_Address at Grand Central Palace, New York, December 10, 1905_
There is an inspiration in your greeting and my heart opens wide to
receive it. I have come a thousand miles to join with you in fanning the
flames of the proletarian revolution. (Applause.)
Your presence here makes this a vitalizing atmosphere for a labor
agitator. I can feel my stature increasing, and this means that you are
growing, for all my strength is drawn from you, and without you I am
nothing.
In capitalist society you are the lower class; the capitalists are the
upper class—because they are on your backs; if they were not on your
backs, they could not be above you. (Applause and laughter.)
Standing in your presence, I can see in your gleaming eyes and in your
glowing faces the vanguard; I can hear the tramp, I can feel the thrill
of the social revolution. The working class are waking up. (A voice,
“You bet.”) They are beginning to understand that their economic
interests are identical, that they must unite and act together
economically and politically, and in every other way; that only by
united action can they overthrow the capitalist system and emancipate
themselves from wage-slavery. (Applause.)
I have said that in the capitalist society the working class are the
lower class; they have always been the lower class. In the ancient world
for thousands of years they were abject slaves; in the Middle Ages,
serfs; in modern times, wageworkers; to become free men in socialism,
the next inevitable phase of advancing civilization. (Applause.) The
working class have struggled through all the various phases of their
development, and they are today engaged in the last stage of the animal
struggle for existence; and when the present revolution has run its
course, the working class will stand forth the sovereigns of this earth.
In capitalist society the working man is not, in fact, a man at all; as
a wage-worker, he is simply merchandise; he is bought in the open market
the same as hair, hides, salt, or any other form of merchandise. The
very terminology of the capitalist system proves that he is not a man in
any sense of that term.
When the capitalist needs you as a workingman to operate his machine, he
does not advertise, he does not call for men, but for “hands”; and when
you see a placard posted, “Fifty hands wanted,” you stop on the instant;
you know that that means YOU, and you take a bee-line for the bureau of
employment to offer yourself in evidence of the fact that you are a
“hand.” When the capitalist advertises for hands, that is what he wants.
He would be insulted if you were to call him a “hand.” He has his
capitalist politician tell you, when your vote is wanted, that you ought
to be very proud of your hands because they are horny; and if that is
true, he ought to be ashamed of his. (Laughter and applause.)
What is your status in society today? You are a human being, a
wage-worker. Here you stand just as you were created, and you have two
hands that represent your labor power; but you do not work, and why not?
For the simple reason that you have no tools with which to work; you
cannot compete against the machinery of the capitalist with your bare
hands; you cannot work unless you have access to it, and you can only
secure access to it by selling your labor power, that is to say, your
energy, your vitality, your life itself, to the capitalist who owns the
tool with which you work, and without which you are idle and suffer all
of the ills that idleness entails.
In the evolution of capitalism, society has been divided mainly into two
economic classes; a relatively small class of capitalists who own tools
in the form of great machines they did not make and cannot use, and a
great body of many millions of workers who did make these tools and who
do use them, and whose very lives depend upon them, yet who do not own
them; and these millions of wage-workers, producers of wealth, are
forced into the labor market, in competition with each other, disposing
of their labor power to the capitalist class, in consideration of just
enough of what they produce to keep them in working order. They are
exploited of the greater share of what their labor produces, so that
while, upon the one hand, they can produce in great abundance, upon the
other they can consume but that share of the product that their meagre
wage will buy; and every now and then it follows that they have produced
more than can be consumed in the present system, and then they are
displaced by the very products of their own labor; the mills and shops
and mines and quarries in which they are employed close down, the tools
are locked up and they are locked out, and they find themselves idle and
helpless in the shadow of the very abundance their labor has created.
There is no hope for them in this system. They are beginning to realize
this fact, and so they are beginning to organize; they are no longer
relying upon someone, else, but they are making up their minds to depend
upon themselves and to organize for their own emancipation.
Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead
them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not
lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led
back again. (Applause.) I would have you make up your minds that there
is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.
You do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without
you. You would just begin to live without him. (Laughter and prolonged
applause.) You do everything and he has everything; and some of you
imagine that if it were not for him you would have no work. As a matter
of fact, he does not employ you at all; you employ him to take from you
what you produce, and he faithfully sticks to his task. If you can stand
it, he can; and if you don’t change this relation, I am sure he won’t.
You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he
would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride.
The capitalist politician tells you on occasion that you are the salt of
the earth; and if you are, you had better begin to salt down the
capitalist class.
