SPEECHES (continued 2)

Who with a heart in his breast can look upon Colorado without keenly feeling the cruelties and crimes of capitalism! Repression will not help her. Brutality will only brutalize her. Private ownership and wage-slavery are the curse of Colorado. Only Socialism will save Colorado and the nation.

The overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist party. It will not fuse with any other party and it would rather die than compromise.

The Socialist party comprehends the magnitude of its task and has the patience of preliminary defeat and the faith of ultimate victory.

The working class must be emancipated by the working class.

Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.

Child labor must be abolished by the working class.

Society must be reconstructed by the working class.

The working class must be employed by the working class.

The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.

War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

These are the principles and objects of the Socialist party and we fearlessly proclaim them to our fellowmen.

We know our cause is just and that it must prevail.

With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.

375

Craft Unionism

Speech at Chicago, November 23, 1905

We have met under the auspices and in the interests of the Industrial Workers of the World. Organized here in Chicago, less than five months ago, the Industrial Workers already number almost, if not quite, a hundred thousand workingmen and women, enrolled as dues-paying members, in a revolutionary, economic organization of the working class.

Why has this new organization been instituted? Why will not the old trade unions that already occupy the field serve the purpose? Why a new organization? These are questions that are up for consideration; that address themselves to all the workers of the country, whether they favor or oppose the new organization.

For many years I have been connected with one and another of the old trade unions. Indeed, since February, 1875, when I first joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, I have been an active member of a trade union; and during that time I have had some experience by virtue of which I trust I have profited sufficiently to enable me to determine whether a trade union is organized for the purpose of serving the working class or not.

At the very threshold of this discussion I aver that the old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands of the working class. I aver that the old trade union has not only fulfilled its mission and outlived its usefulness, but that it is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interests of the workers who support it, but in the interests of the capitalist class who exploit the workers who support it.

Let me cite an instance or two for illustration. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers has been organized about forty years. It professes to be a trade union, an organization of 376and for the working class. The organization has the favor and support of practically every railroad corporation in the United States. The late P. M. Arthur was its grand chief for many years. In the beginning of his official career he was true to the working class. As the organization developed in numbers and in power, and became a menace to the corporations, they realized the necessity of securing control of that organization. And how did they go about it? By making certain concessions to that so-called brotherhood, by flattering its grand chief, by declaring that they had no objection to a labor organization such as this brotherhood, especially while under the supervision of so conservative a leader as Mr. Arthur. Every time the corporations made a concession to the engineers it was at the expense of poorly paid employes in other departments who were unorganized; and when the men in these departments protested and finally went out on strike, the engineers have invariably been used by the corporation to defeat their fellow-workers, who were in revolt against degrading economic conditions.

Mr. Arthur was, therefore, a prime favorite with the railroad corporations. They granted him annual passes over their lines; and when the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers met in convention, their delegates were provided with special trains to transport them to and from the convention, free of charge, as evidence that the corporation appreciated the value of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

Since the engineers were organized, the firemen, conductors, brakemen, switchmen, telegraphers and trackmen have also been organized, and several other departments have been partially organized, and they all have practically the same form of organization. They are all conservative. They all operate within the bounds set and approved by the railroad corporations. Are they, can they be true to the men who pay the dues, to the workingmen who support them? I answer that they cannot. Not only are they not true to the wage-workers who support them, but they are pressed into service, politically and otherwise, when occasion demands it, in the interest of these corporations, and to the detriment of their own.

Only the other day, since this much-discussed matter of rate 377legislation has been pending, the grand chiefs of these various brotherhoods have been convened. By whom? By the railroad corporations. For what purpose? This will appear as I proceed.

Just after the grand chiefs of these labor unions met with the railroad officials, another meeting took place. Of whom? Of the representatives of the principal of these several organizations, who, acting under the advice of their grand officers, proceeded to the city of Washington, held a conference with President Roosevelt, and protested that the labor unions they represented, consisting of the railway workers of the country, were opposed to any sort of legislation that would have a tendency to reduce railroad rates in the United States. The announcement also went forth at the same time that these brotherhoods would make their political power felt in the interests of the railroad corporations; that is to say, against the common people, the toiling millions of the land.

What a picture, indeed!

One glance proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that these unions are exceedingly useful to the corporations; and to the extent that they serve the economic and political purposes of the corporations, they are the foes—and not the friends—of the working class.

The United Mine Workers, in point of numbers a powerful labor organization, embraces a large majority of the coal miners of the country. Is this organization of any real benefit to coal miners? What has it actually done for them during the last few years? What have the miners, who have paid millions of dollars from their scant earnings in support of the organization, what have they to show in return?

These miners are well organized. They have the numbers. They ought to have real economic power. But they lack it. And why? For the simple reason that they are not organized upon the basis of the class struggle. Their union principles are not right; and it is for this reason that their organization has the hearty support of the coal operators of the country, who, by the way, are in session in Chicago at this very time, for the purpose of uniting, for the purpose of dealing with the miners, not through the rank and file of their union, but, as they themselves declare, through their national board.

