The I. W. W. — What It Is And What It Is Not
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Author : The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

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THE I. W. W. — What It Is And What It Is Not
		CHAPTER 1.
		
			Misconceptions 
		
		Almost
every person has heard or read of the organization called the
Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as "The
I. W. W." Most of these people have heard or read what the
I. W. W. is not, and consequently have misconceptions
regarding this organization, its policy, functions and aims. Being
unacquainted with this labor union, they judge it by its reputation.
Now, the character of the I. W. W. and its reputation are two
entirely different things. Its character is what its membership makes
it, while its reputation is what its enemies have represented it to be.

		
			Lying Capitalist Propaganda 
		
		Its
enemies are the capitalist class, and capitalist henchmen of every kind
and stripe. They know that if the workers understood the
I. W. W. they would flock to its standard and enroll
themselves into its membership by hundreds of thousands. Therefore,
every power which the capitalists control is directed to slandering the
organization, misrepresenting its principles, lying about its methods,
and vilifying it and its membership.  Press, pulpit and platform thunder their vicious falsehoods against the I. W. W.  Pseudo-patriotism  has been invoked to the point of frenzy by campaigns where facts were utterly ignored, or were distorted for the sinister purpose of maligning an organization which has a clearer
conception and is animated by higher purposes than any union that has
ever presented itself to the working people.
		With an assumed regard for human welfare, the capitalists, with their  lickspittles and apologists have insidiously cultivated the belief that the
I. W. W. is an organization driving recklessly forward to the
violent destruction of human society. The capitalists calculatingly and
cold-bloodedly took, and still take, advantage of the disposition among
the working people to adopt ready-made opinions in preference to
forming their own opinions. Press, pulpit, platform and screen have
been used to present the I. W. W. in such light as would
oppose its reception with all the bitterness that prejudice could array
against it.
		Those who have been led to object to the
I. W. W., only object to what they believe it to be. But the
I. W. W. is different, something entirely different. 
		
			The "Foreign" Misconception 
		
		There
is a widespread belief that the I. W. W. is an organization
of foreign origin. On the contrary, it is a labor organization of
American origin. Born of American labor experience and conditions, it
was organized in Chicago, Illinois, in 1905. Dealing primarily with and
guided by the facts of American economic life, it serves the economic
interests of the American working class on this continent. 
		At the same time, it is also designed to serve the wage
working interests in all the countries of the world, in many of which
it has branches, and in all of which its influence is felt. 
		The opinion is commonly, too commonly held, that the
I. W. W. membership consists mainly of foreigners. This
charge is as old as labor unionism. The "foreign contention" has been
used to discredit every union since labor first began to organize. It
is conveniently overlooked that the "Pilgrim Fathers" were
"foreigners", and that the only real "Americans" are the Indians. 
		In the I. W. W. membership in the United
States, the prevailing nationality is American. Of course, there are
workers of all nationalities in the I. W. W., because there
are workers of all nationalities employed in American industry. While
the employers find employment for foreigners, the I. W. W.
will find it as necessary to organize them as to organize natives. As
we work with foreigners, we must combine with foreigners. All those who
work for wages the I. W. W. will organize, whether they be
white, black, or yellow; men, women or children. 
		
			To Unite All Workers 
		
		Race
color, religion, nationality, age or sex do not provide grounds upon
which the I. W. W. will divide those whom the employing class
have united industrially. Industrial solidarity of labor is a prospect
of which the employing class stands in dread is why the capitalists
strive to blacken the reputation of the I. W. W. They will
scheme, lie, frame-up and vilify it in order to prevent such industrial
organization among the workers as the I.W. W. is endeavoring to bring
about. When they say that the I. W. W. is a foreign
organization, they appeal to a patriotism to which they themselves are
strangers, which their records as financial industrialists proves
conclusively. With the I. W. W. there are no foreigners. All
are workers, and we have only one enemy—the employing class which
exploits our labor. 
		
			I. W. W. Shuns Secrecy 
		
		It
is also alleged that the I. W. W. is a secret organization.
Those who utter that falsehood know in their hearts that the
I. W. W. has successfully resisted every attempt to drive it
underground. Its members have fearlessly asserted their beliefs and
undauntedly faced mobs, insane with bloodlust, rather than retract
their honest opinions. I. W. W. members have gone to jail by
thousands, but the organization has never been forced into the
retirement of secrecy. Their meetings have been held openly, in open
halls, or upon the street corners, often with the jails to adjourn to. 
		There are no "grips" or "passworts’’—no "hokus-pokus" of
any kind. The I. W. W. is a wide-open organization which
covets the light and avoids methods and acts that need the shelter of
darkness, or the covering of a disguise. Truth is its doctrine, and
overalls its uniform; the fellowship of wage toil is its qualification
for membership, and loyalty to the cause of labor is its creed and
test. It maintains eight publications, in six languages, to make its
ideals known to all. 
		
			The I. W. W. and Violence

		
		It has been rumored, and the rumor found
acceptance, that the I. W. W. is an organization which
endeavors to achieve its aim by violent methods. Violence has played a
great part in the development of the I. W. W., but the I. W. W. has been the victim, and not the author of that violence.
		In
cases where employers have tried to connect the I.W. W. with acts of
violence they have failed ignominiously. There has never been
established in any court action a connection of the I. W. W.
with crime. In all such cases the I. W. W. has been
exonerated. In the world war cases the sabotage and violence counts
were thrown out by the United States Appellate Courts. Yet in spite of
all this, there is an increasing propaganda maintained, whereby it is
still sought to perpetuate the idea that the I. W. W. is a
criminally disposed organization. 
		
			The Source of "Labor Violence" 
		
		In
the history of American Unionism, the first established connection of
organized labor with criminal violence is found when the capitalists
planted an agent— James McPartland—among the Molly Maguires.
		Since then the "agent provocateur"
has became a fixed institution in American labor unionism. In fact,
providing men who will mislead labor and provoke violence in order to
destroy labor unionism, has itself become an industry.
		 Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakota, who speaks with fifty years’ experience in public life to guide him, has this to say of labor violence:
		
			
				The
great combinations (of employers) would hire private detectives and use
force, if necessary, to beat strikers into submission. In order to
justify the use of force, in the eyes of the public, they would send
secret agents among the strikers, advocating some act of violence which
these agents represented to be for the welfare of the workers. They
would talk violently and excite the men and advise bomb throwing and
even murder. They (these agents) even perpetrated such outrages.
Generally the assaults were against property, and of course immediately
the army or police, or both, were called in to restore law and order.
			
		
		
			The Megaphones of Criminal Capitalism 
		
		Senator
Pettigrew might have added that the capitalist press seizes upon these
made-to-order riots and committed-to-order outrages to inflame public
opinion against labor organizations. The pulpiteers of capitalism take
up the hue and cry, and they are echoed in every circle that depends
upon the favor of capitalism for existence. 
		No other organization has been so grossly misrepresented
in this respect as has the I. W. W. The attempt to fasten an
ill-favored reputation upon this organization has cost the capitalist
class millions of dollars, and has cost the I. W. W. the
lives of many and the liberty of hundreds of its members. Besides,
because of manufactured opinion, those who oppose the organization most
bitterly, know the least about it. 
		In order that such among the workers, who have been
misled into the belief that the I. W. W. is other than it is,
may have an opportunity to judge it upon its merits, this pamphlet has
been written. We shall here state without equivocation the principles,
aims and methods of the I. W. W. Common fair play should
grant us a hearing. Of the outcome we have no fear. 
		CHAPTER 2.
		STRICTLY PROLETARIAN
		
			Membership in the I. W. W.