The revolutionary movement of the working class will date from the year
1905, from the organization of the INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD.
(Prolonged applause.) Economic solidarity is today the supreme need of
the working class. The old form of unionism has long since fulfilled its
mission and outlived its usefulness, and the hour has struck for a
change.
The old unionism is organized upon the basis of the identity of
interests of the capitalist and working classes. It spends its time and
energy trying to conciliate these two essentially antagonistic classes;
and so this unionism has at its head a harmonizing board called the
Civic Federation. This federation consists of three parts; a part
representing the capitalist class; a part supposed to represent the
working class, and still another part that is said to represent the
“public.” The capitalists are represented by that great union labor
champion, August Belmont. (Laughter and hisses.) The working class by
Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor
(hisses and cries, “sic him”), and the public, by Grover Cleveland.
(Laughter.)
Can you imagine a fox and goose peace congress? Just fancy such a
meeting, the goose lifting its wings in benediction, and the fox
whispering, “Let us prey.”
The Civic Federation has been organized for the one purpose of
prolonging the age-long sleep of the working class. Their supreme
purpose is to keep you from waking up. (A voice: “They can’t do it.”)
The Industrial Workers has been organized for an opposite purpose, and
its representatives come in your presence to tell you that there can be
no peace between you, the working class, and the capitalist class who
exploit you of what you produce; that as workers you have economic
interests apart from and opposed to their interests, and that you must
organize by and for yourselves; and that if you are intelligent enough
to understand these interests you will sever your relations with the old
unions in which you are divided and sub-divided, and join the Industrial
Workers, in which all are organized and united upon the basis of the
class struggle. (Applause.)
The Industrial Workers is organized, not to conciliate, but to fight the
capitalist class. We have no object in concealing any part of our
mission; we would have it perfectly understood. We deny that there is
anything in common between workingmen and capitalists. We insist that
workingmen must organize to get rid of capitalists and make themselves
the masters of the tools with which they work, freely employ themselves,
secure to themselves all they produce, and enjoy to the full the fruit
of their labors. (Applause.)
The old union movement is not only organized upon the basis of the
identity of interests of the exploited and exploiting classes, but it
divides instead of uniting the workers, and there are thousands of
unions, more or less in conflict, used against one another; and so long
as these countless unions occupy the field, there will be no substantial
unity of the working class. (Applause.)
And here let me say that the most zealous supporter of the old union is
the capitalist himself. August Belmont, president of the Civic
Federation, takes special pride in declaring himself a “union man”
(laughter); but he does not mean by that that he is an Industrial
Worker; that is not the kind of a union he means. He means the impotent
old union that Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell lead, the kind that keeps
the working class divided so that the capitalist system may be
perpetuated indefinitely.
For thirty years I have been connected with the organized labor
movement. I have long since been made to realize that the pure and
simple union can do nothing for the working class; I have had some
experience and know whereof I speak. The craft union seeks to establish
its own petty supremacy. Craft division is fatal to class unity. To
organize along craft lines means to divide the working class and make it
the prey of the capitalist class. The working class can only be
unionized efficiently along class lines; and so the Industrial Workers
has been organized, not to isolate the crafts but to unite the whole
working class. (Applause.)
The working class has had considerable experience during the past few
years. In almost every conflict between labor and capital, labor has
been defeated. Take the leading strikes in their order, and you will
find that, without a single exception, the organized workers have been
defeated, and thousands upon thousands of them have lost their jobs, and
many of them have become “scabs.” Is there not something wrong with a
unionism in which the workers are always worsted? Let me review
hurriedly some of this history of the past few years.
I have seen the conductors on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad,
organized in a craft union, take the place of the striking union
locomotive engineers on the same system.
I have seen the employes of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway,
organized in their several craft unions, stand by the corporation as a
unit, totally wiping out the union telegraphers, thirteen hundred of
them losing their jobs.
I have seen these same craft unions, just a little while ago, on the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern systems—I have seen them unite with
the corporation to crush out the telegraphers’ union, and defeat the
strikers, their own co-unionists and fellow employes.
Just a few weeks ago, in the city of Chicago, the switchmen on the Grand
Trunk went out on strike. All their fellow unionists remained at work
and faithfully served the corporation until the switchmen were defeated,
and now those union switchmen are scattered about looking for jobs.
The machinists were recently on strike in Chicago. They went out in a
body under the direction of their craft union. Their fellow unionists
all remained at work until the machinists were completely defeated, and
now their organization in that city is on the verge of collapse.