378And this is a very important point for the union miners to take into consideration. These operators, these exploiters, who are conscious of their class interests, propose to deal, not with the union at large, not with the great body of the miners, not with the rank and file, not with the common herd, not with the black beasts of burden, but with their National Executive Board. They will fix things that are out of joint and settle matters generally. They will arrive at mutually satisfactory conclusions. They will harmonize beautifully. And when they do harmonize, it will be in the interests, not of the miners who do the work, who dig the coal, who produce the wealth, but in the interests of the operators who own the mines and exploit the slaves of the pits.

Why, the most zealous supporter of the United Mine Workers is the coal operator himself. The simple fact that the coal operator collects the union dues, and discharges the miner who refuses to pay his dues, is sufficient evidence of this fact.

The coal operator does not collect the dues from the man who happens to belong to the Industrial Workers. He knows enough to know what is good for him; and he knows that the miners, organized as they are at present, can do him little harm, but can do him great good. And this is why he wants the miners organized in the pure and simple old-fashioned way. He knows that if they were totally unorganized they would spontaneously go out on strike. But they cannot strike as they are now organized without securing the sanction of their national, district and local officers; and so the operator keeps a friendly eye upon the union which fortifies and facilitates the exploitation of the coal diggers in his mines.

At stated periods the operators and representatives of the miners meet; and sometimes the sessions are very spirited, the miners insisting upon an increase, and the operators upon a decrease of wages, as was the case at the last interstate conference, when the union officials declared that under no circumstances would they accept a reduction, and the delegates voted by practically a unanimous vote not to accept any reduction, and for a while, there was every indication of a strike. But the national officers met with the operators, and a reduction 379of wages was agreed to, and then the union officers went out among the rank and file and told them that if they were foolish enough to go out on strike they would certainly be defeated, and that the best thing they could do was to accept the reduction. So these union officials, backed by the operators, virtually forced the reduction upon the miners.

The operator can well afford to support that kind of a labor union.

The United Mine Workers, under its present policy, denies and seeks to obscure the class struggle. President Mitchell used to be quoted as saying that the interests of the miners and the operators were identical. He made an address the other day in which he claimed that he had been misquoted; he had not said that their interests were identical, but that they were reciprocal. I would like to have Mr. Mitchell show in what way the operator who fleeces the miner reciprocates to that miner. The simple fact is that the operator—and I don’t know why he is called that, he doesn’t operate anything—the operator takes from the miner what the miner produces. He serves him in that capacity, and no other.

The miners’ union denies, in effect, the class struggle, and vainly seeks to harmonize the economic interests of these two antagonistic classes—the exploiting masters and the exploited wage-slaves; the robbers and the robbed. It cannot be done; not permanently at least; and if it be done even temporarily, it is always at the expense of the wage-slaves. Such an organization as that cannot truly serve the best interests of the working class. It is impossible.

There are many who concur in these views, yet insist that the organization must be changed from the inside; that it can only be brought to its proper position by “boring from within.” I deny it. It is historically impossible. This organization has practically run its course. It has fulfilled its mission as a labor union, whatever that has been. It is now practically in charge of the mine owners; and the only way the miners can get away from that situation is to sever their relations with that capitalist-controlled union and join and build up one of their own upon the basis of the class struggle; and then they will be in position to fight the capitalist class with some chance of success.

380The most important fact in all the world for workingmen to take cognizance of is the class struggle. The Industrial Workers express economically the interests of the working class in that struggle. The Industrial Workers declare that there can be nothing in common between the exploiting capitalist and the exploited wage-worker; that there is inevitably a struggle between them, and that this struggle cannot end until the capitalist class is overthrown, and the wage-system wiped out. Then and then only can there be an end to class rule.

Now, if you are a workingman and if you believe that you have an economic interest in common with that of the capitalist who employs you, remain in the old trade union. That is where you belong. If that is your conviction we do not want you to join the Industrial Workers. You do not properly belong to us. You do belong to the American Federation of Labor and its affiliated organizations. But, if you believe, as I believe, that the working class have economic interests of their own, separate and apart from and in conflict with the economic interests of the capitalist class, then you should, and sooner or later will have to, sever your relation with the old trade union and join the Industrial Workers, the only union organized upon the basis of class struggle.

And now, let me ask, have we a class struggle? The answer comes of itself. This struggle finds expression daily, hourly, in strikes, in boycotts, in lockouts, injunctions, riots, assaults and bloodshed. It is not an unmixed evil, however, for in this great world-wide class struggle, that is shaking the foundations of civilized society everywhere, there are being wrought out the most important problems of our modern civilization.

The working class are in an overwhelming majority. They have the numbers. They ought to have the power. And they would have the power if only they were conscious of their interests as a class.

Every effort is put forth by the exploiting capitalist to prevent workingmen from seeing the class struggle. The capitalist insists that there is no such struggle. The editor in the employ of the capitalist echoes “no class struggle.” The teacher, professor and the minister, all of them dependent upon the capitalist for the chance to make a living, agree that there 381are no classes and no class struggle. In unison they declaim against class agitation and seek to obscure class rule that it may be perpetuated indefinitely.