		
		The I. W. W. is a labor organization
whose membership is confined to those who work in industry far wages or
salary, which is another name for wages. Anyone who does not work for a
wage is not eligible for membership in the I. W. W. 
		Now, it may be inquired, why is not anyone who is engaged
in an industrially productive capacity entitled to be a member of any
labor union, more particularly of a union which aims to include the
entire working class in its membership and which assumes to act for and
in behalf of the entire working class? 
		First, as an economic organization, the
I. W. W. must represent a definite economic interest,
otherwise, it could not function effectively. Unless a clear and
distinct line of demarcation is drawn to distinguish a particular
interest, no organization could express or advance it. Therefore the
I. W. W. organizes the wage workers as an industrial element
whose particular interest immediately lies in modifying the terms of
its relationship to the owners of industry, while preparing to end that
relationship altogether. 
		The terms of the relationship between employer and
employee are expressed in the wage paid; in the hours worked, and the
conditions obtaining on the jobs. For the wage worker on the job,
everything else outside of these are irrelevant and immaterial. In
these aspects of the wage relationship, the wage earners are vitally
interested, and about these they are vitally concerned. Consequently,
in order that no extraneous matter absorb the attention of the
organization, or divert it from its function on behalf of the wage
earners, the I. W. W. has confined its membership to those
who have wages, hours and conditions of employment to settle with the
employing class. 
		
			I. W. W. Serves Only the Wage Working Interest

		
		Some persons are engaged in productive
employment who are in a position to arrange their hours and conditions.
In such self-employing capacity they are not irritated by restrictions
that irk wage earners. They may have the same desire as wage earners
for the overthrow of capitalism, but their interest is not identical
with that of wage labor in the every day struggle against the wage
relationship, because for them that relationship does not exist. 
		As a labor movement is necessarily and primarily
concerned with the daily problems that confront the wage laborers in
their working places, it is imperative that such a movement shall not
admit into its ranks any element not completely in accord with the
interest of those whose instrument it is intended to be. To introduce
an alien and inharmonious element is invite discord and bring
confusion. No organization can serve two interests simultaneously. 
		
			The Proletarian View Point 
		
		Then
again, there are grades in the wage working class social division,
whose admission into a working class economic organization is so
dangerous an experiment that the I. W. W. has deemed it
advisable and necessary, temporarily, to exclude them from membership.
Managers, superintendents, foremen—those who hire and fire—are not
admitted.

		Those workers, from the very nature of their positions in
industry, are prone to see all questions about the jobs, which they
supervise and direct, from the employers’ viewpoint. They would,
because of this, tend to undermine the effectiveness of the union.
Moreover, their control over the jobs, and, therefore, over the life
conditions of the workers placed under them might be to obstruct the
union in its functions, and might even defeat its purposes and its
efforts. So that while the I. W. W. acknowledges the
industrial kinship of these directors with the manual wage workers, it
excludes them from membership, pending the time when industrial
proletarian elements will have achieved such organization and
industrial standing that the members of this group can be safely
assimilated. 
		This, in a general way, explains why the
I. W. W. confines its membership to actual wage workers who
have no connection whatever with the employer which might serve to dull
their consciousness, or to reconcile them to the wage relationship at
any time. 
		
			I. W. W. Not a Political Organization 
		
		Another
popular misconception, that has been planted and is being carefully
fostered by the capitalist class, is that the I. W. W.
aspires to be a great revolutionary political organization, which aims
to overthrow existing governments and set up a bureaucratic tyranny of
its own. Positively this is one of the greatest untruths spread and
believed about the I. W. W. The I. W. W. is not a political organization.
It has no political aspirations or aims. What it knows about politics
and politicians has taught it to avoid both, like pestilence. The
I. W. W. does not direct its activities against the
government at all. All of its attention is centered upon the jobs and
the wage relationship. The I. W. W. is neither a political
nor an antipolitical organization. It is an economic organization.
		
			Changing the Job Relationship.

		
		Every day and every hour of every day, week
after week, and month after month, year in and year out, the
I. W. W. concerns itself solely with and about the wage
relationship, which involves a constant struggle between employers and
employes. It seeks and strives constantly to arouse the sentiment for
a shorter work day among the wage workers. It endeavors to organize
them to demand and secure shorter hours. It tries to organize the
workers in an effort to secure higher living standards. It would
organize the workers to obtain better and more healthful conditions. 
		It does not seek working class betterments by way of politics, but by way of economic direct action.
			
		
		
			Direct Action

		
		Now perhaps no other term used, not even the
term "radical," has been so grossly misrepresented by the capitalist
agencies to mean the violent destruction of life and property as
"direct action." Working people have been led to believe that the
direct actionists of the I. W. W. are men and women who go
about the country loaded down with guns, bombs and chemicals, seeking
something to destroy. Working people are made to tremble at the thought
of the I. W. W. Destruction is alleged to be its sole
concern, and violence preferable to the methods of peace. 
		Working people have believed this lying propaganda, and,
unfortunately, many of them still continue to believe it,
notwithstanding the fact, as before stated, that there has been a
complete failure to fasten responsibility for crime upon this
organization. Why do people go on believing what has been so often and
so completely refuted? Simply because they have failed to investigate
the facts. They are too indifferent to verify, or to disprove the
allegations hurled against this and other labor organizations. 
		CHAPTER 3.
		THE ECONOMIC FACTOR IN SOCIETY
		
			Individualism vs. Collectivism 
		
		To
the vast majority of workers, the I. W. W. is something
separate and apart from them and their problem. The influence of the
capitalist propaganda, launched from several sources in which the
people place a traditional confidence, has served to deaden the
instinct of the working masses and blinds them to their own interests.
The workers have been taught to think in individual terms, and only
seldom rise above personal considerations. Each thinks of the job he or
she holds as a personal quantity; of life as an individual problem, and
even of eternal salvation, where there is what passes for religion, in
terms of individual concern and achievement. 
		Against this individual conception, the
I. W. W. contends with the collective idea of a class
interest and class action. It discards the old capitalist ideas as
outworn and dangerous to society. It refuses to pray for relief, and
discourages the idea that the workers need, or should depend upon
elements outside of themselves for relief in the present, or for
emancipation finally. It sees the workers always as workers, and never
in any other character, nor would it employ them in any other capacity.
To the I. W. W. the worker, as a producer, is a far more
important social factor than the worker his political character of
citizen, where he or she is endowed with the attributes of citizenship.

		
			Economic Determinism 
		
		We
hold that the manner in which a people make their living determines the
form of their society. The changes in social institutions which mark
the history of the human race have always been due to previously
occurring changes in the mode of production. Man, by his observation of
natural laws, made discoveries that were condensed into tools and tool
improvements and, within the past century, more particularly, the
observations of the laboratory have reinforced those of the workshop
until man has surrounded himself with an economic environment which is
reaching upon the present social structure and compelling a social
readjustment that will conform to the existing system of production.
The old social order and the new economic system are at odds, and
threaten the existence of the race. For now as in all previous times,
organized human society is dependent upon the wealth-producing element
within it. As this element is made to suffer, society tends to decay.
The magnificent social structure of our modern day cannot rest securely
upon a proletarian foundation which misery and degradation are
tormenting into restlessness. And, unless constructive progress is
made, catastrophe must inevitably ensue. 
		