There has been a ceaseless repetition of this form of scabbing of one
craft union upon another until the working man, if his eyes are open, is
bound to see that this kind of unionism is a curse and not a benefit to
the working class.
The American Federation of Labor does not learn by experience. They
recently held their annual convention, and they passed the same old
stereotyped resolutions; they are going to petition Congress to restrict
the power of the courts; that is to say, they are going to once more
petition a capitalist Congress to restrict the power of capitalist
courts. That is as if a flock of sheep were to petition a pack of wolves
to extract their own fangs. They have passed these resolutions over and
over again. They have been totally fruitless and will continue to be.
What good came to the working class from this convention? Put your
finger upon a single thing they did that will be of any real benefit to
the workers of the country!
You have had some experience here in New York. You have plenty of
unionism here, such as it is, yet there is not a city in the country in
which the workers are less organized than they are here. It was in March
last that you had here an exhibition of pure and simple unionism. You
saw about six thousand craft union men go out on strike, and you saw
their fellow unionists remain at work loyally until all the strikers
were defeated and sacrificed. Here you have an object lesson that is
well calculated to set you thinking, and this is all I can hope to do by
coming here, set you thinking, and for yourselves; for when you begin to
think, you will soon begin to act for yourselves. You will then sever
your relations with capitalist unions and capitalist parties (applause),
and you will begin the real work of organizing your class, and that is
what we of the Industrial Workers have engaged to do. We have a new
mission. That mission is not merely the amelioration of the condition of
the working class, but the complete emancipation of that class from
slavery. (Applause.)
The Industrial Workers is going to do all for the working class that can
be done in the capitalist system, but while it is engaged in doing that,
its revolutionary eye will be fixed upon the goal; and there will be a
great difference between a strike of revolutionary workers and a strike
of ignorant trade unionists who but vaguely understand what they want
and do not know how to get that. (Applause.)
The Industrial Workers is less than six months old, and already has a
round hundred thousand of dues-paying members. (Applause.) This splendid
achievement has no parallel in the annals of organized labor. From every
direction come the applications for charters and for organizers, and
when the delegates of this revolutionary economic organization meet in
the city of Chicago, next year, it will be the greatest convention that
ever met in the United States in the interest of the working class.
(Applause.)
This organization has a world-wide mission; it makes its appeal directly
to the working class. It asks no favors from capitalists.
No organization of working men has ever been so flagrantly
misrepresented by the capitalist press as has been the Industrial
Workers of the World; every delegate to the Chicago convention will bear
testimony to this fact; and this is as it should be; the capitalist
press is the mouthpiece of the capitalist class, and the very fact that
the capitalist press is the organ, virtually, of the American Federation
of Labor, is in itself sufficient to open the eyes of the working class.
If the American Federation of Labor were not in alliance with the
capitalist class, the capitalist press would not pour its fulsome eulogy
upon it.
This press has not one friendly word for the Industrial Workers, not
one, and we do not expect it to have. These papers of the plutocrats
know us and we know them (applause); between us there is no
misunderstanding.
The workers of the country (the intelligent ones at least) readily see
the difference between revolutionary and reactionary unionism, and that
is why they are deserting the old and joining the new; that is why the
Industrial Workers is building up so rapidly; that is why there is such
a widespread demand for organizers and for literature and for all other
means of building up this class-conscious economic organization.
(Applause.)
As I have said, the Industrial Workers begin by declaring that there is
nothing in common between capitalists and wage-workers.
The capitalists own the tools they do not use, and the workers use the
tools they do not own.
The capitalists, who own the tools that the working class use
appropriate to themselves what the working class produce, and this
accounts for the fact that a few capitalists become fabulously rich
while the toiling millions remain in poverty, ignorance and dependence.
Let me make this point perfectly clear for the benefit of those who have
not thought it out for themselves. Andrew Carnegie is a type of the
capitalist class. He owns the tools with which steel is produced. These
tools are used by many thousands of working men. Andrew Carnegie, who
owns these tools, has absolutely nothing to do with the production of
steel. He may be in Scotland, or where he will, the production of steel
goes forward just the same. His mills at Pittsburg, Duquesne and
Homestead, where these tools are located, are thronged with thousands of
toolless wage-workers, who work day and night, in winter’s cold and
summer’s heat, who endure all the privations and make all the sacrifices
of health and limb and life, producing thousands upon thousands of tons
of steel, yet not having an interest, even the slightest, in the
product. Carnegie, who owns the tools, appropriates the product, and the
workers, in exchange for their labor power, receive a wage that serves
to keep them in producing order; and the more industrious they are, and
the more they produce, the worse they are off; for the sooner they have
produced more than Carnegie can get rid of in the markets, the tool
houses are shut down and the workers are locked out in the cold.
