a clerk, but he is
the exception that proves the rule. The wage worker in the capitalist
system remains the wage worker.
There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself, but while you
cannot alone break your fetters, if you will unite with all other
workers who are in the same position that you are; that is, if—instead
of being bound up in a little union of a score, or a hundred, or a
thousand, that is almost as helpless to do anything for you as you are
to do anything by yourself—if you will join the organization that
represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve
your freedom and the equal freedom of all.
The workingman who does this is a missionary in the field of sound
working class organization; he wears the badge of the Industrial
Workers; he has a new idea of unionism. Instead of being satisfied with
ancient, out-of-date, reactionary methods he will have the advanced and
progressive ideas of industrial revolutionists. That is to say, he will
understand that when the workers are united in one great economic
organization and one great political organization; when they strike
together and vote together they can put their class in power in every
council, in every legislature and in the national congress; they can
abolish the capitalist system, take over the industries to themselves
and rule the land forevermore.
For this great change the workers must prepare themselves through
organization and education. Were it to come today it would result in
collapse. It would mean a catastrophe, and why? Because if, for example,
the Illinois Steel Works were turned over to the workers today they
would not be fitted, trained, drilled, equipped for the operation of
this mammoth industrial enterprise.
The Industrial Workers proposes to first unite all workers within one
organization, classified in the various departments representing their
several trades and occupation, to bring them all into harmonious
economic relations with each other. The next thing is to coördinate them
within their several industries with an eye to operating these
industries when they secure control of them. That is the central
function of the new union, and by far the most important one.
The old union never makes any reference to industrial self-control,
because so far as the old union is concerned wage-slavery is to prevail
forever.
The Industrial Workers declares that it is organized to put an end to
the wage system, to free the workers, to make them the masters of the
mills and other plants in which they are employed. In order to fit them
to operate these enterprises in their own interests when they are turned
over to them it is necessary that they undergo a thorough process of
industrial education.
So that, after you join the Industrial Workers, when you go to your work
in the morning, you will not be tied to your task blindly; you will have
a thought about your relation to your fellow-workingmen in all other
departments. You will understand your part in the enterprise, and your
connection with and relation to the whole. You will help to fit your
fellows for the new function, so that when the hour strikes you will be
perfectly trained and ready to take control of industry and operate the
productive enterprises in the interests of the people. To me nothing
could be simpler.
Don’t you think we are capable of effecting this change? I do. I not
only think it; I know it. And I know it is inevitable.
Upon the one hand the capitalists are combining. It will be but a short
time until practically all the lands, railroads, telegraphs, steel
mills, sugar refineries, breweries and all other great establishments
will belong to practically a single syndicate, controlled by a few
capitalists. But while they are combining and centralizing their capital
we are organizing the workers that they may act together, economically
and politically, and possibly in other ways before the struggle is ended
and the victory won.
In the Industrial Workers they will vote as they strike, and strike as
they vote—all together.
Do you know what I expect to see? I expect to see a general strike in
the city of Chicago. I would rather see it here than in any other city
in America; than any other in the world.
The capitalists are drunken with their power. They are running things to
suit themselves, and they are going to keep the working class in
subjection just as the remnants of the Indians are kept on their
reservations out on the plains. And if you object they are so completely
in control that they will club you, or they will jail you, or kill you
if necessary.
I want to see the time when the workers of Chicago will be so thoroughly
organized in their economic capacity that they can quit work and
paralyze industry in Chicago for just twenty-four hours, and when they
are organized well enough to do that they will have every capitalist in
the city and nation suing for peace. When they are organized well enough
to do that they will secure more economic concessions in five minutes
than they can get in five years striking and boycotting along the old
trade union lines.
How is it now? Why, the union butcher workmen go out on strike, and they
strike bravely and loyally to the bitter end. But all other union men
remain at work until the butcher workmen are used up.
The capitalists are rich; the loss of a few hundreds or thousands of
dollars doesn’t hurt them, because they get it all back again. So they
can wait until this corps of the working army is defeated and its
stanchest supporters are out of jobs. Many of these quit the union; it
is no use. They tried the union and are disgusted with it, and in all
probability some of them will stay at work in the next strike and help
defeat the union.
Next comes the strike of the Chicago machinists, and that lasts a long
time. All their fellow unionists remain at work. Here we have a large
body of machinists engaged in a life and death struggle, and they hold
out wonderfully well. They levy assessments on all other machinists who
keep at work to help these strikers in idleness for many weary months,
and then at last, when all the resources are exhausted and the men are
on the point of starvation, they have got to surrender, and they go back
defeated, and the open shop system is established, and the union, so far
as any usefulness to the machinist is concerned, is practically wiped
out of existence.
What good has the machinists’ union done to these machinists? It
collects high dues and pays high salaries. Hundreds of thousands of
dollars are contributed by the workers with which to buy their own
defeat. Now, defeat would be bad enough if it came about free of charge,
but if you have to pay $174,000 for it, as the official report of the
machinists show, it is time you were doing a little thinking on your own
account.