			What History Teaches 
		
		Similarly,
in the past when the masters of the earth’s resources so directed their
control that human progress was hindered, they brought about the
epochal changes that history records as revolutions. A careful study of
conditions at these times will explain our contention that these
revolutions were the result of a social adjustment to meet the new
conditions. As Benjamin Franklin well expressed, "The history of the
human race can be more correctly written in terms of tools, (means and
methods of production) than in any other terms." 
		Violence and bloodshed upon a great scale marked the
advent of every previous social change. Violence has been the midwife
by which every revolution of the past has been successfully ushered in.
So with the unthinking, who take things as a matter of course, and who
accept terms as including, with out reservation, every detail
pertaining to the events they describe, the fact that the
I. W. W. is an avowed revolutionary organization is taken to
mean that it proposes to use the weapons that have been used by all
revolutionary organizations in the past. Therefore, when the term
"direct action" was coined, the capitalist henchmen seized upon it to
terrify the people with pictures borrowed from the bourgeois
revolutions, which were marked by the greatest terrors and most inhuman
atrocities. 
		
			The Economic Direct Action of the I. W. W.

		
		Direct action, as used by the
I. W. W., means that the workers shall act directly, as
workers, where they are employed. It means, accordingly, direct
economic action, where the workers decide upon, and apply the control
of their labor power, which organization gives them, in the manner
which they believe to be most effective. They may withdraw themselves
entirely from the working places—declare a strike off the job. They
may remain in their working places and diminish their efficiency by one
means or other. In the selling of goods they may tell the purchasers
the truth about the goods; in the manufacture of products they may make
known the adulteration which the manufacturer employs. And there are other ways through which the workers can exert economic pressure.
		But
when the workers leave the working places they forfeit, for the time
being, their productive character—cease to be workers. Far this reason,
the I. W. W. prefers the strike on-the-job, to striking off
the job. 
		Again, when the workers are misled into destroying
property, they have abandoned their character of wealth producers and
assumed a directly opposite character—that of wealth destroyers. To
this, in principle and as a matter of sound policy, the
I. W. W. is opposed. 
		Nor are the instruments of military warfare the weapons
of industrial warfare, and the I. W. W. does everything in
its power to discourage the idea that resort to physical force is an
effective tactic for organized workers. We believe and teach—that all
such means will be used only by the proletariat to its own
disadvantage. The I. W. W. does not aim at the industry as a
necessary social convenience, but at the employer as an unnecessary
social encumbrance. The I. W. W. undertakes to deal with the
employers conscious and directly, through the machinery of production
which the workers use and by which the employers benefit. It proposes
to act directly and not through leaders, political or otherwise.
Conscious control of labor power is the reliance of the
I. W. W. 
		
			The Price of Principle

		
		If the I. W. W. were not avowedly
committed to a revolutionary program, which it has steadily refused to
compromise or forego, its enemies would [not] have found it very
difficult to hamper its progress, by arraying the ignorant and fearful
against it. But to have bought popularity at the cost of principle was
too high a price for this genuine labor organization. To eliminate from
its program its ultimate objective—the overthrow of capitalism—would
have been to forfeit its claim to being a labor union, in the true
sense of the term. 
		The evils in society that compel organization by the wage
workers are inherent in the capitalist system. They are its logical
fruit. Therefore the I. W. W. cannot do less than declare its
revolutionary purpose, even though by doing so it provided opportunity
for its enemies to misrepresent and defame it, which they did not fail
to grasp and make the most of. They ransacked the graveyard of history
and rattled the bones of the historic dead to drive terror into the
workers whom the I. W. W. is seeking to reach to educate and
to organize. 
		
			The Capitalist Revolution

		
		The history of past revolutions is a record of
physical struggle in which the contest for class mastery was determined
by the power of the sword. Conspiracy, which sought secrecy as one of
the conditions necessary to successful preparation, marked all previous
revolutions. Men and women who were parties to such revolutionary
conspiracies carried their lives in their hands. They were severely
dealt with when apprehended and they, too, dealt severely with
traitors. Death was the penalty for treason. When these contests
entered the stage of open revolution, blood flowed freely, and, hitherto every epochal social development has had a sanguinary baptism.
		In
the history of social revolutions the sea of blood upon which the
capitalist class rode to power was greater than that of all preceding
revolutions put together. This was in great part due to the development
of the death-dealing instruments of warfare, but there is also the marked tendency of the capitalist class to be more relentless and unmoral  than any other class which aspired to and gained social damnation.
		The history and rise of the capitalist class to a ruling position in society, as told by Karl Marx (Capital, Vol 1. Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII.)
and other writers, goes to prove that no other ruling class in the long
history of the human race has been so completely without a sense of
human responsibility, so filled with bloodlust, or so devoid of the
principles of honor. Chivalry is impossible in capitalist society, and
compassion is regarded by the bourgeoisie as unpardonable weakness. It
depends upon power and respects only power.
		
			Rigging Up a Scarecrow 
		
		The
term "direct action" the industrial and political rulers of the United
States seized upon and associated with past historical events. Direct
action was associated with the deeds of terror in the French
revolutions, and even [. . . ]  *)  of the  Communards  (1871) by the  Thiers  (capitalist) government was put upon those who were its victims in the  Pere Lachaise cemetery and in the streets of Paris.
		Direct
action was distorted in the hands of capitalist propagandists from the
meaning intended by the I. W. W., to convey the impression
that the I. W. W. proposed to use  the knife, the gun and the bomb 
to carry forward its designs. Such are the manner and the methods of
the capitalist class; such were its own weapons and its own idea of the
term direct action. It would hang its own reputation upon the
I. W. W., and upon others who are inimical to its interests.
It lives by cheating and robbery, and it only runs true to form when it
would rob the I. W. W. of its reputation; and cheats opinion
when it misrepresents the facts in connection with the
I. W. W. mission, actions and methods.
		
			Control of Labor Power 
		
		Let us repeat that by direct action, the I. W. W. means  action by the workers in the working places.
The workers, as members of the I. W. W. always preserve their
character as workers, and their direct action is always in their
working capacity. The policy of direct action in this sense, which is
the sense in which the I. W. W. uses the term, takes the form
which the organized judgment of the workers deems most effective. They
may use their organized control of their labor power (1) to suspend
production by walking out of the working places; (2) by remaining an
the job but consciously withdrawing their productive efficiency; or
they may strike intermittently. But, in whatever way they exercise
their organized central, they never entirely abandon their industrial
character. This threatens seriously to embarrass the capitalists in the
operation of their establishments and they will not stop at anything to
prevent the growth of an organization endowed with such potentialities.
Hence their hatred of the I. W. W. in which they find
inspiration for the multitudinous falsehoods they have circulated about
it.
		