This is a beautiful arrangement—for Mr. Carnegie; he does not want a
change, and so he is in favor of the Civic Federation, and a leading
member of it; and he is doing what he can to induce you to think that
this ideal relation ought to be maintained forever.
Now, what is true of steel production is true of every other department
of industrial activity; you belong to the millions who have no tools,
who cannot work without selling your labor power, and when you sell
that, you have got to deliver it in person; you cannot send it to the
mill, you have got to carry it there; you are inseparable from your
labor power.
You have got to go to the mill at 7 in the morning and work until 6 in
the evening, producing, not for yourself, but for the capitalist who
owns the tools you made and use, and without which you are almost as
helpless as if you had no arms.
This fundamental fact in modern industry you must recognize, and you
must organize upon the basis of this fact; you must appeal to your class
to join the union that is the true expression of your economic
interests, and this union must be large enough to embrace you all, and
such is the Industrial Workers of the World.
Every man and every woman who works for wages is eligible to membership.
Organized into various departments, when you join you become a member of
the department that represents your craft, or occupation, whatever it
may be; and when you have a grievance, your department has supervision
of it; and if you fail to adjust it in that department, you are not
limited to your craft alone for support, but, if necessary, all the
workers in all other departments will unite solidly in your defense to
the very last. (Applause.)
Take a plant in modern industry. The workers, under the old form of
unionism, are parceled out to a score or more of unions. Craft division
incites craft jealousy and so they are more or less in conflict with
each other, and the employer constructively takes advantage of this
fact, and that is why he favors pure and simple unionism.
It were better for the workers who wear craft fetters if they were not
organized at all, for then they could and would spontaneously go out on
strike together; but they cannot do this in craft unionism, for certain
crafts bind themselves up in craft agreements, and after they have done
this, they are at the mercy of the capitalist; and when their fellow
unionists call upon them for aid, they make the very convenient excuse
that they cannot help them, that they must preserve the sanctity of the
contract they have made with the employer. This so-called contract is
regarded as of vastly more importance than the jobs, aye, the very lives
of the workingmen themselves.
We do not intend that certain departments shall so attach themselves to
the capitalist employers. We purpose that the workers shall all be
organized, and if there is any agreement, it will embrace them all; and
if there is any violation of the agreement, in the case of a single
employe, it at once becomes the concern of all. (Applause.) That is
unionism, industrial unionism, in which all of the workers, totally
regardless of occupation, are united compactly within the one
organization, so that at all times they can act together in the
interests of all. It is upon this basis that the Industrial Workers of
the World is organized. It is in this spirit and with this object in
view that it makes its appeal to the working class.
Then, again, the revolutionary economic organization has a new and
important function which has never once been thought of in the old
union, for the simple reason that the old union intends that the wage
system shall endure forever.
The Industrial Workers declares that the workers must make themselves
the masters of the tools with which they work; and so a very important
function of this new union is to teach the workers, or, rather, have
them teach themselves the necessity of fitting themselves to take charge
of the industries in which they are employed when they are wrested, as
they will be, from their capitalist masters. (Applause.)
So when you join the Industrial Workers you feel the thrill of a new
aspiration; you are no longer a blind, dumb wageslave. You begin to
understand your true and vital relation to your fellow-workers. In the
Industrial Workers you are correlated to all other workers in the plant,
and thus you develop the embryonic structure of the co-operative
commonwealth. (Applause.)
The old unionism would have you contented. We Industrial Workers are
doing what we can to increase your discontent. We would have you rise in
revolt against wage-slavery. The working man who is contented today is
truly a pitiable object. (Applause.)
Victor Hugo once said: “Think of a smile in chains,”—that is a working
man who, under the influence of the Civic Federation, is satisfied with
his lot; he is glad he has a master, some one to serve; for, in his
ignorance, he imagines that he is dependent upon the master.
The Industrial Workers is appealing to the working class to develop
their latent powers and above all, their capacity for clear thinking.
You are a working man and you have a brain and if you do not use it in
your own interests, you are guilty of treason to your manhood.
(Applause.)
It is for the very reason that you do not use your brain in your
interests that you are compelled to deform your body in the interests of
your master.
