RATIFICATION MEETING

Appendix, Part I

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD, CHICAGO, JULY 7.

Speeches Delivered by:

THOMAS J. HAGERTY, THOS. POWERS, WM. D. HAYWOOD, CHAS. O. SHERMAN, WILLIAM E. TRAUTMAN, PAT O’NEIL

MISS LUELLA TWINING, Presiding.

A meeting to ratify the work of the Chicago convention in forming the Industrial Workers of the World, was held at Brand’s Hall, in that city, on Friday evening, July 7, at 8 o’clock. The hall was completely filled, and many people were compelled to stand throughout the meeting. The greatest enthusiasm was manifested as the different speakers explained the purposes of the organization. Miss Luella Twining, of Pueblo, Colorado, representing the American Federal Union, presided and introduced the speakers.

In opening the meeting Miss Twining made the following speech:

Fellow workers:—We have come to celebrate and ratify the organization of the Industrial Workers of the World. Industrial unionism stands for the solidarity of labor. Under industrial unionism it would not be possible that the Western Federation of Miners, when on strike, could be shot down by the militia hauled by trainmen. Industrial unionism stands for solidarity. I will not explain the principles of industrial unionism further, for there is no one on the program but who is celebrated as an exponent of these principles. The first speaker on the program will be Thomas J. Hagerty, of the Industrial Workers’ Club of Chicago. You all know of him; he is a celebrated speaker. (Applause.)

ADDRESS OF THOMAS J. HAGERTY:

After the applause had subsided, Hagerty spoke as follows:

I do not want to take up much of your time to-night, because I know some of the men here, the everyday workers from the shop and the mill and the factory, have a message to deliver to you tonight that rings true, because it comes from the lips of revolutionary workingmen. The preamble upon which they stand sets forth very clearly the reason of this ratification meeting, namely, that there are two classes in this country, and that they have nothing in common. Many of the workers have been misled into the belief that they have many things in common with the shirking class. I have met men, workers, who said to me: “Why, I haven’t any objection against my employer; he is a good fellow; when he meets you on the street he shakes hands with you just the same as with any other sort of man, and I am opposed to this talk about war between the classes. That is not true, because I am well treated by my boss.” The man who is in this state of mind towards the class struggle reminds me always of a story that I am fond of telling. It was originally told me by a long, lank, raw-boned Kentuckian on the Oklahoma, Choctaw and Gulf Railway in Indian Territory three summers ago. It is very hot in the Indian Territory in the summer time. One of the speakers who will talk to you is from Arkansas, and he can tell you something about Indian Territory after a while. The man who told me the story said he noticed a fellow sitting under a water tank one day, scratching himself very vigorously. After a good deal of squirming around he finally brought something to the light and looked at it very carefully and cautiously and intently from every point of view, and then just as carefully put it back again in the same place. The man standing alongside of him turned around and said: “Why, you blamed idiot, why didn’t you kill the darned thing?” The first fellow looked around at him in amusement and said: “Why, that wasn’t the one that was biting me.” (Laughter). And so there are workingmen to-day who keep on putting the parasite back because it does not happen to be the particular one that was biting (applause)—failing to realize that the whole parasite system is draining their life blood, and thinking, because a particular parasite is not at a particular time biting them, that therefore there is no class struggle.

The Industrial Workers of the World, then, is founded on the class struggle. Its members know from their own bitter experience just what it means to be exploited. They are not able always to put their knowledge into fine technical phrases; they do not know very much about that sort of thing, but they know what they want. They know that the other fellow is now putting the boots to them, and they want to wear the boots themselves. They know when they go out upon the streets that the man who does the least work has the most of the good things. They walk out on Sundays with their wives and their little ones, and they see the wives of their employers rustling in silks and satins. They hear the rush of the oncoming red devil wagon and the toot of its horn, and they know instinctively that between the class that have all these good things and do not labor for them, and their own class which has none of these things, their own class which must get out of the way of the wheels at the toot of that horn, their own class which is in calico when the other class is in silks—they know that between these two classes there is a war and a struggle, and that that struggle must go on, as the Preamble setting forth the principles of the Industrial Workers of the World states, “until all the workers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field and take and hold that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.” (Applause). They know what they want, and when a sufficient number of them know what they want, then the Industrial Workers of the World proposes, in conjunction with all other workers, through united public action to take and hold that which belongs to them.

The Industrial Workers of the World have nothing to conceal from the rest of their fellow workers. They do not smother their purpose in any fine American Federation of Labor phrases about the community of interest between the capitalist class and the working class. They stand four-square to the true interests of the workers, on a platform that is unmistakable, on a platform that recognizes no aristocracy of labor, that recognizes a T-bone beefsteak has as much nourishment value in it to the stomach of a hod-carrier as it has to the stomach of the most aristocratic Typographical Union man (applause), and that fundamentally, at bottom, there are the same human wants of food, shelter and rain. It is agreed upon all those things. It is agreed on them, not because some of the workers are better paid than others, but it is agreed upon them because these are the ground demands of the working class to-day, and until they are obtained the working class must remain in want, hunger and misery. It is primarily an educational movement to show the workers that their interests are common in every part of the world.

The other day, according to the newspapers, the International Harvester Company was involved in Odessa; some of its property was in danger. The Russian workingman out on strike in Odessa is exploited by the same employer as the workingman out on strike in this city here at the works of the McCormick Harvester Company and those of the International Harvester Company. There is a world-wide exploiting class, and so any movement against that class must stretch out all over the world. (Applause). The letters received at this convention from foreign industrial union movements, from France, Germany, Denmark, show conclusively that this is not something new in America. About five years ago in Spain such a convention, such a congress of the workers as has been holding here during the past week was held in Madrid, and the last congress held last month in Madrid issued a manifesto along the same lines as the manifesto that called the workers to this convention, and for the same ultimate object. So that in spite of petty national lines, in spite of international division lines, the workers the world over are coming together on the ground of their common working class interests, without regard to race, color, creed or flag, and they are coming together because the earth and all that the earth holds and all its possibilities are theirs—are theirs by right of muscle, are theirs by right of labor, and they propose to take them and to enjoy them for their class, from antipode to antipode. (Applause.)

The Chairwoman:—The next speaker will be Thomas Powers, of the textile workers, of Providence, R. I. You all know the condition of the textile workers. I take great pleasure in introducing Thomas Powers, who will speak to you of them. (Applause.)