			The Lever Labor’s Weapon

		
		We believe that the peculiar characteristic of
the wage worker is that of wealth producer or potential wealth
producer, that is, that of being the indispensable social element. Our
aim is to cultivate this consciousness in the wage workers and to
organize it far effective expression. It is our purpose to teach the
workers that they can act only to imperil the cause of labor by
attempting to abandon this character and adopt any other. The worker
can only function in his own behalf by exercising his power over
wealth-production and in no other character or capacity. The lever in
the workshop we hold to be mare powerful and reliable than a paper in
the ballot box. Politics is the weapon of the ruling class, and its use
will serve only to protect their rulership, and to perpetuate the wage
relationship. And, as long as the wage relationship is continued, the
evils which naturally flow from it will still continue to afflict the
wage earning class. 
		To abandon the industrial field and attempt to further
the cause of labor by physical violence, either in connection with a
strike situation, or a military revolution, would be, for the organized
workers, to abandon their entrenched position, and to deprive
themselves of the shelter which their industrial position gives them.
Organized to control their power as a class, they occupy an impregnable
position, and would be qualified to exert an irresistible force. 
		
			What the I. W. W. Teaches 
		
		The
philosophy of the I. W. W. is not the philosophy of salvation
through armed physical force, but the philosophy of freedom through
organized industrial power. It does not teach the doctrine of
blood-letting and wide-spread misery, but the doctrine of human
conservation and the abolition of misery. It is not advancing mere
theory, but dealing with a demonstrated fact—that the working class
constitutes the all-sufficient element for social upkeep and security. 
		
			Economic Direct Action and Self-Reliance 
		
		When
the workers use direct action they depend upon themselves instead of
depending upon go-betweens as they have been accustomed to do. In this
sense, direct action means self-reliance. Heretofore, the workers have
depended upon representatives to meet and bicker with employers. Direct
action eliminates these labor leaders, by refusing to employ them.
Likewise, by refusing to embark upon a political career, the
I. W. W. concentrates the activities of the organized workers
upon the job. Instead of seeking redress for grievances in Washington,
or one of the State Capitals, the organized workers will demand it from
the employer directly, and be in a position to command it. 
		From the foregoing, it will be seen that the
I. W. W. does not teach reliance upon, nor can it
consistently advocate physical violence. It proposes more effective
action, in which the workers depend upon their control over wealth
production. Because the I. W. W. does this, the capitalist
class and its hangers-on regard it as the most dangerous of all labor
organizations, and work industriously and unscrupulously to give it a
reputation which will render it obnoxious to those who are ignorant of
its real purposes, methods, and objects. But "Truth crushed to earth
will rise again" and the I.W. W. is winning recognition. Through the
mists of a vicious propaganda, the workers are beginning to know the
I. W. W. for a labor organization in which they can place
reliance and dependence. 
		
			The Political Shadow 
		
		We
know that political institutions do not make economic conditions, but
are themselves developed out of, and by economic circumstances. The
politician does not dictate to industry, but receives and records the
dictation of industry. Senator Pettigrew will help corroborate our
contention in this regard. In his book, "Imperial Washington," he says:

		
			
				It is fifty years since I
began to take an interest in public affairs. During those years I have
been participating, more or less actively, in public life—first as a
government surveyor, then as a member of the Legislature of North
Dakota; as a member of the House of Representatives, and, finally as a
member of the United States Senate. Since 1880 I have known the
important men in both the Republican and Democratic corps; I have
known personally the leading business men who backed the political
parties and who made and unmade presidents. For half a century I have
known public men and have been on the inside of business and politics.
Through all of that time I have lived and worked with the rulers of
America.
				"When I entered the arena of public affairs in
1870, the United States, with a population of thirty-eight millions,
was just recovering from the effects of the Civil War. The economic
life of the old slave-holding South lay in ruins. Even in the North,
the panic of 1873 swept over the business world, taking its toll in
commercial failures and unemployment and an increase in the number of
tenant farmers. The policy of sending carpetbagging rascals into the
embittered South hindered reconciliation, and sectional differences
prevented any effective cooperation between the two portions of the
country. The result was a heavy loss in productive power and in
political position. Through this period the United States was an
inconsequential factor in international affairs.
				
					The Transition
				
				"The
transformation from that day to this is complete. With three times the
population; with sectionalism practically eliminated; with the South
recovered economically and the economic power of the North vastly
increased; with more wealth than any other five nations of the world
combined; with the credit of the world in her hands; with large
undeveloped, or only slightly developed resources; with a unified
population, and a new idea of world importance, the United States
stands as probably the richest and most influential among the great
nations.
				I witnessed the momentous changes and participated
in them. While they were occurring 1 saw something else that filled me
with dread. 1 saw the government of the United States enter into a
struggle with the trusts, the railroads, and the banks, and I watched
while the business forces won the contest. I saw the forms of
republican (political) government decay through disuse, and I saw them
betrayed by the very men who were sworn to preserve and uphold them. I
saw the empire of business, with its innumerable ramifications, grow up
around and above the structure of government. I watched the power over
public affairs shift from the weakened structure of republican
machinery to the vigorous new business empire. Strong men who saw what
was occurring no longer went into politics. Instead, they entered the
field of industry, and with them the seat of government of the United
States was shifted from Washington to Wall Street. With this shift,
there disappeared from active public life those principles of
republican government that I had learned to believe were the means of
safeguarding liberty. After the authority over public affairs had been
transferred to the men of business, I saw the machinery of business
pass from the hands of individuals into the hands of
corporations—artificial persons—created in the imagination of lawyers
and given efficacy by sanction of the courts of law. I discovered
that these things had been going on from the beginning of our
government, that they had grown up with it, and were an essential part
of its structure. From surprise and disgust I turned to analysis
and reason and for the past twenty years, I have been watching the
public life of the United States with an understanding mind. For a long
time I have known what was going on in the United States. Today I think
I know why it is going on.
				
					Senator Looks Backward
				
				When
I look back over the half century that has passed since I first entered
public life, I can hardly realize that the America, which I knew and
believed in as a young man in the twenties would have changed so
completely in so short time. Even when I know the reason for the
change, it is hard to accept it as a reality.
				Many of the
public men who have lived and worked in the United States during the
past century have written their impressions of public affairs. Benton,
Blaine, Grant and Sherman discussed the public life of the middle of
the last century. Since then, there have been many autobiographies and
memoirs. I have read these books carefully, and it seems to me that not
one of the writers is at the same time a student and, a realist.
				First of all, they have written about politics, with very little or no attention to the economic forces that were shaping politics.
In the second place, too many of them have written the agreeable things
and left the disagreeable ones unsaid. In the third place, they have
written what they believed should have happened, rather than what
actually did happen. Fourth, and by far the most important, each of
these men has written as a member of a ruling class, pleased with
himself and satisfied that rule by his class was the best thing for the
community. The pictures that these men give are like the decision
of our courts—-built on precedents rather than realities." (Emphasis
ours.)
			