I have already said that the capitalist is on your back; he furnishes
the mouth, you the hands; he consumes, you produce. That is why he runs
largely to stomach and you to hands. (Laughter.)
I would not be a capitalist; I would be a man; you cannot be both at the
same time. (Applause.)
The capitalist exists by exploitation, lives out of the labor, that is
to say the life, of the working man; consumes him, and his code of
morals and standard of ethics justify it and this proves that capitalism
is cannibalism. (Applause.)
A man, honest, just, high-minded, would scorn to live out of the sweat
and sorrow of his fellow man—by preying upon his weaker brother.
We purpose to destroy the capitalist and save the man. (Applause.) We
want a system in which the worker shall get what he produces and the
capitalist shall produce what he gets. (Applause.) That is a square
deal.
The prevailing lack of unity implies the lack of class consciousness.
The workers do not yet understand that they are engaged in a class
struggle, that they must unite their class and get on the right side of
that struggle economically, politically and in every other
way—(applause), strike together, vote together and, if necessary, fight
together. (Prolonged applause.)
The capitalist and the leader of the pure and simple union do what they
can to wipe out the class lines; they do not want you to recognize the
_class_ struggle; they contrive to keep you divided, and as long as you
are divided, you will remain where you are, robbed and helpless.
When you unite and act together, the world is yours. (Prolonged
applause.)
The fabled Samson, shorn of his locks, the secret of his power, was the
sport and prey of the pygmies that tormented him. The modern working
class, shorn of their tools, the secret of their power, are at the mercy
of a small class who exploit them of what they produce and then hold
them in contempt because of their slavery.
No master ever had the slightest respect for his slave, and no slave
ever had the least real love for his master.
Between these two classes there is an irrepressible conflict, and we
Industrial Workers are pointing it out that you may see it, that you may
get on the right side of it, that you may get together and emancipate
yourselves from every form of servitude.
It can be done in no other way; but a bit of sober reasoning will
convince you workers of this fact.
It is so simple that a child can see it. Why can’t you? You can if you
will think for yourselves and see for yourselves. But you will not do
this if you were taught in the old union school; you will still look to
someone else to lead that you may follow; for you are trained to follow
the blind leaders of the blind. You have been betrayed over and over
again, and there will be no change until you make up your minds to think
and see and act for yourselves.
I would not have you blindly walk into the Industrial Workers; if I had
sufficient influence or power to draw you into it, I would not do it. I
would have you stay where you are until you can see your way clear to
join it of your own accord. It is your organization; it is composed of
your class; it is committed to the interests of your class; it is going
to fight for your class, for your whole class, and continue the fight
until your class is emancipated. (Applause.)
There is a great deal of opposition to this organization. The whole
capitalist class and all their labor lieutenants are against it
(applause); and there is an army of them, and all their names are on the
pay-roll and expense account. They all hold salaried positions, and are
looking out for themselves.
When the working class unite, there will be a lot of jobless labor
leaders. (Applause.)
In many of these craft unions they have it so arranged that the rank and
file do not count for any more than if they were so many sheep. In the
railroad organizations, for instance, if the whole membership vote to go
out on strike, they cannot budge without the official sanction of the
“Grand Chief.” His word outweighs that of the entire membership. In the
light of this extraordinary fact, is it strange that the workers are
often betrayed? Is it strange that they continue at the mercy of their
exploiters?
Haven’t they had quite enough of this? Isn’t it time for them to take an
inventory of their own resources?
If you are a working man, suppose you look yourself over, just once;
take an invoice of your mental stock and see what you have. Do not
accept my word; do not depend upon anybody but yourself. Think it out
for yourself; and if you do, I am quite certain that you will join the
organization that represents your class (applause); the organization
that has room for all your class; the organization that appeals to you
to develop your own brain, to rely upon yourself and be a man among men.
And that is what the working class have to do, cultivate self-reliance
and think and act for themselves; and that is what they are stimulated
to do in the Industrial Workers.
We have great hope and abiding faith for we know that each day will
bring us increasing numbers, influences and power; and this
notwithstanding all the opposition that can be arrayed against us.
We know that the principles of the Industrial Workers are right and that
its ultimate triumph is assured beyond the question of a doubt; and if
you believe in its conquering mission, then we ask you to be true enough
to yourselves and your class to join it; and when you join it you will
have a duty to perform and that duty will be to go out among the
unorganized and bring them into the ranks and help in this great work of
education and organization, without which the working class is doomed to
continued ignorance and slavery.