ADDRESS OF THOMAS POWERS:

Madam Chairman and Fellow Workingmen of Chicago:—I never indulged the thought that I would ever become important enough to be introduced at a meeting of this kind. A workingman twelve hundred miles east of this great city comes here to make common cause with workingmen twelve hundred miles to the west of this city. From all points of the compass workingmen have come to this city to make common cause with one another. And what is the common cause? The common cause is that which grows out of the organization of capital; or, I might say, to put it more plainly, the rampant nineteenth century madness of greed which it induces. Do you know—of course you do—and I want to tell you that I talk about it in order that you may know—as I know and every man in Rhode Island knows—that the successful man of to-day, the successful man who is measured as we measure success to-day, by his dollars, thinks, and is sustained in the thought, in his every act by the so-called intellectual class, that it is his right and that it is perfectly proper that he should look upon society as something for him to prey upon, something for him to exploit. To what end? To the end that he might have countless dollars, that he might have power. Let as look at what he has done with his countless dollars. Let us look at what he has done with his power. Take up the daily papers of Chicago to-day, and you will find that he has dominated the halls of the legislature of this State. Take up any paper or read the Associated Press dispatch news and you will find that this money-grubber has dominated the institutions of American citizenship from one end of this land to the other. His curse, his demoralizing influence, flows from the executive chair of the nation into the sewer department. (Applause). It is for this that he is piling up his dollars. It is for this that he is seeking power. Was it for this that the men of the American revolution pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor? Was it for this that the men at Concord bridge in 1776 and the men at Lexington Green, the men on whose hands were the callouses that resulted from driving the plow and using the hammer, spilled their blood in order to give this republic birth? Was it for this that this government was instituted, to breed the most accursed, the most demoralizing horde of money-grubbers that the world has ever produced? (Applause.)

This has grown out of what we call capitalism. It is to fight this, among other things, that we are organized. And this same cold-blooded, bloody thing is at work in Ireland, is at work in England, is at work in France, in Belgium and in Germany. I believe there is not a part of the civilized world where the influence of this coarse, this cunning, this brutal man, this money-grabber, is not felt. You hear in common talk this old adage, that in the society of to-day it is every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Now, don’t you believe any such thing. The devil will do nothing of the kind. The devil wouldn’t know what to do with the hindmost, he wouldn’t know where to put him. (Laughter). The hindmost, if many of them got into his dominions, would be the means of dethroning him. But instead of taking the hindmost, he will take the foremost, for he will find them men of his own heart. (Applause). Yes, and he will use them to perpetuate his reign. He will give them places and use them for ornamentation in the council chambers of hell. (Applause.)

Now, workingman of Chicago, I am a textile worker, and I don’t pretend to understand anatomy; I know nothing about that knowledge that physicians possess, but there is not a day, there is not a time that I walk the streets of the city in which I live but I am pained by the spectacle that is presented by the men and women who follow the calling I follow. They are pale, they are emaciated, they are not properly fed, they do not earn enough to give them good food in order that they might have good blood, in order that they might be strong; and in the city of Fall River it is even worse than it is in the city in which I live. I often wonder how it is that a physician can live in Fall River. I often think how a man who can read, who can understand what this spectacle means, how he can live and have this horrible sight presented to him day after day; women with thin faces and thin arms, little boys eleven and twelve years of age, with their thin arms and their thin legs—little old men. They are exploited, and who is the exploiter? Why, he is a refined gentleman—a capitalist. (Applause). When he comes out on the street you would know him by the cut of his clothes and his refined appearance. You will see him come into the mill at eight o’clock in the morning, and you will know that he had a bath before he left his family hotel. That man can fatten; that man can live and send his children to the private school; he can send them to the college, and he can do this and see other children denied even the substance to produce strong and healthy growth. This I see every day. I do not need to go to any other man to furnish me with the reason why I ought to be in this revolutionary organization of the working class. I can see it everywhere I go.

A few nights ago in your city I was asked to speak at one of those meetings out on the street corner, and a number of men assembled around there, and I thought that if only those men could be lined up and walk the streets of Chicago what a spectacle they would present, and what a story their appearance would tell. Would I could write the story their appearance would tell, that story would put our so-called boasted civilization to shame. There were men assembled around that meeting whose necks are in that crooked position (illustrating), whose shoulders are pulled out of shape, who have the ox appearance, men who are deformed by the curse-stained hard labor which they do. (Applause.)

We have asked that these little children in the mill be protected by the law. We have asked that laws be made to prohibit their employment under twelve and fourteen years of age. But as I said, the “get there” class, the men who are going to get there, who are going to keep out of this impoverished world—the employing class—what have they done? They have brought about such a state of affairs through their influence among the machine politicians that these laws are not enforced. There is not a State in this country that enforces its child labor laws, because of the influence of the employing class among the legislators.

Let me tell you what has happened in Fall River; it was told to me by one of the spinners there. “Twenty-five years ago,” this man said, “we had 2,000 men in our union, spinners, and there has never been a time since then that a spinner working in that city did not belong to our union,” and he felt proud of his union. He was asked “how many power mules have you here now?” and he answered “About 350.” Now, this is what has happened: In these twenty-five years the number of mules had decreased from 2,000 to 350. What has become of them? They have been carried to the scrap heap, and their places have been taken by the spinning frame, and the father is out on the street looking for a job at whatever he can get, and the child is in the mill working at spinning. I want to tell you about the loom, the Draper loom. No one would nave been more surprised at this than the textile worker of twenty five years ago. To-day in the town of Waterville a cotton weaver is running forty looms. Do you know what that means? Well, that means ten times as many looms as the weaver in India ran ten or twelve years ago. That means four times the number of looms that the most expert cotton weaver ran in the city of Fall River ten years ago, and is nearly four times as many as they are running there to-day, but that loom has not come there as yet. If the manufacturers in the cotton industries in this country decided to keep in employment the present number of weavers and would give to each the number of looms which it is possible for them to run with this new loom, they would have to increase the other departments of the plants about three-fold. I doubt very much if there is cotton enough grown in the world to supply the production which is made possible through the introduction of this loom.

Now, then, the men who compose this organization take these things into consideration. They recognize the changes and improvements which result through invention, and they tell the workingman that he must band together with every other workingman. They tell him that his cause is not only common with the man in another department, in another branch of trade, but they tell him that his cause is common with the men in every country in the world. Workingmen, this organization, this Industrial Workers of the World, will do more than educate people on economic lines. It will open up to their minds many thoughts which are sleeping now. It will open up in their minds thought that will dispel the national prejudices which have caused them to stand apart. It will little by little tell them this story “You Englishman, your great-grandfather went over to Ireland and he fought the Irishman; and he did it for whom? Why, for the king. He did it to uphold the throne of William of Orange. And don’t you know that this king is God’s anointed? Did this thought ever strike you? Yes, he is God’s anointed, because God created the first king, and the first king was the devil, and every king that has succeeded has been a devil also, and their entire wake has been a sea of blood. They have caused prejudice to run on generation after generation, to keep apart the sons of the men who met in the death grapple, and who when it was all over went home to shed the tears and pay off the war debt. This organization will spread the thought that will remove that prejudice. It will tell the workingmen how they have preyed upon each other to promote capitalist interests, how they have been played upon by those men who have been responsible for their condition, and will tell them also how they are preyed upon by the wise American capitalist class. Do you know that there is nothing which has more to do with planting in the mind a refined madness than capitalist greed? When you see this American flag waving, did you ever stop to think what it represents? Did you ever stop to think of what is going on in the country over which it floats? On the Fourth of July I saw on the State House in the City of Boston the great flag waving, and three months before that time one of the most powerful men in that State openly declared that the members of that Legislature were sold like fish in the fish market (applause). Within the shadow of Bunker Hill this is going on. Down in Plymouth, I stood upon the celebrated Plymouth Rock that they call the birth-place of the nation, and I stood on the streets of that city and saw there in the faces and on the bodies of the men who passed along the evidence of the work of this nineteenth century industrial pirate, the money-grubber—the capitalist. Everywhere you go you can see him. He has no country, he has no God, he has no love, no consideration. The only thing that he knows, the only thing that he works for, is the wealth power of the world. Mankind is his field of prey. Organize to overthrow him, is what we have done.” (Applause.)