		
		CHAPTER 4.
		INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION THE VITAL FORCE
		
			The Compelling Force 
		
		As
a changing mode of production operates to change all the institutions
depending upon it, it is as well to recognize that production is the
substantial foundation upon which any society rests. So that in any
society that element only is necessary whose functions are essential to
the prevailing productive system. In present day society, this element
is comprised of every population which labors for a wage. Without the
wage laborers our system of production could not endure. 
		A little consideration will satisfy even the most
prejudiced that if the wage workers did not make and operate the tools
of production, this system of production would go to pieces and our
present civilization disappear. 
		The clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses that
afford shelter, the means of transportation on land, sea and air would
all be out of reach, were not the hands of the wage laboring class busy
in productive social service. Society does not depend upon the
capitalist or the politician. It depends upon the workers. From the
most primitive forms up to the present, human society has always
depended upon the working class element. The workers have always
constituted the social guarantee, and their efforts as producers is the
price that humankind has paid for its existence, from the time when man
lived precariously until the present day, when the question of
sufficient to enable the race to survive has been answered by
superabundant production. 
		The productive facilities and capacity must exist before
an organized society is possible, which is to say that production is
prior to and more important than politics. Politics is the handmaiden
of industry. As the system of production changes, so do we observe
corresponding social and political changes. 
		But by whom is the mode of production changed? Obviously
by those who alone are competent to change it—the human productive
factors, at the present time, the wage workers. For if this contention
did not hold true, our philosophy would be at fault. If it could be
proven that the capitalists, as such, have contributed to the change in
the productive system, then they would have justified their existence
in a social sense. But they have not done so. Every change effected,
which has won social advantage industrially, has been due, to those
actively engaged in productive work. The capitalist, as such, seized
and fattened upon every invention, mechanical and administrative
improvement. He has never contributed anything to human advancement. He
is a parasite, and like all other parasites, he has no independent
existence, but lives upon the constructive wealth-producing organism
which the enthralled labor of the ages has built up. 
		
			I. W. W. Would Dispel Labor Ignorance

		
		The power of the capitalist class is a delegated
power, which labor ignorance has invested in it. It has no power in
itself. Labor is power, and, when conscious of its own interest and its
social responsibility, it is the only power. Therefore, the
I. W. W. depends upon education, not upon terror. Facts are
its weapons, not bombs. It is busy teaching instead of intimidating.
Its arsenal is lined with bookshelves, and not with gunracks. Truth is
its artillery, and justice its objective. 
		The I. W. W. is dangerous only to the greedy
and the socially conscienceless. It brings hope to the dispossessed and
downtrodden, and promises the earth and the fullness thereof to those
who make use of the one to bring forth the other. Those only shall
share who produce, those only shall eat who labor. One for all and all
for one. Such is the I. W. W. This is what makes it dangerous
to those whose colossal fortunes and position of mastery are founded on
the misery and wretchedness of the hosts of toil. 
		
			Industrial Organization

		
		When the producers, who work for wages, organize
as they are arranged in the industries, they will have taken a long
step in the direction of industrial freedom. 
		We find the workers are so arranged that the labors of
the classifications necessary for the completion of the finished
products from the raw material dovetail into one another. The function
of each labor classification is related to and coordinated with that of
every other classification. The modern working force represents a
harmoniously balanced industrial organization. Once the workers learn
to combine into unions, as they are situated in the industries, they
will develop a power which can be used to advance their interest; a
power so great that nothing could successfully resist it. 
		
			Oil Industry an Example

		
		Take the oil industry, as an example. The
working force includes every necessary worker from the time the ground
is surveyed for the derrick until the product is loaded on the cars.
Take the oil industry as a whole—it is senseless to do less—and when
the surveying crews, drillers, tooldressers, roustabouts, truckers,
cooks, waiters, pipeliners, refinery men, repairmen of all kinds, tank
builders, etc., are all organized into an oil workers union, you have a
power which would bring one of the greatest of all employers—Standard
Oil—to its knees. The same applies to the coal industry, agriculture,
to lumbering, to the foodstuffs and textile, in fact to all industry. 
		
			Working Class Interdependence

		
		But, as the workers in each of these industries
are dependent upon the functioning of the workers in all other
industries, it is necessary that all of them be bound together for
mutual assistance and support. The transportation industry is the
connecting link which binds them all together. Without modern
transportation, modern industry would be impossible. 
		But, without food and clothing and houses for the
transportation workers, and fuel and oil for the engines, and rolling
stock, modern transportation itself would not be possible. So that,
while transportation appears to be of supreme importance, it is, in the
true social sense, no more important than any of the other industries.
There is this about transportation that, unlike other industries, it
cannot be stored up. You can store oil, clothes and food, but you
cannot store transportation. 
		
			Controlling Labor Through Craft System

		
		If transportation is suspended the social effect
is immediately noticeable, while in other industries the noticeable
effect of a suspension is delayed. Transportation therefore is, from
its strategic position in the industrial scheme, the key industry. For
this reason, the capitalist class watch jealously over their control of
transportation labor, which they retain possession of through what we
know as the Big Four Railroad Brotherhoods. 
		It is worthy of notice that these four unions, up until
quite recently, were not only kept rigidly apart from other unions, but
from each other. Only when the rank and file of these unions gave
evidence of their determination to force united action did the
railroad-controlled Grand Lodges decide to make a united demand. 
		Time and again these Grand Lodges have refused to be
bound by the expressed wishes of the rank and file, and have flagrantly
disregarded the strike mandates of the membership. This emphasizes the
difference between direct action and indirect action. The rank and file
of these railroad unions are accustomed to do as their officers advise,
instead of doing what their own judgment dictates, and their interest
requires. Indirect action means control of organized laborers. Direct
action means control by the organized workers. 
		So also the capitalist class control the labor forces
outside of the railroad industry, by keeping the organized workers
divided according the tools they use. Only when workers so organized
have threatened to break away from the control of the capitalist-minded
if not capitalist-employed labor leaders, have they been successful in
securing any substantial portion of their demands. 
		The craft unions are based upon a condition long ago
superseded and discarded, where a workman employing many tools worked
from the first operation upon the raw material until the finished
product had been realized. Now, the system of production in the modern
industrial plant has eliminated the craftsmen, and hundreds of
operatives function in many capacities with power-driven machines to
make the product which the craftsman used to produce. 
		
			Product Determines  Labor Classification
		
		Always
the craftsman was identified by his product and today the working force
which has replaced him also is identified by its product. The tailor
was never the man who used a needle, shears and goods, but one, who by
using these produced clothes. Similarly, the shoemaker was not a man
who used an awl, waxed thread and lasts, but a man who, by using these
produced shoes. It was always the product that determined the
craftsman. 
		While the craft survived there was room and a function
for the craft union, but in our present stage of industrial
development, there is neither place nor function for the craft union.
It serves the capitalist interests by keeping the working forces
divided. It is as much out of place in modern industry as a Ku Klux
Klansman in a Knight of Columbus meeting. 
		
			Another Bogey

		
		The cry of being an anti-religious organization
has also been raised against the I. W. W. when, as a matter
of fact, the I. W. W. does not concern itself about religion
in any way, shape or manner. It does not inquire about the religious
views of the worker, it only takes cognizance of his industrial
calling. Whether he (or she) be of the Catholic or Jewish religion,
Greek Orthodox, or any of the varieties of Protestantism, makes no
difference to the I. W. W. The belief of the Buddhist and the
Mussulman are, equally with all other religions, or no religion, a
matter of complete indifference to it as a labor organization. It is
the champion of none of them as against the others. 
		The I. W. W. is free of religious strings, nor
will it permit itself to be made the vehicle of anti-religious
propaganda. It takes those whom it finds in industrial occupations,
regardless of their religious affiliations, and strives to weld them
into One Big Union of the Working Class. 
		Now, those whom the I. W. W. encounters in
industry the employers have placed there. Divers religions are
encountered, many languages are spoken, and it is the mission of the
I. W. W. to unite these into one common organization for
industrial purposes. As the employers have recruited Jew and Christian,
Buddhist and Mussulman, in the polyglot working forces that man the
industries, the I. W. W. as a militant labor union has no
option but to organize these workers as workers, paying no attention
whatever to their religious beliefs. It is concerned about them only as
economic factors. 
		The Jew and Gentile expend their labor power in exactly
the same manner; they labor together under the same conditions; and are
exploited to the same degree. The I. W. W., being concerned
only about the wage relationship, appeals to them upon the grounds of
common activities upon the job, and pays no attention whatever to
church, temple or synagogue. It is not to be held responsible for the
fact that industry is not religious, and it takes industry and the
personnel of industry, as it finds them. It seeks to fashion out of
both a social order in keeping with the development of modern times. So
much for the misconceptions that have been scattered broadcast about
the I. W. W. 
		