We insist that there is a class struggle; that the working class must recognize it; that they must organize economically and politically upon the basis of that struggle; and that when they do so organize they will then have the power to free themselves and put an end to that struggle forever.

Now, have not the workers, especially here in Chicago, had sufficient experience during the last few years? Have they not been defeated often enough to demonstrate the inherent weakness of the old trades union movement? Haven’t they been enjoined by the Courts often enough? Clubbed by the police and flung into jail often enough? Haven’t they had experience of this kind enough to open their eyes to the fact that there is a mighty class struggle in progress, and that there will never be any material change in their condition until they unite their class in every department of industrial activity?

Speaking for myself, I was made to realize long ago that the old trade union was utterly incompetent to deal successfully with the exploiting corporations in this struggle. I was made to see that in craft unionism the capitalist class have it in their power to keep the workers divided, to use one part of them with which to conquer and crush another part of them. Indeed, I was made to see that the old form of unionism separates the workers and keeps them helpless at the mercy of their masters.

Object lessons are presented to you every day in the week. You have hundreds of thousands of workers organized in Chicago, in every conceivable kind of a union, and under the direction of an infinite variety of leaders. I will not say that these leaders are all incompetent or corrupt. That would not be true. But many of them are corrupt, and in that capacity have it in their power to betray and sell out the workers who trust them. In this position the workers will remain—where there is no hope for them—so long as they cling to the outgrown old trade union and its inefficient methods. We have had the proof of this over and over again. Take all the great strikes that have occurred in Chicago during the last few years. Have any of them been successful? Have they not uniformly failed?

382The capitalists have not entirely stamped out the defeated unions, that is true. They have had the power to do this in the hour of the workers’ defeat, but they have refrained from doing it, because they are shrewd enough to know that if they destroyed those unions, another and better one would take their places. Is it not a fact that they had the butcher workmen absolutely at their mercy, and could have compelled the members to entirely withdraw from the unions before giving them employment? They did not crush the unions out. When they had conquered they were satisfied. They had driven the unionists back to their reservations and they were perfectly satisfied that they should build up again along the same old lines.

The Employers’ Association had the striking teamsters completely at their mercy, and could, had they seen fit, have utterly crushed out their union. They did not do it. In the closing part of the negotiations the settlement hinged upon the alleged privilege of the teamsters wearing their union badges, and this the Employers’ Association finally conceded; and then the claim was put forth that the striking teamsters had come out victorious. The truth is that they lost everything; but the employer was not anxious to destroy their organization. He knew very well that if he did a stronger one would spring from the ruins; that a crushed union at least teaches workingmen to see its inherent defects.

The employer is shrewd enough to know that when you totally wipe out organizations you drive the workers into solidarity.

The teamsters were entirely defeated, nothing left; and yet their leaders boasted that they had served their organization. It reminded me of the dispatch once sent from a field of battle by a general who had been completely routed: “There is nothing left but honor, and d—n little of that!”

It is true that there are some employers who are supposed to be entirely opposed to unionism, even the old form of trade unionism. But the great majority of capitalists, especially the shrewder, far-seeing ones, unqualifiedly approve the pure and simple labor union. And now let me show that between these two sections of the capitalist class there is, after all, no vital difference with regard to the trade union movement.

383C. W. Post, president of the Citizens’ Industrial Association, and David M. Parry, president of the Manufacturers’ Association, who are opposing the American Federation of Labor, have repeatedly said that they are not opposed to trade unionism if it will confine itself to its “legitimate” functions. In other words, they are not opposed to trade unionism if it does not antagonize the capitalist class. That is their position. Now, what is the position of the great body of capitalists who avow their friendship for the trade union movement? Precisely the same. They are in favor of the trade union as long as it does not menace or attack the capitalist class; that is, as long as it doesn’t do anything. And in its present shape it is not doing anything; and that is why the capitalists are not opposed to it. Let these trade unions unite tomorrow; let them declare in favor of waging this fight along the lines of the class struggle, and they will soon find out whether these capitalists are in favor of trade unionism or not.

The very fact that the great majority of capitalists favor trade unionism proves that it is doing little or nothing for its members. Were it really doing something for them it would be antagonizing the capitalist class, and that class would fight it. But the capitalists are not fighting the old brand of unionism; they have, in fact, formed an alliance with it and the union is the silent partner in the firm.

You have all doubtless heard of the Civic Federation. This federation is supposed to be fair and impartial. It is organized for the one purpose of dove-tailing the interests of labor and capital, and every member of this body insists that these interests can be harmonized; that there is no necessary conflict between them. That is what Mr. Gompers says; that is what Mr. Mitchell says; that is what Archbishop Ireland and Bishop Potter say, and that is what they all say—that there is no necessary conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. If there be no necessary conflict between them, it follows that all the fighting that is going on must be unnecessary. I suppose then that ought to be very easily ended.