Karl Marx, the profound economic philosopher, who will be known in
future as the great emancipator, uttered the inspiring shibboleth a half
century ago: “Workingmen of all countries unite; you have nothing to
lose but your chains; you have a world to gain.”
You workers are the only class essential to society; all others can be
spared, but without you society would perish. You produce the wealth,
you support government, you create and conserve civilization. You ought
to be, can be and will be the masters of the earth. (Great applause.)
Why should you be dependent upon a capitalist? Why should this
capitalist own a tool he cannot use? And why should not you own the tool
you have to use?
Every cog in every wheel that revolves everywhere has been made by the
working class, and is set and kept in operation by the working class;
and if the working class can make and operate this marvelous
wealth-producing machinery, they can also develop the intelligence to
make themselves the masters of this machinery (applause), and operate it
not to turn out millionaires, but to produce wealth in abundance for
themselves.
You cannot afford to be contented with your lot; you have a brain to
develop and a manhood to sustain. You ought to have some aspiration to
be free.
Suppose you do have a job, and that you can get enough to eat and
clothes enough to cover your body, and a place to sleep; you but exist
upon the animal plane; your very life is suspended by a slender thread;
you don’t know what hour a machine may be invented to displace you, or
you may offend your economic master, and your job is gone. You go to
work early in the morning and you work all day; you go to your lodging
at night, tired; you throw your exhausted body upon a bed of straw to
recuperate enough to go back to the factory and repeat the same dull
operation the next day, and the next, and so on and on to the dreary
end; and in some respects you are not so well off as was the chattel
slave.
He had no fear of losing his job; he was not blacklisted; he had food
and clothing and shelter; and now and then, seized with a desire for
freedom, he tried to run away from his master. You do not try to run
away from yours. He doesn’t have to hire a policeman to keep an eye on
you. When you run, it is in the opposite direction, when the bell rings
or the whistle blows.
You are as much subject to the command of the capitalist as if you were
his property under the law. You have got to go to his factory because
you have got to work; he is the master of your job, and you cannot work
without his consent, and he only gives this on condition that you
surrender to him all you produce except what is necessary to keep you in
running order.
The machine you work with has to be oiled; you have to be fed; the wage
is your lubricant, it keeps you in working order, and so you toil and
sweat and groan and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power, and
then you pass away like a silk worm that spins its task and dies.
That is your lot in the capitalist system and you have no right to
aspire to rise above the dead level of wage-slavery.
It is true that one in ten thousand may escape from his class and become
a millionaire; he is the rare exception that proves the rule. The
wage-workers remain in the working class, and they never can become
anything else in the capitalist system. They produce and perish, and
their exploited bones mingle with the dust.
Every few years there is a panic, industrial paralysis, and hundreds of
thousands of workers are flung into the streets; no work, no wages; and
so they throng the highways in search of employment that cannot be
found; they become vagrants, tramps, outcasts, criminals. It is in this
way that the human being degenerates, and that crime graduates in the
capitalist system, all the way from petty larceny to homicide.
The working millions who produce the wealth have little or nothing to
show for it. There is widespread ignorance among them; industrial and
social conditions prevail that defy all language properly to describe.
The working class consist of a mass of human beings, men, women and
children, in enforced competition with one another, in all of the
circling hours of the day and night, for the sale of their labor power,
and in the severity of the competition the wage sinks gradually until it
touches the point of subsistence.
In this struggle more than five millions of women are engaged and about
two millions of children, and the number of child laborers is steadily
increasing, for in this system profit is important, while life has no
value. It is not a question of male labor, or female labor, or child
labor; it is simply a question of cheap labor without reference to the
effect upon the working class; the woman is employed in preference to
the man and the child in preference to the woman; and so we have
millions of children, who, in their early, tender years, are seized in
the iron clutch of capitalism, when they ought to be upon the
playground, or at school; when they ought to be in the sunlight, when
they ought to have wholesome food and enjoy the fresh atmosphere they
are forced into the industrial dungeons and there they are riveted to
the machines; they feed the insatiate monsters and become as living cogs
in the revolving wheels. They are literally fed to industry to produce
profits. They are dwarfed and deformed, mentally, morally and
physically; they have no chance in life; they are the victims of the
industrial system that the Industrial Workers is organized to abolish in
the interest, not only of the working class, but in the higher interest
of all humanity. (Applause.)