			I. W. W. A Problem for Capitalists

		
		When the I. W. W. came into existence,
it set a new problem for American capitalism to deal with. Here was an
organization based upon the bedrock of economic truth, whose message
was vibrant with the appeal for class solidarity. It constitutes the
greatest menace that ever threatened the capitalist regime. The
capitalists are aware of its potentiality, and have tried to strangle
it from its birth. 
		At the second convention a battle was staged which was to
determine whether the new organization was to be controlled in the
interest of capitalist property, or in the interest of wage labor. The
workers’ representatives dominated the convention. 
		The aftermath of this convention is a tale of labor
treachery and baseness, in a Western setting, that did much to stay the
progress of the I. W. W. Such was its purposes, and the
outcome was what the capitalists desired. 
		Behind the clash of personalities, leading up to, and
following the events which established the general eight hour day in
Goldfield, Nevada, was hidden a conflict of ideas and interests. The
first skirmish by the Western capitalists and their agents in the
Western Federation of Miners and A. F. of L., against the I. W. W, was
successful locally and temporarily. Some of the principal figures in
that contest have passed away, but the effect of their treason lived
after them. The W. F. M. has been eliminated as a labor factor, and has
degenerated into an organization more or less openly controlled by the
mine operators. 
		
			Cutting Out Politics 
		
		The
next contest in the I. W. W., and really the most significant
in its history, was staged at the Fourth Annual Convention (1908) where
the question of political action was at issue. The decision of the
convention was that the organization could not be a labor union and a
political party at the same time. The I. W. W. divested
itself of the disease-breeding political illusion which had murdered
every previous labor movement, and settled itself upon a proletarian
basis and a single function—in the every day struggle to regulate the
job relationship by economic means alone, and eventually to abolish
that relationship altogether.
		This decision antagonized the
labor politicians, who then enlisted with the enemies of the
I. W. W. and did yeoman service in misrepresenting it. For a
time these politicians did the dirty work of the capitalist class, and
as they gave their imagination full play, they did it more effectively
than the less qualified stool pigeons which the capitalists keep on
their payrolls. These politicians, and the parties they belonged to,
have gone the way of all illusions, and the I. W. W. is still
here, adding to its strength and influence. Of course, the old-time
labor political parties have been succeeded by other political forms
which, true to their capitalist conceptions, also believe that
attacking the I. W. W. will recommend them to reaction and
will provide a passport to the flesh-pots. However, the
I. W. W. pursues the even tenor of its way, undisturbed by
the yawping of political mongrels, who are neither avowedly capitalist,
nor outspokenly labor. 
		The principles of the I. W. W. are concisely
set forth in its Preamble, which is the most important document ever
issued in the name of labor for the guidance of labor. 
		
			PREAMBLE of the INDUSTRIAL WORKERS of the WORLD

		
		
			The working class and the
employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long
as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and
the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of
life. 
			Between these two classes a struggle must go
on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession
of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage
system.
			We find that the centering of the management
of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable
to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade
unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be
pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby
helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid
the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the
working class have interests in common with their employers.
			These
conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld
only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in
any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work
whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus
making an injury to one an injury to all.
			Instead of
the conservative motto, "A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work," we
must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword,,"Abolition of
the wage system."
			It is historic mission of the
working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must
be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but
also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.
By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new
society within the shell of the old.
		
		CHAPTER 5.
		THE ONLY REAL INTERNATIONAL
		
			An International Proletarian Union 
		
		As
will be seen the I. W. W. principle is not intended to apply
to only one country, but is intended to cover wage labor in all
countries. As the laborers in one industry are dependent upon and
necessary to the laborers in all other industries, so are the workers
of one country dependent upon and necessary to the workers in all other
countries. Modern transportation has practically eliminated distance,
and knits the countries of the world in an industrial whole. This
interdependence of the workers in all the countries of the world, the
I. W. W. is the first organization to give expression to. And
it is fitting that the most highly developed capitalist country of the
world should bring forth the labor organization most suitable to the
needs of the world’s proletariat. In the I. W. W. we find the
genesis of the first proletarian international. 
		
			Building the New Society 
		
		"By
organizing industrially, we are forming the structure of the new
society within the shell of the old (order)", states the Preamble.
Here, in this declaration, we have that which differentiates the
I. W. W. from all previous and present allegedly
revolutionary organizations. This idea proclaims the rise of a new
school of labor thought and makes a new program for the labor movement.

		In the conventions and meetings of the I. W. W.,
in its first four years, two ideas that had dominated and vitiated
every previous labor movement met and fought out their contentions—the
labor political advocates and the anti-political forces. Hitherto,
these two had divided the realm of labor thought and both had commanded
much strength, although neither had succeeded in attaining a commanding
position among the organized labor forces in America, since the failure
of the political movement of labor (1828-1832), in the Atlantic states.
Among labor progressives it was conceded that if a movement was not
political, it must necessarily be anti-political, and vice versa.
Marxists and Lassalleans had fought out their differences, and the
followers of Bakunin and Proudhon had disputed with the united remnants
of both. 
		
			The I. W. W. Neither Political Nor Anti-Political 
		
		When
the Industrial Manifesto was issued, both the labor politicians and the
anti-politicians prepared to capture the new movement and bend it to
their purposes. The outcome was a disappointment to both, and each
school claims, despite the evidence to the contrary, that the
I. W. W. fell victim to the will of the other. 
		As a matter of fact, the I. W. W. rejected
domination at the hands of either, and as its judgment directed, took
from each what would stand analysis. It has accepted the economics of Marx, while rejecting his speculative philosophy
and it has conned from other philosophers principles in accord with
working class experience. For its fundamental principles it has drawn
more heavily upon Marx, Engels and Dietzgen
than upon others, but its philosophy is not that of the traditional
Marxists, for it rejects the theory of working class advancement or
emancipation through political action.
		Nor is it  anarchistic, because it aims at, and is endeavoring to organize a highly central form of organization which views industry and its problems from the
highly collective instead of the individual viewpoint.
		This,
and this only, it has in common with the anarchist school of thought—it
rejects political action, as an effective medium of organized working
class activity. 
		It is an economic organization, operating in the economic
sphere, using economic means for economic purposes at all times, and
aiming at an economic objective—an industrialized society. 
		
			The Economic School

		
		The I. W. W. philosophy is a new
school of thought developed out of the contending philosophies of the
past. The I. W. W. is the economic school of thought in
contradistinction to the political and other schools which sought some
other means than the organized control of human labor power to bring
about the overthrow of capitalism, and its replacement by an industrial
society. 
		Social evolution sustains the I. W. W. theory
of "building the new society within the shell of the old". That which
was responsible for the epochal changes that mark human social history
has not been the development of political forms, but the development of
economic forms. Moreover, it was only when these forms had developed to
a point where they could bear the weight of social responsibility that
revolutionary changes occurred. There is no reason to suppose that
capitalist society will offer an exception to this historic rule. Only
when the proletariat has developed a form which will suffice to
safeguard human interest will the industrial revolution become the fact
of history. 
		