The Chairwoman:—The next speaker will be William D. Haywood, president of the Western Federation of Miners. In Colorado the capitalists hate him. When Peabody spoke of William D. Haywood as a labor fakir he represented the capitalist class and voiced the thought of Gompers. I take great pleasure in introducing William D. Haywood, president of the Western Federation of Miners. (Applause.)

SPEECH OF WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD:

Fellow Workers:—The first thing that it is necessary for me to say to you this evening is to correct the introduction of out little chairlady. I am not the president of the Western Federation of Miners, but am holding the position of secretary-treasurer at the present time. The president of the Western Federation of Miners is as close to me, however, as any man can be, and I very much regret that you will not this evening have the opportunity of listening to the president; a man who has suffered as much for the cause of labor as any man in this country was ever called upon to suffer.

The theme for this evening is “Industrial Unionism.” For nearly two weeks there have been assembled in this hall over 2 men and women gathered in your city for the purpose of organizing, not a rival to the American Federation of Labor, not a rival to any other organization—but to organize a labor movement for the working class. Those of us who have studied conditions in this country recognize the fact that up to the launching of this organization there was not a labor organization in this country that represented the working class. (Applause). This industrial union is an organization that stands with the gates wide open to take in every man and woman, and, if necessary, child, that is working for wages with either brain or muscle. (Applause). This organization is broad enough in its scope to take in the men who works in the sewer, or our journalistic friends here on the platform who think that they are professional men. (Applause). There are a great many professional men who don’t know the difference between a professional man and a laborer. For instance—begging the pardon of the journalists—there are some scrub reporters that are working on a police assignment who imagine they are professional men working for a salary. They get about $15 a week, and are lucky at that. There are a great many skilled artisans that are getting $3.50 and $4 a day, who recognize their position as workingmen, and their remuneration, their compensation, as wages. (Applause). I simply want to demonstrate that a $3 a day hod-carrier is just as good as a $15 a week reporter, and it does not make a bit of difference whether he is a negro or a white man. (Applause). (A voice:—”As long as he is a union man”). It does not make any difference whether he is an American or a foreigner. (Applause). Although I am an American, it is no fault of mine. I am still of the opinion that an American is just as good as a foreigner as long as he behaves himself, and no longer. (Laughter.)

The organization that has been launched in your city recognizes neither race, creed, color, sex, or previous condition of servitude. (Laughter). We came out of the west to meet the textile worker of the east. We men of the west are getting more wages per day than those men are getting. We recognize the fact that unless we bring them up to our condition they of necessity will drag us down to theirs. (Applause). We propose that this industrial movement shall provide, for every man and woman that works, a decent livelihood. Is that something worth working for? Now, understand me—or rather, do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that this organization is going to improve the condition of purely the skilled workers, the bricklayer, the carpenter or the type-setter; but I mean that we are going down in the gutter to get at the mass of the workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living. (Applause). I do not care the snap of my finger whether or not the skilled workers join this industrial movement at the present time. When we get the unorganized and the unskilled laborer into this organization the skilled worker will of necessity come here for his own protection. (Applause). As strange as it may seem to you, the skilled worker to-day is exploiting the laborer beneath him, the unskilled man, just as much as the capitalist is. (Applause). To make myself better understood, the skilled laborer has organized for himself a union, recognizing that in unity there is strength. He has thrown a high wall around that union which prohibits men from joining the organization. He exacts that a man to become a member of the labor union must of necessity serve an apprenticeship to develop his skill. What for? For the benefit of the union? No, but for the benefit of his employer, who is a member of the Citizens’ Alliance (applause), and who is trying to crush out of existence that same union that has endeavored to develop skilled mechanics for the benefit of the capitalist class. (Applause). What I want to demonstrate to you is that the skilled mechanic, by means of the pure and simple trades union, is exploiting the unskilled laborer. I think that will be easy for me to do. The unskilled laborer has not been able to get into the skilled laborer’s union because that union exacts that a man must needs have served a term of years as an apprentice. Again, there are unions in this country that exact an initiation fee, some of them as high as $500. There is the glass blowers’, to be specific, how long would it take a man working for a dollar or a dollar and a quarter a day and providing for a family, to save up enough money to pay his initiation fee into that union? Why, he might just as well figure on a trip to “Paree.” To demonstrate the point that I wanted to get at, it is this: That the unskilled laborer’s wages have been continually going down, that the prices of commodities have been continually going up, and that the skilled mechanic through his union has been able to hold his wages at a price and upon a scale that has insured to him even at these high prices a reasonably decent living; but the laborer at the bottom, who is working for a dollar or a dollar and a quarter a day, has been ground into a state of destitution. (Applause.)

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this condition does not exist as generally throughout the west as it does here and farther east, and especially is this true in the camps where the Western Federation of Miners is thoroughly organized, because in those camps we have established a minimum wage of $3 a day for every man or boy that is employed around the mines. Now we have no objections to a man getting as much more as he can, hut we exact that he shall get at least those decent wages that will justify him in maintaining a family and doing it respectably, and we are coming here to Chicago and we are going further east to see if it is not possible to bring the common laborer up to a plane something like we enjoy in the mining camps of the west. (Applause). And that can only be brought about by organization. Not an organization with $500 initiation fee; not an organization that demands that you shall serve a three years’ apprenticeship to any trade for the benefit of a member of the Citizens’ Alliance, but an organization that has the doors wide open so that any man that is working at any calling can come in and join hands with us. (Applause). Though we are enjoying very good conditions, we recognize, as I stated before, that our conditions can only be maintained by upholding the conditions or endeavoring to uplift the fellow who is at the bottom.