A gentleman named August Belmont presides over this harmonizing body. Not long ago, in an address, he claimed that there was no better trade-unionist in the country than he, and 384he proved it during the Interborough strike in the city of New York, when several thousand union employes of that corporation, of which he is president, went out on strike because they were driven to that extremity by his pernicious policy. He proved that he was a loyal trade-unionist when he employed James Farley, the notorious professional strike-breaker, and his army of Hessians to take the places of his former employes. Just a little while after Mr. Belmont had thus defeated his employes and disrupted their unions, he met at the hospitable banqueting board of the Civic Federation with the national officers of the American Federation of Labor and its allied unions, and there made good his claim that he was a true trades-unionist of the old school.

Do you think that a labor leader who is absolutely true to the working class could sit at such a banquet with such a capitalist as Belmont? Do you think he would be the guest of such an organization as the Civic Federation, whose only purpose is by subtle schemes to, reduce the trade-union movement to harmless impotency?

It is for this and this alone that the Civic Federation has been organized. This is its real mission. The American Federation of Labor has fallen within the fatal influence of this emasculating alliance, and has thus proven that it is not organized to advance the true interests of the working class.

The American Federation of Labor is now holding its annual convention in the city of Pittsburg. What are its delegates doing there? Simply passing the same old resolutions. Once more they are going to petition Congress to enact an eight-hour law. They have done that over and over again, and their petition has been as repeatedly pigeon-holed. They have also resolved to petition Congress to restrict the powers of capitalist courts in dealing with labor. They have done that time and again, and what have they gained by it? Absolutely nothing. No attention has been paid to these servile supplications. They have been disregarded, thrown aside, treated with contempt; but the delegates solemnly meet in convention once more to pass the same hoary resolutions, to introduce the same stale petitions, with the same inevitable results. Now, is not this a perfectly stupid procedure? Are 385these men incapable of profiting by experience? Do they not by this time understand the nature and essential functions of capitalist-class government?

Can they not see that we have a capitalist-class Congress, and capitalist-class legislatures, elected in every instance by an ignorant working class, kept ignorant, designedly, in the name of unionism, and with the aid of the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class? And that it is the very height of folly and depth of humiliation for a committee of the working class to beg the representatives of the capitalist class to legislate in the interests of the working class?

They were elected to serve the masters. And they are serving them. And we have no right to find fault with them—at least those of us who are responsible for their being where they are.

Now, we who have organized the Industrial Workers have had enough of this kind of experience. We have quit the old unions. We have organized the Industrial Workers for the purpose of uniting the working class; the whole working class. Not only the skilled workers, not only those who are favored, but the working class, skilled and unskilled, male and female, in every department of activity, are united upon the principle of Industrial Unionism.

The old unions were built up on tools that have been discarded and upon trades that have ceased to exist.

Half a century ago the trade union was right; it was adapted to the then existing industrial conditions. For illustration, a cooper shop was a cooper shop. It contained coopers and coopers only, and the Coopers’ Union was organized. That embraced the coopers who were employed at their trade in the shop. Since then there has been half a century of industrial evolution. Compare the great cooperage establishment of today with the cooper shop of fifty years ago, in which the old hand tools were used, in which the apprentice learned his trade, and having mastered this, could seize the small tools with which work was done and virtually employ himself. There has been a marvelous change since that time. A modern cooperage establishment is the result of industrial evolution; and if you will visit one you will find that scores of different 386kinds of labor are performed there. Indeed, you will find almost any kind of worker there except a cooper!

Now, we behold that the form of the union must correspond to the mode of industry. In other words, the union, like the trade, is subject to the inexorable laws of evolution. We want a union today that expresses all the various subdivisions of labor now engaged in a cooperage establishment. Suppose there are 500 such employes in a plant. We organize them all, and they are assigned to their various departments; and if one of them has a grievance it becomes the concern of every worker in that establishment.

How is it now? Certain departments are organized in craft unions, meet with the officials and make an agreement or contract. They do not care what becomes of the rest, if only they can get what they are after for themselves. After they are thus tied up, the employes in some other department present a grievance and are turned down and out. They go out on strike. Those tied fast in an agreement say: “We would like to help you, we are in sympathy with you, but you see we have an agreement, and that agreement is sacred; it must be preserved inviolate; and while we are in sympathy with you and hate to see you defeated and lose your jobs, we cannot go back on our agreement.” And in this way one union is used to crush another, labor is defeated and scabs are made by thousands.

It is a fact that nearly all scabs and strike-breakers are ex-unionists. Go among them and interrogate them and you will find that they will tell you in almost every case that at heart they are in favor of union labor, but that they were beaten by it and found this the only way of getting even. I know of hundreds of instances, of my own knowledge, of men who have been made scabs in precisely that way. Now, the trade unions feel very bitter toward scabs, and pursue them relentlessly until the unfortunates seek escape in suicide. And yet, while they so bitterly persecute the scab, they support the union that makes the scab.

What we want today, above all things, is united economic and political action, and we can never have that while the working class are parceled out among hundreds, aye, thousands, 387of separate unions, that keep them divided for reasons, many of which very readily suggest themselves.