			Russia Sustains I. W. W. Contention

		
		Russia affords a striking example of what occurs
when "forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the
old" has been neglected. Not that the revolutionaries of Russia are to
be held responsible for a condition not of their making. They did the
best they could. But the industrial facts were against them and they
failed to achieve the goal they were bent upon achieving. They
accomplished a political revolution, but in the absence of a sound
industrial underpinning, the communist state collapsed and Russia has
slipped back into capitalism. This has not occurred because the Russian
revolutionists desired it, or schemed to bring it about, but because
the law of economic determinism is operative under a communist as well
as any other regime. The Russian experience supports the
I. W. W. theory. By organizing industrially—not politically
or militarily—the workers "are building the structure of the new
society within the shell of the old." 
		
			Industrial Organization by Industries

		
		Let us take the coal industry and look at it
organized industrially as an industry. When the coal production workers
are organized industrially, such an organization deprives them of no
rights which they enjoy and choose to exercise. They will be at liberty
to vote if they feel so inclined, or not vote, as they please. They may
go to church or stay at home. Their activities in every sphere, outside
of industry, are determined by themselves individually. In industry,
however, they will all belong to one union of coal mine workers,
regardless of what they do in or around the mines, coke ovens,
etc.—engineers, loaders, firemen, oilers, machinists, blacksmiths,
electricians, weighmen, miners, pullers, topmen—everyone, the object of
whose labor is coal production, will be members of one union. 
		
			Productive Interdependence 
		
		But
as the operation of the coal mine industry is dependent upon all other
industries, this union of coal mine workers, in order to function
successfully, must be linked with similar unions of the workers in all
other industries. Before the coal mine workers can function
industrially, in the social sense, there must be transportation
provided. Unless the loaded cars are hauled away, no coal can be mined.
For the object that inspires coal production is to supply a social
need. Then it resolves itself into this, that the transportation
workers are as necessary to coal production as are the coal mine
workers. And again, the coal diggers must have machines or picks to dig
with, mine cars, tracks to run them on, and motors or mules to haul
them with. They must have houses to live in, and beds to sleep in;
food, and means to prepare it. The clothing makers must have furnished
them clothing, and the shoe workers footwear. Without all of these,
they could not function. They help the coal workers, and the coal
workers help them. Each depends upon all the others. They supplement
and complement one another. 
		Each article for human consumption from coal to candy,
represents the labor of the entire working class. This is why
independent unions cannot fully serve the interest of the workers in
any industry. Sooner or later these must break beneath the strain that
the united capitalist class will subject them to. At best, they serve
as points of resistence and are without the capacity to build for the
inauguration of a new social order. But industrial unions, linked
together, or one I. W. W. union. branched according to the
arrangement obtaining in capitalist industry, generates the power to
resist in the present, and to construct the new order as well. 
		The I. W. W. is not a federation or amalgamation of industrial unions, but one union, with several subordinate parts.
			
		
		CHAPTER 6.
		LABOR’S GREATEST ENEMY
		
			Industrial Ignorance

		
		The workers are aware that certain undesirable
and unwelcome things exist, but they do not know why these things are.
Consequently, they do not understand how to secure the remedies that
they covet, and for which they clamor. This knowledge the
I. W. W. is striving to bring to the working class. Education
is the main dependence of the I. W. W. It realizes that only
the ignorant can be victimized with impunity. Ignorance is the enemy of
working class progress. The ignorant are always fearful; they do not
know how to go, and they only make headway timidly. In proportion as
the workers understand their class position in society, they recognize
the need of organization and the power that lies in it. The intelligent
among the workers are nearly always found in labor organizations. 
		
			Labor Leaders

		
		Unfortunately for the working class, the
individual conception sometimes overpowers the social consciousness of
organized workers, and they reach out for personal advantage to the
point where they use the working class, instead of permitting
themselves to be used by it and for the class interest. They are not
always consciously unfaithful, but are swayed, without perceiving it,
by the common predilection to put self before others. There is a
deplorable low standard of economic morality obtaining among organized
workers, for which leaders of labor thought, who encourage imperfect
labor agencies, must be held accountable, because they have
consistently and often intentionally cultivated and fostered economic
ignorance among the union membership whose sources of information they
controlled. 
		So long as this ignorance permeates the mentality of the
workers, the labor movement must lag behind and labor miss
opportunities to advance its interest. Moreover, as long as the element
which has dominated labor affairs, and controlled working class destiny
in the past, maintains its position of mastery, every attempt to
educate the working class will encounter hostility from it. 
		Gompersism, which means capitalist control of organized
labor power through the craft system, will fight every educational
movement which it cannot control in the interest of capitalist
property, as it has fought every movement in the past forty years that
tended more clearly to define the lines of class division in capitalist
society. 
		
			Mental Poverty of Labor

		
		Ask the average worker what relation machine
production has to unemployment, and you will find that he is unaware of
the fact that  machinery will explain unemployment. Yet this fact, which is potent enough to be self-evident, is a mystery to the average unionist, let alone to the average working man and woman. The unemployed, even after many experiences, on the average only understand that "the job was shut down" by the boss. It is accepted
that the employer has an unquestioned right to shut down industry,
regardless of the social consequences. Why the capitalist system
compelled the suspension and left the employer no option is a sealed
book to the working class generally. This should not be.
		The
workers, at least the organized workers, should be able to explain this
phenomenon, and the experience of years should have taught them how to
correct these periodic industrial visitations. But under the domination
of ideas, as much out of keeping with the times as are their unions,
every new occasion finds the workers as unprepared as did every
previous panic. Labor has not learned from its sufferings, because its
thinking, like its action, is largely indirect. It does not find
explanations for its plight, it accepts advice and explanations from
those who do not explain, and whose interest lies in working class
inability to understand; and in its acceptance of conditions to which
only its ignorance permits it to tolerate. And the explanation for
unemployment is not difficult, if the workers seek it out. 
		Where the machine is put in, some of the workers move
out. One worker with a machine, or a small working force with
machinery, will produce more goods than a large working force with hand
tools. So that machinery displaces laborers. This is the feature of
machinery that secures its installation in industry. But machinery does
more than merely throw workmen out of jobs, it renders the versatile
skill of the craftsman unnecessary. So the machines have won their way
into every industry, and wherever they went less labor was required
until eventually the aggregate of these surplus laborers grew to such
proportions that there came into existence what is known as the army of
unemployed. 
		At first the unemployed were largely of the mechanical
trades, but the invention of new mechanical devices, and the
improvement of machinery, which has been going on, has reduced the
unemployed to a working class contingent in which the unskilled workers
predominate. 
		The change in the proportion of skilled and unskilled
workers in the unemployed ranks corresponds to the change which was
taking place in industry, where skilled craftsmen had ceased to be
important factor. For in all industries today, due to machinery, the
unskilled and little-skilled constitute the predominant element. The
place of the craftsman has been taken by the technologist but
relatively, the industrial proletariat is the most important factor in
modern production. In field, mine work and railroad, and upon the sea,
the unskilled workers dominate. Were they once organized, as the
I. W. W. proposes, they would bind every other social element
to their will and purpose. 
		