Now, don’t get discouraged, folks, you of the working class, because here in Chicago you have lost some strikes. Remember that you never could have lost those strikes if you had been organized industrially as the workers in Russia are organized (applause)—organized into an organization that takes in every man, woman and child working in an industry. For instance, in the packing plants, the butchers’ organization was one of the best organizations in this country, reputed to be 50,000 strong. They were well disciplined, which is shown from the fact that when they were called on strike they quit to a man. That is, the butchers quit, but did the engineers quit, did the firemen quit, did the men who were running the ice plants quit? They were not in the union, not in that particular union. They had agreements with their employers which forbade them quitting. The result was that the butchers’ union was practically totally disrupted, entirely wiped out. Now, presuming that every man around the packing houses, from the printer to the pig sticker, belonged to one union; that when they went out on strike the engineers, firemen and men that ran the ice plants all quit; that millions of dollars of produce were in a state so that it would rapidly perish, don’t you believe that those packing house companies would have capitulated? Don’t you believe that if to-day the organized workers of your great city would not go on strike, but that they would stay home for three or four days, that the teamsters would win the strike that they are now engaged in? (Applause). One union man is no better than another union man, and any union man that will stand back because a company has an agreement with him, and who will scab on his fellow union man, he may be a union man, but in my opinion he is a technical scab. (Applause). On the Santa Fe Railroad some time ago the telegraphers went out on strike, and they presented their grievance to the company. The company says: “We cannot do anything for you.” They appealed to the different brotherhoods of railroad men. Those various brotherhoods appointed their grievance committees to see the management. When they went to the management the management said to them: “Gentlemen, haven’t we schedules with you?” The committee said “Yes.” “Well,” said the company, “you carry out your schedules with us and we will attend to the telegraphers.” They attended to the telegraphers to the extent that there is not a union telegrapher on the Santa Fe system. Then the machinists went on strike on the same system, and they appealed to the brotherhoods, and the brotherhoods in the same manner appealed to the management The management called their attention to their agreements, and told them to attend to their business and carry out the rates and rules of those schedules, and they would attend to the machinists; and the machinists to-day are the victims of the sacred contract of the union man with his employer. There never was a contract so sacred, drawn up between a union and an employer, but what the employer would break it if he felt it was to his interest to do so. (Applause.) So that in my opinion and in the opinion of the delegates that have assembled here, no union will have the right or be empowered to enter into a contract with any company or corporation unless that contract is in keeping with and to the welfare of the general labor movement. (Applause.)

Some of the labor leaders of this country have been quoted as saying that it is possible for the capitalist, the corporationist—or the employer, if you will—to get together with the working-men and adjust the conditions that exist between them. Some of them have said that if we only sit down at a table and look each other in the eye and talk these matters over that there would never be another strike. Well, now, that proposition of looking each other in the eye suggests to me that out in Colorado and further west this is a sort of a poker player’s game. (Laughter).

A man sitting behind a full hand of four aces looks the other fellow in the eye and tries to make him believe he has only got two deuces. (Laughter.) Now, the capitalist is always ready to sit down and look the other fellow in the eye, and he has always got the best of it. Why? Because he owns the tools that the other fellow works with. (Applause). Without the tools the other man could not live, and when a man or a company or corporation has possession of the tools, the means of production, the economic power, the means of life, he has your life absolutely in his possession. (Applause). Why, folks, rather than be one of the residents of the ghetto down here, a place that I was through last night I would rather be a big buck nigger on a plantation in the south before the days when chattel slavery was wiped out. Why? Because—size me up pretty well now—I would be worth about $3,000 to a plantation holder. It would be to his interest to provide me with good shelter, with suitable clothing, with proper food, with proper medical attendance, because I represent to him a monetary value of $3,000. Suppose I was to go to some plantation owner to-day-and we have not any slavery in this country. He would size me up and he would say: “You are worth just about $2 or $1.50 a day to work on this ranch. If you get sick you take care of yourself. If you die it is no loss to me. I care nothing about your family. Your little pickaninnies, there is no value to them. Your little redheaded girl does not represent five cents of value to me.” Is this system more cruel than that of slavery days? A hundred thousand times more. (Applause). The wage system is worse than chattel slavery.

Now, are there any of you who feel that your interests and the capitalist’s interests are identical? Don’t you know that there is not an employing capitalist or corporation manufactory in this country that if it were possible would not operate his or its entire plant or factory by machines and dispose of every human being employed? (Applause). The corporation does not hire you. The employer never looks at your face; he never looks you in the eye. He cares nothing about your feelings. He does not care anything about your surroundings. He cares nothing about your twinges of anguish or your heartaches. He wants your hands and as much of your brain as is necessary to attach yourself to a machine. (Applause). Remember, that to-day there are no skilled mechanics. Down in the packing house there are no butchers. There is a train of specialized men that do just their part, that is all. The machine is the apprentice of yesterday; the machine is the journeyman of to-day. The machine is rapidly taking your place, and it will have you entirely displaced pretty soon, and it is a question as between you and the capitalist as to who is going to own and control and manipulate and supervise that machine. (Applause.)

That is the purpose of this industrial union. Now, let no man make a mistake. While we are going to do everything that we can to improve and take advantage of every opportunity that is offered to us to improve the condition of the working class as we go along, the ultimate aim of this organization is to get control of the supervision of industry. (Applause). We propose to say to the employing class what the hours of labor shall be and what the remuneration shall be. We are the people who do the work, and we have got tired of those who do nothing but shirk, reaping all of the benefits. That is the definition of industrial unionism; the absolute control and supervision of industry. And when the working class are sufficiently well organized to control the means of life, why then the system that the speaker before me told you about, the ownership of legislatures and senates and militias and police will be of little avail to them, because a condition such as exists in Chicago at the present time could not exist: The army or police that would raise a hand, a club or a gun against a workingman would have to leave this community or starve to death. (Applause). And we are going further than that. We are going to say to the employer: You must take your place in the productive system of this country or you will starve. (Applause.)

Now, remember, that we fellows out west were once east; that if we don’t know what we are going up against, our fathers probably did. My great great-grandfather lived in Boston. My great-grandfather came as far west as Ohio. My grandfather lived in Iowa. My father carried the mail in Colorado before there was a railroad. I have been still farther west, until they told me that it was only a few miles to the rolling billows of the Pacific, and I concluded that the Haywood family had better turn back, that we had been driven to the frontiers until there were no more frontiers. So I have come back to Chicago, and am still on the frontier; that is, on the frontier of this industrial union movement, which I hope to see grow throughout this country until it takes in a great majority of the working people, and that those working people will rise in revolt against the capitalist system as the working class in Russia are doing to-day. (Great applause.)

The Chairwoman:—I called Brother Haywood president inadvertently, but you will all admit that while he has not been president he would make a good one. The next speaker on the program will be C. O. Sherman, secretary of the International Metal Workers. (Applause.)

ADDRESS OF C. O. SHERMAN:

Madam Chairman, Sisters and Brothers :—As stated by the previous speakers on the platform this evening, we have participated for the last two weeks in a convention that has been held in this hall. I do not know as it is necessary to make any apology when I tell you that we have been so busy that we owe an apology to the laundry girl and to the barber, as we did not find time to look after either one of them. We have no apology for the birth of this international organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World. We participated in this convention, and we propose to father this organization because we believe the condition of the producing class demands an organization of this character. Its basic principle is the class struggle, and we expect the organization to be built up with the producing class, such portion of them as realize at the present time that there is a class struggle. (Applause). We will say, however, that there is one fundamental principle of this organization that will always be lived up to. There never will be a member of this organization, whether holding a local or national position, or even a humble member, that will be eligible to the Civic Federation. (Applause.)