Who is it that is so violently opposed to the Industrial Workers? It is not the rank and file of the trade unions. It is their officers. And why are they so fiercely opposed to the Industrial Workers? For the reason that when the working class are really united a great many labor leaders will be out of jobs.

There are at present thousands of unions. Some of them have a few members and others have a great many; and every time, in the evolution of industry, there is a new subdivision of labor, however minute, a new union must be launched, clear down to the Grand International Brotherhood of Peanut Peelers, Polishers and Packers, or whatever it may be. And they elect a staff of their own grand international officers, and their names are put upon the payroll; and let me say to you that their interests are primarily in keeping themselves there.

Why should the railroad employes be parceled out among a score of different organizations? They are all employed in the same service. Their interests are mutual. They ought to be able to act together as one. But they divide according to craft and calling, and if you were to propose today to unite them that they might actually do something to advance their collective and individual interests as workers, you would be opposed by every grand officer of these organizations. The payroll and expense account of the officers of the railroad brotherhoods alone amount to more than a quarter of a million dollars a year.

There is an army of men who serve as officers who are on the salary list who get a good living keeping the working class divided. They start out with good intentions as a rule. They really want to do something to serve their fellows. They leave the shops or the mines as common workingmen. They are elected officers of a labor organization and they change their clothes. They now wear a white shirt and a standing collar. They change their habits and their methods. They have been used to cheap clothes, coarse fare and to associating with their fellow-workers. After they have been elevated to official position, as if by magic they are recognized by those who 388previously scorned them and held them in contempt. They find that some of the doors that were previously barred against them now swing inward, and they can actually put their feet under the mahogany of the capitalist.

Our common workingman is now a labor leader. The great capitalist pats him on the back and tells him that he knew long ago that he was a coming man, that it was a fortunate thing for the workers of the world that he had been born, that in fact they had been long waiting for just such a wise and conservative leader. And this has a certain effect upon our new-made leader, and unconsciously, perhaps, he begins to change—just as John Mitchell did when Mark Hanna patted him on the shoulder and said, “John, it is a good thing you are at the head of the miners. You are the very man. You have the greatest opportunity a labor leader ever had on this earth. You can immortalize yourself. Now is your time.” Then John Mitchell admitted that this capitalist, who had been pictured to him as a monster, was not half as bad as he had thought he was; that, in fact, he was a genial and companionable gentleman. He repeats his visit the next day, or the next week, and is introduced to some other distinguished person he had read about, but never dreamed of meeting, and thus goes on the transformation. All his dislikes disappear and all feeling of antagonism vanishes. He concludes that they are really most excellent people and, now that he has seen and knows them, he agrees with them that there is no necessary conflict between workers and capitalists. And he proceeds to carry out this pet capitalist theory and he can only do it by betraying the class that trusted him and lifted him as high above themselves as they could reach.

It is true that such a leader is in favor with the capitalists; that their newspapers write editorials about him and crown him a great and wise leader; and that ministers of the gospel make his name the text for their sermons, and emphasize the vital point that if all labor leaders were such as he there would be no objection to labor organizations. And the leader feels himself flattered. And when he is charged with having deserted the class he was supposed to serve, he cries out that the indictment is brought by a discredited labor leader. And 389that is probably true. The person who brings the charge is very likely discredited. By whom? By the capitalist class, of course; and its press and pulpit and “public” opinion. And in the present state of the working class, when he is discredited by the capitalists, he is at once repudiated by their wage-slaves.

The labor leader who is not discredited by the capitalist class is not true to the working class. If he be unswervingly loyal to the working class he will not be on friendly terms with the capitalist class. He cannot serve both. When he really serves one he serves that one against the other.

The labor leader who is in high favor with the exploiters is pronounced safe, conservative, wise and honest, and the workers are appealed to to look to him for advice, for guidance and leadership. The unthinking accept the advice with enthusiasm. And so the labor leader who serves the capitalist class instead of the working class is hailed deliverer and basks in the public favor.

But let me say to you that in spite of all this the honest and discredited leaders will be lovingly remembered long after the popular ones of today are forgotten.

Now, in these matters, I am not asking you to take my advice. I am not asking you to follow me. I simply want you to think over these things for yourselves. The very first need is that you open your eyes and see for yourselves. Take nothing for granted.

So many of you are satisfied to blindly follow where others lead; and so you are deceived and betrayed; you have to pay all the penalties.

It is high time you were ceasing to depend upon someone to “lead” you; that you were opening your eyes; that you were doing your own thinking. And that is all I am asking you to do.

I have already told you that I have had some experience and that I hope I have in some measure profited by it. I have been involved in strikes enough to satisfy me. I have so often been saddened by the outcome of such strikes.

I have seen men by scores and hundreds and thousands, after striking for weeks and months, lose their jobs. I have 390seen the poor wretches blacklisted and I have seen them persecuted until they were in rags, and their families were upon the streets, and I have said there must be another and a better way. I have seen enough of this to satisfy me. There is a better way. But you will never find it by pursuing the old lines. You have got to unite the whole working class, and this can be done. It is not an impossible task. Every worker, however limited his mentality, ought to be able to see that there is little or nothing to be accomplished along the old lines; that, in fact, there is no hope; that you are engaged in an unequal struggle, and that the ultimate outcome is certain to be defeat, despair and death.