If there is a crime that should bring to the callous cheek of capitalist
society the crimson of shame, it is the unspeakable crime of child
slavery; the millions of babes that fester in the sweat shops, are the
slaves of the wheel, and cry out in their agony, but are not heard in
the din and roar of our industrial infernalism.
Take that great army of workers, called coal miners, organized in a
craft union that does nothing for them; that seeks to make them
contented with their lot. These miners are at the very foundation of
industry and without their labor every wheel would cease to revolve as
if by the decree of some industrial Jehovah. (Applause.) There are
600,000 of these slaves whose labor makes possible the firesides of the
world, while their own loved ones shiver in the cold. I know something
of the conditions under which they toil and despair and perish. I have
taken time enough to descend to the depths of these pits, that Dante
never saw, or he might have improved upon his masterpiece. I have stood
over these slaves and I have heard the echo of their picks, which
sounded to me like muffled drums throbbing funeral marches to the grave,
and I have said to myself, in the capitalist system, these wretches are
simply following their own hearses to the potter’s field.
In all of the horizon of the future there is no star that sheds a ray of
hope for them.
Then I have followed them from the depth of these black holes, over to
the edge of the camp, not to the home, they have no home; but to a hut
that is owned by the corporation that owns them, and here I have seen
the wife,—Victor Hugo once said that the wife of a slave is not a wife
at all; she is simply a female that gives birth to young—I have seen
this wife standing in the doorway, after trying all day long to make a
ten-cent piece do the service of a half-dollar, and she was ill-humored;
this could not be otherwise, for love and abject poverty do not dwell
beneath the same roof. Here there is no paper upon the wall and no
carpet upon the floor; there is not a picture to appeal to the eye;
there is no statue to challenge the soul, no strain of inspiring music
to touch and quicken what Lincoln called the better angels of human
nature. Here there is haggard poverty and want. And in this atmosphere
the children of the future are being reared, many thousands of them,
under conditions that make it morally certain that they will become
paupers, or criminals, or both.
Man is the product, the expression of his environment. Show me a
majestic tree that towers aloft, that challenges the admiration of man,
or a beautiful rose-bud that, under the influence of sunshine and
shower, bursts into bloom and fills the common air with its fragrance;
these are possible only because the soil and climate are adapted to the
growth and culture. Transfer this flower from the sunlight and the
atmosphere to a cellar filled with noxious gases, and it withers and
dies. The same law applies to human beings; the industrial soil and the
social climate must be adapted to the development of men and women, and
then society will cease producing (cry of “down with capitalism”) the
multiplied thousands of deformities that today are a rebuke to our much
vaunted civilization, and, above all, an impeachment of the capitalist
system. (Applause.)
What is true of the miners is true in a greater or less degree of all
workers in all other departments of industrial activity. This system has
about fulfilled its historic mission. Upon every hand there are the
unerring signs of change, and the time has come for the education and
organization of the working class for the social revolution (applause)
that is to lift the workers from the depths of slavery and elevate them
to an exalted plane of equality and fraternity. (Applause.)
At the beginning of industrial society men worked with hand tools; a boy
could learn a trade, make himself the master of the simple tools with
which he worked, and employ himself and enjoy what he produced; but that
simple tool of a century ago has become a mammoth social instrument; in
a word, that tool has been socialized. Not only this, but production has
been socialized. As small a commodity as a pin or a pen, or a match
involves for its production all of the social labor of the land; but
this evolution is not yet complete; the tool has been socialized,
production has been socialized, and now ownership must also be
socialized; in other words, those great social instruments that are used
in modern industry for the production of wealth, those great social
agencies that are socially made and socially used, must also be socially
owned. (Applause.)
The Industrial Workers is the only economic organization that makes this
declaration, that states this fact and is organized upon this
foundation, that the workers must own their tools and employ themselves.
This involves a revolution, and this means the end of the capitalist
system, and the rearing of a working class republic (prolonged
applause), the first real republic the world has ever known; and it is
coming just as certainly as I stand in your presence.
You can hasten it, or you can retard it, but you cannot prevent it.
This the working class can achieve, and if you are in that class and you
do not believe it, it is because of your ignorance; it is because you
got your education in the school of pure and simple unionism, or in a
capitalist political party. This the working class can achieve and all
that is required is that the working class shall be educated, that they
shall unite, that they shall act together.
The capitalist politician and the labor lieutenant have always contrived
to keep the working class divided, upon the economic field and upon the
political field; and the workers have made no progress, and never will
until they desert those false leaders and unite beneath the
revolutionary standard of the Industrial Workers of the World.