We have not come here to make war upon individuals. We are not here to make war upon organizations. But we have formed an organization to make war upon the system that exists at the present time. (Applause). We believe that through the past bitter experience that labor has suffered, workingmen are ready for a change, that they are ready to unite their forces in one class-conscious industrial organization; recognizing that the powers that are against the producing class are organized as a unit, and that it is absolutely necessary, in order to gain the rights of the producing people, that they must be organized on the same basic principle. (Applause). I have no fault to find with the individual capitalist, no matter whether he is a small capitalist or a large one. If he is a millionaire or a multi-millionaire it is not his fault, but it is the fault of the people because they foster a principle that permits him to become a millionaire. (Applause.)

We believe the hour has come when the people are ready for education on the lines that will unite their economic forces with a solidarity that will mean something in this country. We believe that those that have passed through labor organizations and are in labor organizations at the present time have through their bitter experience reached the realization that there is nothing to be gained by division. (Applause). We hear people complain of the capitalists. What is a capitalist? Nothing but a common human being. He came into this world just the same as the common workingman, just as helpless, and no matter what he possesses while here on this earth, no matter what special privileges you give him that permit him to reign over you, when the hour comes that the Index Finger of the Universe points down to his heart and says “Stop,” the minute that command is made that millionaire is on a level with the tramp. (Applause): He is where he began. Can you blame him or can you blame the system? How many of you that are here to-night that are not struggling to get on a level with the millionaire? (Applause). How many of you would miss the opportunity to make a deal in a speculative proposition, or trust your little savings and take a chance? You will take a chance every day on the games that the capitalists set up for you to play, and the stickers go in and bite. And how willingly you run in and bite because you think you are going to make an easy dollar. But when you get through and you come to figure up your earnings, it is the same as the white man does with the nigger down south. When the end of the week comes he has had four or five pounds of cornmeal and a sleep for himself, while the bag of potatoes goes to the barn and the boss has figured all to the white man and nothing to the nigger. (Applause). And that is your position. And you are worse off in comparison to what you have produced; there is nothing for those who have produced.

Now, that one individual whose name may appear over the factory or place of business—tell you why it is that he can be called a millionaire when thousands of men and women are employed by him? How is one individual capable of sweeping out of your production eighty-five per cent, of that which you produce? Why does he do it? Is it from his power of muscle that you are afraid of him? No, you are not afraid of him. But the system under which we live has educated you to the belief that it is necessary to pay tribute to him in order that you may be permitted to live. (Applause.)

We believe the working people are waking up to these propositions. We are not charging any organization with anything, because there is not a man or woman on this platform but knows that there has never been one step or progress ever taken by labor except through organized labor. Unorganized labor never met anything but contempt. Hence for every step of progress that has been made credit must be given to organized labor. We do say, however, had they been organized on a united basis, in a manner where their power could be used if necessary at one time, that their condition would be better. Now, comparisons have been made between different people, and the brother who preceded me, I think it was he, took a kink out of our brothers of the press that were sitting around the table. Now, the other fellows are slaves just the same as they are. (Applause). And I want to say to you that they have more hardships than even the mechanic. If a bricklayer lays so many bricks in a day, when night comes the foreman or boss gives him credit for laying so much brick. Now, one of these poor fellows will go out and cover a meeting and work like a dog and get up a lovely report and lay it down before the master, who will take a blue pencil and scratch two-thirds of it out and throw it in the waste basket. (Laughter). Which goes to show the position that they occupy and that their labor is not appreciated by their master. Now, the reason why they put the blue pencil through the work of the boys is this: It is simply because they took the right to tell the truth, and the press of this country doesn’t want the truth. (Applause.) It is a common occurrence, when you hear people misquoted to lay it to the boys who take notes at the table, but I want to tell you that with very few exceptions the man that reverses even the notes that were taken and cuts out the sentences and spoils the whole proposition is not the man who is here, but the man that sits at the desk in the office and receives their work. He is the man that does that. (Applause). So I would rather be a hod carrier than one of those fellows. A hod carrier works only eight hours a day. These fellows scab twenty-four hours often. (Applause). They have to do it. They haven’t got an organization. The hod carriers are sensible enough to organize. They did that years ago. (Applause). As a general proposition, when you see a young man running around with a pencil over his ear and wearing a No. 10 cuff for a collar you can’t expect very much of him anyway. (Laughter.)

But now, let us get down to practical work here for about three minutes, and then I am going to let you go. This organization, as stated to you, is broad enough for every workingman. Provisions are made so that quarrels can be settled among yourselves as to jurisdiction. There is no room for jurisdictional quarrels in this organization. And we believe that the working people are coming into it. We are going forward with the work of this organization with no quarrels with any other organization or any hatreds. We are going ahead with our work, and if anything gets in our way we are going to push it out of the way, for we are going on. (Applause). We need an organization of this kind in Chicago, because if we had it the policemen would have to walk their beats, and under the present system that is in vogue here now they ride. (Laughter). I have often thought: “I wonder what poor Ireland would say if she could only see her sons protecting a negro scab.” (Laughter). And sometimes we see negro policemen protecting white scabs. A beautiful spectacle in America, when we can hire one-half of the producing class to shoot down the other half. (Applause.) Is that because of the solidarity of labor, or the division of labor? It is because of the division of labor: It is because of the aristocratic organization that we have been drilled in in the past; the organizations that have told you as certain mechanics that you are better than the other mechanics. I want to say to you that there is no mechanic any better than the common laborer. (Applause). If we had no common laborer the structures of any city would not rise unless the mechanic went down and played common laborer. (Applause.)

The common laborers are the founders of this country. They are the ones that make it possible for civilization to exist. It was the common laborer that took the ax and saw and went into the forest, chopped down the timber and brought it to the mill. It was not skilled labor, but it was common labor that put it on the carriage and sent the saw screeching through it and made the material that these buildings are made of. Common labor put it up when it reached the place where it was going into our mansions. Then the aristocrat of labor got hold of it. Wait till I tell you what they did. The “aristocrats” go to work and build the beautiful structure. They carry it on till they get it covered on all sides and on top. Then the glazier comes around and sets the beautiful glass in the sash. The decorators come inside and decorate and beautify it for somebody. And when it is all in shipshape and ready to be occupied, labor has done every bit of it. Common labor went into the forest and got every bit of it. Labor went into the earth and got the stones and the material for the foundation. Not one stroke was struck upon the building by a man who may be called a capitalist. And then the last man that does the setting of the hinges and the trimmings is the locksmith. When he gets through and he has all the windows fixed so that no one can get in, then he goes to the front door and takes his chisel and hammer and sets the lock, and when he finds that it works perfectly he goes on the outside of that building that he with his brothers has built and finished and he turns over the house key to a master that never struck a blow. (Applause). There the master resides, but when you want to find those whose blood stains are around that building you must go into the districts where you find the hovel, the chanty and the little cottage. There you find the men with brawny arms and red flannel shirts on Sunday afternoon sitting around the house smoking their little pipes and resting so that they may be good and strong producers on the next day. Why have they none of these things they produce? If these things are built by labor, why does not labor own them? (Applause). Simply because they occupy the same position as the trained brute. There is no one man could hold a horse if the horse knew his own strength. No one man could equal the power of the horse. When you see a spirited horse driven by a lady, it is not because of her power over the horse, but because he submits through fear. And that is the reason why the producing class permit themselves to be driven. It is because of fear. It is because they are afraid that their brothers will not stand by their side when the pull comes. (Laughter.)