The capitalists have at present ten thousand advantages over us. They own and control all the sources and means of wealth production. They are the masters of the tools; they act together. They control all the powers of government. They can at their own sweet will shut down their mills and factories and mines, and they can wait patiently weeks and months and even years, until the impoverished workers become hungry and are glad to be taken back at any terms. The capitalists have all these advantages, and they never hesitate to do anything, everything, that may be required to keep the working class in subjection. And they can and will keep them there just as long as they are divided.

There is but one hope, and that is in the economic and political solidarity of the working class; one revolutionary union, and one revolutionary party. It is for this reason that the Industrial Workers, an economic organization, has been launched and now makes its appeal to you as wage-slaves aspiring to be free. You cannot be satisfied to live and die as beasts of burden; to toil unceasingly to enrich masters who hold you in contempt; to be dependent upon these masters for your jobs and crawl like sycophants at their feet. You may not be satisfied, even though you have sufficient food and clothing and shelter. You are a human, not a hog; a man, not a mere animal. You have a manhood to sustain; you have your freedom to achieve, and you have an intellect to develop; and these questions will appeal to you with ever-increasing force and compel an accounting at last, if you have the pith and purpose of a typical, self-respecting workingman.

391In the capitalist system you workers are simply merchandise; your master can at his own will sentence you to idleness, your wife to want and your child, perhaps, to a brothel. You cannot be satisfied with such a slavish lot and now is the time to make up your mind to change it. In your heart you will feel the thrill of a new-born joy. You will join the Industrial Workers, the one international labor union that proposes to unite all workers, that all of them may act together in harmonious co-operation for the good of all; a union that recognizes no aristocracy, but the whole working class; that insists that each member shall have all the rights that are accorded every other; a union built upon the class struggle, appealing to all workers to get together on the right side of that struggle and achieve the emancipation of their class.

It is true that this is a stupendous task; that there are great opposing forces; that every falsehood that malignity can devise will be put in circulation to defeat the object of this industrial organization, but nevertheless, those of us who have quitted the old unions and organized the Industrial Workers have done so with the determination that no matter what opposing forces may be set in operation, we will stand together side by side in the true spirit of class-conscious solidarity; we will move forward, step by step, in one solid body; we will speak the truth as we see the truth, and defy all the opposition that may be brought to bear against the Industrial Workers by all the capitalist class and all its vassals and emissaries.

This organization has a mission as high and as noble as ever prompted workingmen, or any other men, to action in this world.

The primal need of the working class is education. By education I mean revolutionary education; the kind that enables men to see that the twenty odd millions of wage-workers in the United States are wage-slaves; that the economic interests of these many millions of human beings who do all the useful work and produce all the wealth are absolutely identical; that they must unite; that they must act together; that they must assert their collective power. When they reach this point they will cease to be slaves and become the masters of the situation; they will wipe out the wage-system and walk the earth free men.

392They can do this, and only they can do it.

I cannot do this for you, and I want to be frank enough to say that I would not if I could. For if I could do it for you, somebody else could undo it for you. But when you do it for yourselves it will remain done forever. And until you do it you have got to pay the penalty of your ignorance, indifference and neglect. You have got to pay it to the last farthing. Nobody on earth or in heaven can relieve you of the consequences of your inaction. As long as you workers remain divided and at cross purposes, instead of closing up the ranks and acting together, you will have to pay the penalty of defeat and humiliation and slavery and all their attendant brood and festering evils.

But day by day you are increasing the sum of your revolutionary knowledge. You are becoming wiser by experience. The Industrial Workers would not have been possible a few years ago. It is an outgrowth of the very conditions I have described. It has become an imperative necessity. The workers everywhere are beginning to recognize it, and that is why they are flocking to its standard. That is why they are subscribing to its principles; why they are working for it day and night with a zeal that has never been known in the history of the organized working-class movement; and why it is rapidly spreading over the whole country, and increasing grandly in numbers and in power. Let me say to you that no matter what formidable or subtle opposition may be marshaled against it by the capitalist class the ultimate triumph of its principles is as certain as that I stand in your presence.

There are a great many workers who insist that the old unions are good enough; and as long as they are of that opinion that is where they belong. So far as I am concerned I gave the old unions a fair trial. I am sure I had no prejudice against them. I am equally sure I did all I possibly could to build them up. For fifteen years I traveled almost continuously over this country organizing railroad men, and all kinds of workingmen, under the mistaken conviction that if we could only get them into the several unions of their trades and occupations we could in some way lift them out of their slavery. My mind was disabused. We had the railroad men, especially 393in this part of the country, pretty thoroughly organized. We had the numbers and to some extent the power, but we didn’t know about the class struggle. We had that to learn. Then came the great conflict with the combined railroad corporations. We defeated them; and then we learned that the corporations control the powers of government. We got our first vital lesson in the class struggle. All the corporations had to do was to press the judicial button in their private office and the judges acted promptly in obedience to the command of their capitalist masters; the police and militia and regular troops followed in regular order; the press and pulpit and deputy marshals did the rest—and that was enough.