(Applause.)
The capitalists have the mills and the tools and the dollars, but you
are an overwhelming majority; you have the men, you have the votes.
There are not enough of them to continue this system an instant; it can
only be continued by your consent and with your approval, and to the
extent that you give it you are responsible for your slavery; and if you
have your eyes opened, if you understand where you properly belong, it
is still a fortunate thing that you cannot do anything for yourself
until you have opened the eyes of those that are yet in darkness.
(Applause.)
Now, there are many workers who have had their eyes opened and they are
giving their time and energy to the revolutionary education of the
working class (applause), and every day sees our minority increasing,
and it is but a question of time until this minority will be converted
into the triumphant majority (applause); and so we wait and watch and
work in all of the circling hours of the day and night.
We have just begun here in New York, and with a vim and an energy
unknown in the circles of unionism. In six months from this night you
will find that there is a very formidable organization of Industrial
Workers in New York (applause); and if you are a working man and you
have convictions of your own, it is your duty to join this union and
take your place where you belong.
Don’t hesitate because somebody else is falling back. Don’t wait because
somebody else is not yet ready. Act and act now and for yourself; and if
you happen to be the only Industrial Workers in your shop, or in your
immediate vicinity, you are simply monumental of the ignorance of your
fellow-workers, and you have got to begin to educate them. For a little
while they may point you out with the finger of contempt, but you can
stand this; you can bear it with patience; if they persecute you,
because you are true to yourself, your latent powers will be developed,
you will become stronger than you now dream, and then you will do the
deeds that live, and you will write your name where it will stay.
Never mind what others may say, or think, or do. Stand erect in the
majesty of your own manhood.
Listen for just once to the throbbing of your own heart, and you will
hear that it is beating quick-step marches to Camp Freedom.
Stand erect! Lift your bowed form from the earth! The dust has long
enough borne the impress of your knees.
Stand up and see how long a shadow you cast in the sunlight! (Applause).
Hold up your head and avow your convictions, and then accept, as becomes
a man, the consequences of your acts!
We need you and you need us. We have got to have the workers united, and
you have got to help us in the work. And so we make our appeal to you
tonight, and we know that you will not fail. You can arrive at no other
conclusion; you are bound to join the industrial workers, and become a
missionary in the field of industrial unionism. You will then feel the
ecstacy of a new-born aspiration. You will do your very best. You will
wear the badge of the Industrial Workers, and you will wear it with
pride and joy.
The very contempt that it invites will be a compliment to you; in truth,
a tribute to your manhood.
We will wrest what we can, step by step, from the capitalists, but with
our eye fixed upon the goal; we will press forward, keeping step
together with the inspiring music of the new emancipation; and when we
have enough of this kind of organization, as Brother De Leon said so
happily the other day (applause), when we are lined up in battle array,
and the capitalists try to lock us out, we will turn the tables on the
gentlemen and lock them out. (Applause.)
We can run the mills without them but they cannot run them without us.
(Applause.)
It is a very important thing to develop the economic power, to have a
sound economic organization. This has been the inherent weakness in the
labor movement of the United States. We need, and sorely need, a
revolutionary economic organization. We must develop this kind of
strength; it is the kind that we will have occasion to use in due time,
and it is the kind that will not fail us when the crisis comes. So we
shall organize and continue to organize the political field; and I am of
those who believe that the day is near at hand when we shall have one
great revolutionary economic organization, and one great revolutionary
political party of the working class. (Cheers and prolonged applause.)
Then will proceed with increased impetus the work of education and
organization that will culminate in emancipation.
This great body will sweep into power and seize the reins of government;
take possession of industry in the name of the working class, and it can
be easily done. All that will be required will be to transfer the title
deeds from the parasites to the producers; and then the working class,
in control of industry, will operate it for the benefit of all. The work
day will be reduced in proportion to the progress of invention. Every
man will work, or at least have a chance to work, and get the full
equivalent of what he produces. He will work, not as a slave, but as a
free man, and he will express himself in his work and work with joy.
Then the badge of labor will be the only badge of aristocracy. The
industrial dungeon will become a temple of science. The working class
will be free, and all humanity disenthralled.
The workers are the saviours of society (applause); the redeemers of the
race; and when they have fulfilled their great historic mission, men and
women can walk the highlands and enjoy the vision of a land without
masters and without slaves, a land regenerated and resplendent in the
triumph of Freedom and Civilization. (Long, continued applause.)