Chicago in the past four months has been in a turmoil. We have had a little experience here that I believe has opened the eyes not only of the union men, but of the business men. I believe business men are disgusted with the present form of organization. I believe they in fact wish they could either get licked or lick the other fellow quickly and have it over with. The present fight that is going on in Chicago reminds me of a story. There was a German who had a very nice little dog, and he made up his mind that if he would clip its ears it would make a nicer looking dog. But he thought that if he cut it off all at once it would pain the dog too much, so he said: “I just will cut a little off each day so that it wont hurt so much each time.” And that is the way it looks about this strike; they don’t want it to hurt so much each time. If labor was organized the way it should be in Chicago, last January when the garment workers struck, the teamsters connected with those factories would have quit also. (Applause). And then organized labor would have served notice on the governor and on the mayor of the city of Chicago that the first time armed troops were seen on the streets of the city of Chicago all labor would quit in the city of Chicago. (Great applause). We will get you organized if you will be as liberal with your support as you were when I first worked with you. Because you need it in Chicago, and we don’t need to go to Fall River, where the brother came from, and where it was reported by the American Federation of Labor that an excellent settlement was made, but they never reported that they got a twenty per cent reduction the day after the settlement was made. You don’t need to go to Fall River to find sweat shops or conditions that are not right for the working people. You can find them right here in Chicago. (Applause). Right here in the city of Chicago little children, little girls, are trudging every morning to the factories when they should be around their mother’s skirts and going to school five days of the week. (Applause.)

The main object of this organization, as stated by the previous speaker, is to reach down and get the fellow that is down and bring him up to the level of the fellow that is well paid now. We are not looking at the top laborer, because we know he sticks up in different places where there are “aristocratic” bunches, and he goes down again like that (illustrating with a gesture). We want to heave up these hollow places, and level it all along on the bottom. We want a minimum. (Applause). If we get the minimum up here, if the mechanic is worthy of elevation, his work will show it and he will elevate, and as soon as he does he will get right under the common fellow and shove him right up to the side of him.

This is up to you. This is up to labor. If labor wants those things it can get them by concentrated action. If we want to remain unorganized or divided, why then the conditions will exist just as they are at the present time. There never was a strike in Chicago where there should be more credit given to men for making a hard fight than the present fight that is in existence, the teamsters’ strike. (Applause). I have been here twenty-five years, and during that time I have seen a great many struggles. I have never seen anything to equal the sacrifice that has been made by the teamsters. The men have sacrificed and bled. I have seen them go and face fifty policemen and put their wagons across the street when they knew that it was impossible for them to escape the policeman’s club. I say that men who have the courage to do that kind of work are fit for a revolutionary movement. (Applause). The great trouble with the boys that are out on strike is this: They are doing their part, but the trouble is on the other end where they meet so-called union men of another organization that hasn’t got a grievance yet, and they wont have till the drivers are licked, and then the bosses will skin these other fellows. On the other end we find union men at the freight house doors welcoming the loads of scab freight. They unload the freight and stow it away, and then they pass down the line to the out-going freight, and there the union men load up the scab wagons and make sure the loads are safely tied on before they go away. (Applause.)

When labor is organized right, when the scab backs up he won’t find anybody there to take care of the freight. We don’t propose to organize only the common man with the callous hands, but we want the clerical force, we want the soft hands that only get $40 a month, those fellows with No. 10 cuffs and collars. We want them all, so that when a strike is called we can strike the whole business at once. (Applause). The Industrial Workers of the World is an organization built on that policy, a movement that can be handled so that all those who are members of that organization can, if we desire, be got to stop work in thirty minutes. (Applause). I am quite confident that before we adjourn this convention we will get something very nice in the way of a nice motto written up in, respect to what we have done for labor, from the Managers' Association of Chicago, because I think that they will enjoy an organization built on the lines of solidarity. (Applause). I am expecting it every day. While the press has been a little bashful about giving us much credit, I expect before long that these boys who broke out with their applause will be found in an organization of their own, connected with the Industrial Workers of the World. (Applause.)

Now, there are other speakers to follow me, and as I have another meeting to go to, I am not going to hold you any longer. I want to say that I thank you very kindly for your attention, and I will ask you to go out and spread the gospel as to the aims of our organization, and show the same spirit and the disposition as you have toward the speakers to-night. If you do, if you constitute yourselves each and everyone of you an organizer, I .am confident it will be only a few months till the city of Chicago will see an organized condition such as never has been enjoyed in the past. I thank you. (Great applause.)

THE CHAIRWOMAN:-The next speaker will be William E. Trautmann of the “Brewery Workers.” (Applause.)

ADDRESS OF WILLIAM E. TRAUTMANN:

My Friends and Comrades:—-The former speaker has indulged in theories as to what the industrial union movement can accomplish. I wish to point to some facts to show what the industrial union movement of the world has already accomplished in other countries upon the globe. We see to-day, and stand amazed perhaps, at the solidarity of the proletarians of Russia. We see to-day one set of workers, as in Warsaw or in St. Petersburg, or in any other part of that country, lay down their tools for three or four days and again resume the operation of the industries; keep on the operation for about a week and, as if guided by a common thought, again lay down the tools and leave the owners of the tools to keep thinking what the working class really does want. Although that country may be classed as reactionary, as being backward, yet we see the working class organized on the lines of industrial unionism,. where the working people, not bound by the sacredness or the sanctity of a contract, not bound down by the labor leaders, not bound down by the commands and dictation of a few, are ready any time to lay down their tools and dictate to the employers and the rulers of the world what they really want. You may say that that may be a chaotic strike without organization. You may say that those who to-day rebel against conditions as they exist in Russia have not even heard about organization or industrial unionism as we are trying to introduce it upon the American continent. Yet the fact remains that the workers of Russia have been organizing for the last ten years on the same lines the American working people are going to organize on; on the lines of industrial unionism, on the lines of the economic organization of the working class, with the power and the determination to lay down the tools at any time when they see fit, and with the power and determination to take up work again when they see fit, when they have either lost or won a fight against the owners of the tools of production and distribution. On exactly the same lines the workers of the world are organizing in every civilized country of the world. It is not the weapon of the barbarian, but it is the weapon of civilization that the workers of this country should use in their fights against the owners of the tools. It is the fight of those who to-day produce everything that is of value. And by reason of their having the power in their hands; by reason of their knowing that they produce everything; by reason of their realizing the fact that they can organize and operate the tools of production and distribution; by reason of these facts and these facts alone have they organized in every community, in every region, in every country, industrial unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World of this country are trying to organize.