I never knew exactly how it happened until I understood the meaning of economic determinism and the class struggle, and then it was perfectly clear to me. And from that time I realized the imperative necessity for a different kind of organization. I then said, we have got to organize, not only the railroad employes, but the whole body of workers for concerted economic and political action; organize them all, so that all of them shall act together and assert the full measure of their power in the interests of all. As soon as a beginning was attempted the railroad corporations said, “This vicious thing must be stamped out of existence,” and so, for two years, I scarcely traveled a foot without being shadowed by detectives of the railroad corporations. No matter where I went, the detectives were there. When I would reach the end of a certain line the detectives who had followed me would go back where they came from and others would take their places.

I remember when I got to Providence, Rhode Island, one night, I was conscious that detectives were watching me very closely. I learned that the railroad officials in New England had announced that the American Railway Union should never get a foothold there. There were two or three loyal men there I knew and could trust; I sent them word not to come to the hotel and not to hold a meeting, but to come to my room at midnight, and come one at a time. And they did come to my room one at a time and I organized them in my room at midnight. I left the city early next morning, and when I got to the next point I received a telegram reporting that they were all discharged, every one of them.

394Notwithstanding our secrecy the corporations knew who had entered my room and for what purpose; and the men were summarily discharged. Why was it that the railroad corporations would not allow the American Railway Union to organize? For the simple reason that the American Railway Union proposed to line up all the railroad employes as the beginning of a thorough reorganization of the working class in general, and the railroads did not propose to tolerate that kind of an organization.

They were and are entirely satisfied with the old brotherhoods, supplying their officers with annual passes and their delegates with special trains to take them to and from their conventions. To such an extent is this partiality carried on some railroads that if a member of one of the brotherhoods refuses to pay his dues and is expelled by the brotherhood, he is promptly discharged by the corporation. The corporation favors the organizations that divide, but is implacably hostile to the one that unites the workers.

For the same reason the capitalist newspapers have so ferociously denounced the Industrial Workers.

They have warned workingmen that the Industrial Workers consists of anarchists, socialists, revolutionists and chronic fault-finders and peace-disturbers, who have been kicked out of other reputable labor organizations; of discredited leaders who do not lead, in whom the workers have no confidence and for whom they can have no respect.

The capitalist press is a unit in denouncing the Industrial Workers, and practically a unit in commending the American Federation of Labor.

If you workers think that the capitalist press is a safe guide in such a matter, you properly belong with the American Federation of Labor. But if you believe, as I believe, and as every intelligent workingman must believe, that the kind of labor organization that the capitalists endorse is not the kind that is for your good—that the organization the capitalist press condemns is the one that has working class virtue and efficiency—then you will do as we have done; you will join the Industrial Workers of the World.

Think it over for yourself!

395Take a backward look over the last three or four years; satisfy yourself by your own study and observation that there has been little but defeat for the workers in the struggle during all that period; that they have gained substantially nothing; that they are divided and disrupted and not organized in any true sense at all. The time has come for a real economic organization of the workers, and that organization is now in the field and makes its appeal to all workers, and its principles and purposes deserve the encouragement, the support and the loyalty of every workingman who has intelligence enough to understand his best interests and manhood enough to assert and stand by them.

I shall occupy your time no longer. I think that no great argument is required in support of our position. The preamble to the constitution states clearly and in few words the object of the Industrial Workers. You will find it written there that the workers and capitalists have nothing in common; that there are a few who have all the good things in life, while millions writhe in poverty and cry out in despair; that those who do nothing and produce nothing are rich, while those who do everything and produce everything are poor; that these two classes consist of capitalists who own tools they do not use, and of workers who use tools they do not own; that the capitalists who own the tools have it in their power to take and do take from the workers what they produce, and that the workers must organize both their economic and political power to take and hold that which they produce by their labor.

This is brief and to the point, and every workingman is capable of understanding it.

As the chairman has stated, the Industrial Workers has no object in concealing any part of its mission, and while it proposes to ameliorate the condition of the workers in every way in its power as far as that is possible in capitalist society, its ultimate object is to entirely abolish the capitalist system, by making the workers themselves the masters of their tools, that they may work freely, unrestrained and unexploited; that they may secure to themselves and enjoy all the fruit of their own labors.

This is the object of the Industrial Workers, and if it has 396your approval, join it and help it to fulfill its mission, and thus hasten the emancipation of the working class, and the brighter, happier day for all humanity.

QUESTIONS.

Q. In the Industrial Workers are you going to separate the different trades, or has a man who joins the privilege of going where he chooses?

Mr. Debs: He joins the department that represents his particular trade or occupation. The Industrial Workers is organized in separate departments, so that the autonomy of the trade is preserved within the organization. Take the men of a certain trade; they belong to a certain department of the organization; they have jurisdiction over their own trade affairs. They are subject, however, to the supervision of the general organization. Take the machinists, for instance; they have a grievance; it will be adjusted, primarily, if possible, within their own department. If that is not possible then it becomes the grievance of the general organization—the concern of all. Instead of merely the machinists going out on strike as now, all their fellow-workers lay down their tools and support them to a finish.