Mr. James O’Connell is at the head of the machinists’ union, and he is
also a labor lieutenant of the capitalist class. He sits at the same
banqueting table with the capitalists and is hand in glove with August
Belmont—the employer of James Farley, the professional strikebreaker,
who, when you go on strike, steps in and gets as much pay in a day as
you get in a year.
You can hardly blame the men who get disgusted with unions as they are
run in Chicago. Not alone Mr. O’Connell, but Mr. Mitchell, president of
the Mine Workers; Mr. Gompers, president of the American Federation of
Labor, and other pure and simple union leaders are in economic tune with
the master class, and are held up as model labor leaders by capitalist
newspapers.
Periodically these model leaders go to New York to attend a love feast
between capitalists and wage workers, or, rather, between capitalists
and leaders of wage workers.
You are only the common herd. They don’t have anything to do with you,
and they don’t need to have anything to do with you. They deal with your
leaders and between them they fix things, and all you have to do is to
work and put up the money and they will attend to the rest.
Last fall, a year ago, when I was in New York, there came near being a
strike on the Interborough railway lines. The employes had been outraged
by the management of the Interborough under an agreement that had been
shamefully violated by the company. They threatened to go out on strike.
It happened to be a national election year, and under the pressure that
was brought to bear upon him, Mr. Belmont, the president of the system,
on the eve of the election, settled with the men and averted the strike.
In a speech I made in New York that night I predicted that the
settlement was temporary and for political effect, and that soon after
the election was over the corporation would begin to violate agreement
and goad the men to strike. And so it came to pass.
After the election was over the corporation renewed its offensive
tactics until at last 6,000 of the men went out on strike. And now we
behold an exhibition of the impotency, if not the crime, of outgrown
unionism. When these 6,000 men went out on strike August Belmont already
had James Farley and his army of professional strikebreakers on the
ground; had them there weeks in advance. And they were getting their
pay, $5 a day and expenses, while Farley got an advance payment, said to
have been $10,000.
August Belmont, the president of the Interborough, was photographed with
Farley, the strikebreaker. They were pictured side by side; they
occupied the first page of the New York newspapers; they were
represented as the modern strikebreakers, August Belmont, the
capitalist, and James Farley, his mercenary minion.
The strike was soon defeated and the places of the men filled with
scabs.
The union men who were in the power houses, who could and who should
have shut off the power, kept those great plants in operation. They
said, “We are in sympathy with you and would like to help you, but we
cannot go out on strike without violating our contract.” And so, to
preserve the sanctity of their craft contract, they cut the throats of
their 6,000 fellow unionists, virtually scabbing on them, so far as the
effect of their action was concerned. These union men might as well have
stepped out of the power houses and taken the places that were vacated
by the strikers.
Now comes the closing chapter of this story, the blackest of all. A
little while after the 6,000 union men had gone out on strike and had
been defeated by strike-breakers under Farley, the lieutenant of
Belmont, the Civic Federation held its banquet. August Belmont attended
this banquet, being the president of the Federation. So also did the
labor leaders. In their regular order came President Gompers, President
Mitchell, President O’Connell, President Duncan and the rest of the
presidents. They surrounded the banqueting board and sat and feasted and
laughed and made joy together. The labor question was speedily settled,
so far as they were concerned.
What do you think of the labor leader who would sit down, side by side,
at the same banquet, with August Belmont, fresh from the field upon
which he had slaughtered 6,000 union men? Do you think that a true union
leader, a man whose heart was with the working class, could feast and
make common cause with a capitalist who had just thrust the dagger of
assassination into the heart of his union? Do you think that a real
labor leader would fraternize with one whose hands were dripping with
the blood of union labor?
I say that a labor leader who attends that kind of a banquet and who
greets in social fellowship an arch-enemy of labor, is himself a Belmont
at heart and the foe of the working class.
You may feel assured that there is no officer of the Industrial Workers
who will ever banquet with the Civic Federation.
Could you imagine Charles O. Sherman—who has given his life to the
working class—could you imagine him consorting with Belmont? Could you
imagine Trautmann—the very incarnation of the revolutionary spirit of
the working class—could you imagine Trautmann attending a banquet of the
Civic Federation, in full fellowship with the men who live out of the
blood of the working class? It is unimaginable. They would scorn to do
it; they would consider this an act of basest treason to their class.
In closing, I appeal to you, as workingmen, to think for yourselves; to
cut loose from those who have misled and betrayed you; to close up the
ranks and unify your forces. I appeal to you to ally yourselves with the
economic organization of your class; I appeal to you to join the union
that truly represents you, the union that unites you, the union in which
you can stand shoulder to shoulder, regardless of your occupation; the
union in which you will move forward, step by step, marching proudly to
the inspiring music of the new emancipation.
I appeal to you to declare yourselves here and now, to be for once true
enough to yourselves to join the only industrial union that is
absolutely true to you.
And if you join this union in sufficient numbers, if you build up this
union and give it the power it ought to have—if you will rally to the
standard of this revolutionary army—then, as certain as I stand before
you, you will carry that banner to victory. Then the workers will be the
sovereign citizens, the rulers of this earth. They will build houses and
live in them; they will plant vineyards and enjoy the fruits thereof.
The labor question will have been settled, and the working class,
emancipated from the fetters of wage-slavery, will begin the real work
of civilizing the human race.