We claim that the producers should also have the right to stop production, and by stopping production., all at the same time, they will show the power of the organized working class, and will simply force into submission if necessary those who to-day control the means of life and the means to obtain what is good and necessary for all the members of the working class. (Applause). The workers of Russia have not the ballot. They cannot have it. They use their economic power, and with an economic organization on the same lines as the industrial union of this country is going to be organized on, they will use that power of the producers to show those who to-day control the destinies of this country that there is a class consisting of millions that can dictate conditions to the few who to-day can and do exploit those millions. (Applause). They have shown in other countries that only by organization on economic lines, by an organization that is based on a recognition of the class conflict in society, on a recognition of the fact that there are two classes, one the exploiting and the other the exploited class, on a recognition of the fact that there will be a class war until we, the workers of the world, are determined to end that war, can we succeed—and it is on this recognition that the workers have organized the economic powers of the world. We must say, and repeat again, that it is time in this country to organize the workers on the same line as they are organized in all countries, in all nations, in all parts of the world, with the same object in view, with the same goal in view, that only by the use of our economic power will we be able to wrest from those who own the tools that which belongs to the producers of all the wealth. (Applause.)

I do not deny that we have other weapons. I do not ignore the political class struggle, or the class struggle on political lines; yet at the same time I say that every Socialist or every man who believes in Socialism has no apology to offer for the formation of an economic organization of the working class that is going to be the training school for the workers of the world in order to enable them to operate the tools of production and distribution in a cooperative commonwealth. (Applause.)

We see to-day in Russia how men lay down the tools for two or three days, again resume operations for about a week, again lay down the tools, and keep the employers all the time in a state of irritation. We see to-day that the workers who are organized on the right lines, on the principles of class solidarity, do not care anything about the sacredness of contract. We see to-day that workers simply go out in a body, in community, and in recognition of the class solidarity and class community of their fellow men—out on strike without recognition of the sacred rights of those who exploit us. And we see to-day that there are growing numbers of those that do not recognize the rights of those who have exploited us for centuries. And why? Because of the recognition of the class conflict that these organizations have been organized upon; because every man who has become the head of an organization realizes the fact that he must become the pillar of the organization. Realizing the fact that he has the interests of his fellow men at stake in the battle between the capitalist class and the wage workers’ army, he becomes a warrior in that army and always remains with it until the victory. Such an army, whatever may come, whatever may be the result, will always be an army of men that will always stick to the colors, and will always remain a fighting army until the goal has been reached.

There is a difference between pure and simple or craft unionism and an industrial union organization. We simply proclaim that a man should be a member of an organization of his shop fellows, and when he knows why he is organized he never will desert the organization. (Applause.) When he knows that a defeat stares his shop fellow men in the face, he will know that the proper time has come to go back to work. Although he may be oppressed and ostracized and persecuted, yet he knows with his fellow men in the same factory, in the same mine, in the same shop, that the proper and opportune time will come when he, without the consent of the employer, will take up arms against him and fight against him. The difference between craft unionism and industrial unionism lies in the fact that the craft unionist recognizes the sacredness of contract. He allows the employer to choose the battle ground, and when the contract expires the employer is prepared to take up arms and take up the battle against the employes. He has prepared everything to defeat them, and when the contract is signed the employer does not recognize the committee of the union. You all know, without the necessity of proof, the conditions as they exist. The industrial unionist, on the other hand, will consider and study the economic conditions of the country, and will always be prepared for a fight, and will always be ready to take up the battle against the employing class, always ready to take up arms, always ready to help his fellow workmen in the same industry. Here is the difference between a man bound down by the sacredness of contract and a man who is bound to his fellow men in the same industry and in all industries by class solidarity, by the recognition of the solidarity of interest of all men who toil in the sweat of their brow. And this recognition alone will make the industrial union movement a success. The sacredness of contract idea should not prevail in this organization. The workmen should always be ready to take up the fight against the employing class; any time be ready to support the men in the shop, in the same industry, in all industries if necessary, to fight the battles against those who exploit us, against those who grind out of our labor power all the luxuries of their own life and do not allow us to enjoy what nature has given to all mankind. (Applause.) Not the difference in forms, but the difference in the means employed should be the distinction between craft unionism and the industrial union movement. It should be the distinction between the methods and the final aim and goal.

The industrial union movement recognizes the fact that labor must always be exploited as long as the system of wage slavery exists. The industrial unionist recognizes the fact that, unless he overthrows the system of capitalist exploitation, he will always be a wage slave. The industrialist will recognize the fact, does recognize the fact, that with all the power at the command of his fellow workers in the same shop, in all industries in the world, he has only one aim, one goal, one object before his eyes—the overthrow of the capitalist system. Although he may fight the battles of to-day just as effectively, just as fiercely, just as successfully as the old craft unionists have fought them for the last ten years, the difference only is that we see to-day the capitalist pitting one section of workers against another section of workers. We see to-day how union men can take the places of other union men. We see to-day the wood workers taking the places of the carpenters; we see to-day the engineers in one industry taking the places of the engineers in another industry. We see how, by the abetting of the capitalist class and through the aid of the labor leaders, one faction of the working class is being used against the other part of the working class, and by the systematic effort of the capitalist class, the working class is kept divided and at loggerheads. (Applause.) The industrial union movement proposes that there should be solidarity upon the economic battle ground. The workers should recognize that the common worker who sweeps the streets and the man who earns $5, $6 or $8 a day in the iron and steel works, are equal, one as good as the other; that they both have one interest; that they have one foe to fight, and that is the owners of the tools of production and distribution. (Applause). By recognizing this fact the industrial union movement proclaims and the Industrial Workers of the World proclaim that we, the working class, must use our efforts to get and keep the working class united on the economic battle field in order to enable them to control the means of life, the means of production and distribution, so that the workers may be able to operate the industries of this country, not for the benefit of the few, but for the common good of all. That is the final aim of industrialism. (Applause.)

The Chairwoman:—Before I introduce the last speaker I will state that Eugene V. Debs is out of the city, and Daniel De Leon was unable to come on account of sickness. The last speaker will be Pat O’Neil, the man from Arkansas.

ADDRESS OF PAT O’NEIL:

Madam Chairwoman and Fellow Slaves :—I do not intend to keep you here very long, because you have sat quite a while under a fire of oratory and I expect you are tired; if you are not now you will be mighty soon when I get going. We have heard every speaker here this evening mention the class struggle, but no one has yet defined what is the class struggle, so that if there is any one here who has any wonder or any doubt as to what the class struggle means he may go away not knowing unless it is explained.