Q. Is it true that the Industrial Workers was organized because the workers cannot gain anything by political action?

Mr. Debs: No, that is not true. The workers have never yet tried to get anything by united political action. They will some time, I do not doubt. The Industrial Workers was organized because under the old form of organization they could get little or nothing by economic action. If they had secured satisfactory concessions under the old forms there would be no Industrial Workers. It has been organized because of the failure of the old unions on the economic field. Now, if it can be shown that they have succeeded, or even measurably succeeded, then there is no necessity for the Industrial Workers. But if, on the other hand, it can be shown that they have repeatedly and wretchedly failed, then there is an unanswerable argument in favor of the Industrial Workers.

Q. What is a tradesman or a skilled worker? Why should 397there be any distinction between a tradesman and any other worker in a shop?

Mr. Debs: That is not a very easy question to answer. There used to be a great many skilled mechanics who are now common workers. In proportion as machinery is improved the skill of the trade is transferred from the worker to the machine; and the skilled labor of one day becomes the common labor of the next. The locomotive engineer has always regarded himself as a skilled worker, and he has refused to affiliate with what is called the common laborer. Within the next few years the locomotive engineer will probably become a motorman and he will then come off the perch. The work will be so simple that almost any worker can perform it. I have already referred to the coopers. In the town where I live there used to be a number of cooper shops in which there were skilled men; and they had a large and strong Coopers’ Union. All the coopers that worked there belonged to it. And these coopers didn’t have anything to do with common labor. They flocked by themselves upon the theory that they were skilled men and could not afford to put their skill on the same level with the common labor of unskilled workers. During the last few years that trade has undergone a complete change. The skilled coopers have practically disappeared and but a shadow of the old union remains.

Now, if you will ask that old cooper, who was a skilled man and belonged to a union that represented skilled labor a few years ago—if you will ask him who the skilled man is, I think he can give you a satisfactory answer to your question. The skill of the trade is being gradually eliminated, and we are taking cognizance of that fact. We Industrial Workers recognize no aristocracy of skill. If any partiality were to be shown, however, I would give the unskilled man the benefit of it, because he needs it most. But there is no such discrimination in the Industrial Workers. The workingman, skilled or unskilled, is a worker; a man, and, whatever his occupation, has all of the wants and aspirations and is entitled to all the rights and opportunities of a human being for self-development. The machine is rapidly reducing workers to a common industrial equality, making the unskilled man the productive equal of the 398skilled man. The machine is the skilled man, and when he gets through, that question will have answered itself.

Q. Does the Industrial Workers make any provision for a wage scale?

Mr. Debs: Yes; it is going to get all the wages for its members that it possibly can, while the wage-system lasts.

Q. How are you going to prevent the leaders from being as bad as those of the trades unions are today?

Mr. Debs: In the first place, there will be but a single organization. There will not be a hundred different and conflicting organizations and as many different sets of officers.

Q. Then they will have only one to buy; it won’t cost so much.

Mr. Debs: All the chances will be reduced to the minimum. Take the railroad brotherhoods, for instance. If every locomotive engineer running into Chicago voted tomorrow to go out on strike they could not go out without the official sanction of the Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, and he alone could prevent the strike. That is, they might vote unanimously to strike, but the power of one single grand officer would outweigh that of the entire organization. With us it is the rank and file that decides and is the supreme power. It is not likely they will sell themselves out. Besides, the Industrial Workers is made up of a body of class-conscious industrial revolutionists, who will not be sold out. They are wide-awake workers who think for themselves, and that is why they are in the Industrial Workers. The old trade unions are mainly run by the officers. Didn’t you notice in the papers this morning that the coal operators who were here in session declared that they proposed to deal, not with the rank and file, the common herd, but with the national officers of the union? They will settle things, and that is how they are generally settled in the old unions; but that is not the way they will be settled in the Industrial Workers.

This is an important point. Take a plant such as a brewery, for instance; a score of different kinds of labor represented by as many different organizations, and as many different sets of officers. Here are temptation and opportunity multiplied by twenty. Here we have wide-open chances and incentive to 399bribery, corruption and treachery. Suppose now, that the same plant is organized in the Industrial Workers. Instead of being parceled out among twenty different unions they are all embraced in one. The men in one department have a grievance. That plant has a general committee; and if the grievance fails of adjustment in the department in which it arises, it is referred to the general committee that has supervision of the plant, and if they fail to satisfactorily adjust it, the matter goes to all the employes, as Industrial Workers, for action. They vote to go out on strike and that settles it. In the Industrial Workers no national officer and no set of national officers have power to override the action of the rank and file. And when they vote to go out, they go out and stay out, until they vote to go back.

401

Class Unionism

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 402of 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. 403He 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 404market. 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 405into 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 406where 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 407is 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.

408Reform 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.

409A 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 410is 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 411convicts 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 412who 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.

413In 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 414comprehension 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 415allow 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 416you 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.

417It 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.