Now, just imagine yourself as a workingman on friendly terms with your employer. He probably is a man of the very best intentions but remember that, when his competitor cuts wages, he in turn must cut yours or go out of business. That is the iron law of competition and of business. On the other hand, some labor leaders in the United States undertake to convince us that there is a harmony or identity of interest between labor and capital. Now, you are interested in getting the largest possible wages in return for your toil, while the employer is interested in getting your labor for the least possible amount. Is there any harmony or identity of interest in that? Can there be? Now, that is the class struggle; the struggle of those who produce all and have nothing, to have larger and larger returns for their labor.

The natural law of labor and of wages is laid down by all the great authorities, beginning with the sacred writings, that “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; not in the sweat of another man’s face, but in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; that is, that the result of labor ought to belong to those who do the labor. That is the natural law of labor and wages. Adam Smith repeats it as such. John Stuart Mill copies this law, and so do all the great writers from that early time up to the present. I will admit that we have some men who write to the contrary, but they are not great writers. (Applause). I want you to get that idea into your minds, as it constitutes the class struggle. It is very plain when you once come to see it, very plain.

Another thing. They were jollying the members of the press here to-night, and I have just one thing to say about that. I am satisfied that we have been organizing here on exactly correct lines, exactly class-conscious lines, because there is only one newspaper in the city that has told the truth about what you did (applause), and that is the German newspaper, which has given us a fair deal because it is a workingman’s paper. The other papers all belong to the employing class, and they have lied like thieves. (Laughter and applause.)

Now, I just want to ask you a straight-forward question. I saw a sign down here the other day, “Diamonds, jewelry, etc.” Now, just suppose that you were down there and your wife came in and found you buying a diamond necklace and a watch and chain and pendant with a nice motto, for some other woman, don’t you reckon there would be something doing at your house pretty soon? Well, now, I want to tell you that that is exactly what you do every day; you buy the diamonds and silks and satins for the other fellow’s wife, and the calico rags for our own. (Applause). And by the gods, if that wife of yours had a lick of sense she would go on strike and make you move your washing till you got some sense. (Applause.)

As you were told a moment ago, I am from Arkansas. We raise lots of things down in Arkansas; we raise some curious things. We raise cotton, corn and mules—two-legged and four-legged (laughter)—and we raise children and whiskey and hell. (Laughter). A short time ago I was talking with a gentleman down there, and he says to me: “Why, you are crazy; you want to pull mankind all down to your level.” I says: “No, no, I can’t understand it that way. I want to reach down and get the fellow that is in the hole and bring him up a ways. The trouble with your intellect is that it runs right down in the mud like a hog’s nose.” And that is a fact. You take a man whose intellect follows the line of his nose that is down all the time, he imagines that the only way to level humanity is by pulling down; but a man whose intellect looks upward towards the light, he recognizes that there is only one way of leveling mankind, and that is by leveling them up. (Applause.)

Some curious things occur in the labor field. I have lived quite a while in this world, seventy-five years the second of last month. I have been a laborer now a little over sixty-eight years since I was bound up to a trade, and I want to call your attention to some curious facts. You have been addressed to-night by workingmen: Hagerty, of laboring stock; Haywood, an actual laborer; Sherman and others. Now, Roosevelt is having some sort of hysterics about race suicide. I will admit that his class runs to cigarettes, collars and cuffs, but when you want men you go to the laboring class and find them. (Applause). Take that man Bill Haywood; the women who go to monkey dinners don’t have that kind of sons. (Applause). I don’t wonder. I don’t wonder the men who associate only in the class to which Roosevelt belongs fear race suicide. Luckily this climate is not good for monkeys.

Now, I don’t want to talk statistics; that is dry business; but I want to call your attention to one fact, that your employers’ figures show that every workingman in the United States produces wealth to the value of about $2,500 per annum on the average. We find that we have returned to us, including salaries of the high-priced superintendents, presidents of railroads and men of that class bunched in with the laborers—that we get a return of about $437 per annum. Now, then, I have got a question that I want to ask some of you fellows that don’t believe in this class business: Who in the Sam Hill gets the other $2,100? What was it produced for? And by what right does the individual who produces nothing at all relegate to himself the greater portion of that which labor has produced? Looking backward, as I said a while ago, we see that labor alone can produce wealth, and that the smaller part called wages is all that goes to those that toil. Then we find that the right to property comes by labor and through labor. Talking with a right nice Johnnie boy some time ago, whose father left him quite a little wad of money in the way of railroad stocks and the like of that: “How did all these things that you have, come to belong to you?” “Why,” he said, “my father gave them to me.” I said: “Well, where did your father get it?” “Why, my father made it in business, sir, and accumulated it.” “He did? And that is the way you come to inherit it, because he accumulated it? Well, sir, I want to tell you something. My father did not accumulate, but he produced, and I have been robbed of my inheritance. The law of inheritance is all right, but it should run through the line of production, not through the line of accumulation.” Of course, he couldn’t see it that way. I don’t blame him, because he was at the wrong end of the telescope, and I looked powerful small to him. (Applause.)

But see here, do you believe there is any truth in that story of the Carpenter of Nazareth? If you do, ask yourselves this question: How many kinds of a fool was He when He spoke this prayer that I want to give you: “Our Father who art in heaven, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Now, I want to ask you a question: If you believe He was here for that purpose, and that He was a true representative of your cult, I want to ask you who owns the corner lots and the oil wells in Heaven? (Laughter and applause). While they have been talking and praying about His will and His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, we have had nineteen centuries of Christianity and jails. (Applause). I don’t believe that kind of praying will do anybody any good.

I am like Dean Swift and his man Jock. One morning the Dean said: “Jock, did you black my boots?” “No,” said Jock, “I blacked them yesterday, and that is enough.” After a bit, about dinner time, the Dean said to him: “Jock, I wish you would go and saddle my horse and your pony,” and while Jock was gone the Dean ate his dinner, and when Jock brought the animals around to the door the Dean was ready to ride. “Well, but,” said Jock, “Master, I didn’t have my dinner.” “Oh,” said the Dean, “you ate yesterday, and that will do for you to-day.” Well, they started riding down the road, and while Jock was riding ahead he met a friend, who said: “Where are you going?” “We are going to heaven,” Jock replied. “How do you make that out?” “0h,” said Jock, “I am fasting and my master is praying, and if that is not the way to get to heaven I don’t know how you would get there.” Well, it is that way about Christianity and the jails. It is all either prayer or fasting for the working class. (Applause.)

But as I said to you, I did not intend to keep you here long. We have come here to hold a ratification over the organization of the first industrial movement in the United States. For eighteen years I have been agitating on this one particular line, asking my fellow laborers to get together in an organization which recognized really, not just simply through word of mouth, that an injury to one was an injury to all. They have at last got to the place where they recognize that. (Applause). And now, you who are here, I ask you to ratify it by giving three good hearty cheers for industrial unionism.

The meeting then closed with three rousing cheers for the Industrial Workers of the World.