			Two Conflicts

		
		There has been going on in society, side by
side, two great conflicts, that between the working class and the
employing class on the one hand, and that between the unskilled and the
organized craftsmen. Within the working class, the organized workers of
the craft days have striven to retain their supremacy over the
unskilled workers. The organized labor movement in the craft system, so
far as it is a labor movement, has and is still attempting, to secure
for itself the places attending the machinery of production. Its fight
has been to drive off the unskilled, for whom technical advancement was
making place. These unions grew to deserve the term "job trust," which
has been applied to them. Even their demand for shorter hours, better
wages and conditions were never intended to improve the lot of their
unskilled fellows, and many advantages won by these unionists were
secured at the expense of the unskilled. Their initiation fees,
generally prohibitive, their apprentice rules, their jurisdictional
lines, were all established in an effort to retain their special
advantages. 
		Even their attempt to organize the unskilled workers by
their sides, where they did organize them, was intended only to make
their own positions secure. Instead of asking for the organization of
the unskilled, the working out of this policy made organization by and
of the unskilled more difficult. But the machine continued at work,
reducing the quality of skill and diminishing working forces to mere
skeletons of what they were formerly. The problem of unemployment
persisted in chronic form, insistently commanding the attention of the
workers until there is a growing recognition that the solution of this
problem rests with the workers themselves, and that they must organize
as a class to solve it. 
		
			Unemployment Working Class Problem 
		
		While
the unemployed army is a constant and growing social element, its
personnel is in a state of constant change. There is continuously
growing an interchange of places between the employed and unemployed
portions of the working class. The problem is ever the same, and its
solution becomes everyday more necessary to the working class. Within
the capitalist system, the workers must decide how to fit a
continuously increasing number of wage workers into a constantly
diminishing number of jobs. One way is by shortening the workday. 
		If the average working day is now eight hours, by
reducing the number of working hours to six per day, millions, now
permanently unemployed, would be put to work. Of course the workings of
the capitalist system would operate again to create another army of
unemployed, but the workers, by organization could again shorten the
workday to from 6 to 5 or 4 hours, or by reducing the number of working
days per week. 
		
			Unemployment Necessary to Capitalism 
		
		While
the present system of ownership survives, the army of unemployed is
necessary for the capitalist class. The workers are indispensable, the
capitalists are unnecessary. Common social sense points out that what
is essential to social upkeep be preserved and that the unnecessary and
unserviceable be dispensed with. So that when it becomes apparent that
capitalist ownership of necessary social resources, and the means for
their utilization, menace society they will be discarded. But, in the
meantime, the workers must organize themselves to make room for their
fellow workers around the machinery of production. Every worker added
to the working force lightens the burden of the other workers. The
employers, by virtue of their ownership, are riding upon backs already
overburdened. The employers are not necessary to production, the
workers are; and, as workers, they have the power to say whether, or
how long, the capitalists will ride. The power over wealth production
is the power over society. The workers must organize, as the
I. W. W. is proposing, in order to wield that power. 
		
			Industrial Solidarity Greatest Power

		
		The superiority of industrial power, as
represented by the workers’ organized control of labor power, over
every other expression of power, has been strikingly illustrated in
recent years. 
		In the great world war, the economic forces were as
important as the military forces. It was clearly proven that without
economic support the military effort would have collapsed. So important
was the economic end of the military campaign that the several
governments actively prosecuting the war had to take cognizance of it
and give expression to their recognition. Politician and militarist
were reluctantly forced to admit that, in the last analysis, the
success of the military effort depended upon the economic support with
which the industrialists in the various countries assisted the armies;
"Work or Fight" was the slogan and men were selected for work or war,
as their value in the furtherance of the campaign seemed to warrant.
The machine in the industry was as important and as necessary as the
battery at the front; the worker in overalls was as indispensable to
military victory as the soldiers in uniform. The worker was even more
necessary, because the soldier, in his military character, cannot and
does not equip himself with the instruments of warfare, or the means
with which to fight. 
		A nation must first be a producer of surplus wealth
before it needs to, or can fight. In war, as in peace, the working
class is the determining factor. The I. W. W. would preserve
the working class character—producer—and would eliminate war wherein
the overall is dropped and the uniform assumed; where productive tool
is replaced by the death-dealing weapon, and men go forth to destroy
wantonly and recklessly what has been produced in labor travail and is
sorely needed by the human race. 
		
			Labor the Great Reliance

		
		The political contention for labor has also
received a decided setback, when the annals of the world war are read
understandingly. Political governments proceeded to industrialize
themselves and to organize the industrial forces of the nations as a
prerequisite of military and political success, which, taken together,
meant national industrial advantage, for the capitalists who control. 
		In Russia, we found that the political communists were
compelled to forego some of their industrial policies to win political
tolerance from, and a place among, the political governments. In
proportion as it changed its economic principles, Russia made headway
politically, until at the present time, the fears of the international
capitalist class have abated to a point where Russia is about to be
admitted to the "family of nations." The economic retrograde movement,
though the Russians entered upon it reluctantly, won friendly influence
among the profit-hungry in the capitalist countries, but the friendship
is that of the wolf for the sheepfold. 
		
			Economic Factor in War

		
		Again, in the Turkish-Allies controversy,
political democracy is the disguise preferred to an economic
end—control of the oil deposits in the disputed territory. 
		In the French invasion of the Ruhr basin, if political
ends only were to be served, Berlin was as readily seized as Essen and
Bochum, but the French were after the substantial in German national
life, and they occupied the industrial heart of Germany. 
		The politicians in Berlin in this emergency did not rely
upon political platitudes; they made their appeal for the greatest
resistance that Germany as a nation could offer—a general strike by the
German workers. This is all the more significant, because it was the
German political socialists who coined the phrase: "The general strike
is general nonsense." Time and circumstances have driven the German
socialists to give world acknowledgment that the conscious, organized
control of labor power is the greatest force in society. In 1920, the
German politicians also depended upon industrial action to defeat the
Kapp counter-revolution. 
		The French, also, recognize that the one power in Germany
which would reduce the army of invasion to impotence is the refusal of
the workers to labor. The French use their military power to exert
economic pressure—their army of occupation is but an extended armed
picket line—but if the workers stand pat, and the French labor movement
does its labor duty, the capitalists of France, and their comrades in
labor exploitation will experience the setback and the lesson of their
career. 
		
			Industrial Power

		
		An I. W. W. organization in Germany,
or in France and Germany, would bend the politicians, render the army
of occupation helpless, and bring the capitalist class, which both
serve, to its knees. Industrial power is the irresistible force which
the I. W. W. is endeavoring to bring into play. When the
labor power necessary to each industry and all industries is controlled
by an organization which includes the workers in every labor
classification and division, it will not only be possible, but sure,
that such control will be exercised in the direction of attaining
higher living standards, as stepping stones to industrial freedom. 
		
			The I. W. W. and the Unemployed

		
		As the unemployed, or workers in fear of
unemployment and its denials, constantly threaten this working class
ambition, one of the first undertakings of such an organization would
necessarily be to relieve this disastrous competition. One of its early
moves would be to strive for a shorter workday, thus reducing the
number of unemployed and strengthening the employed force which would
be more amenable to organization, and so situated as to exert its
industrial influence toward the advancement of working class interest.
A working class organization will naturally have a working class
viewpoint, and its activities will be of a working class nature
primarily, but all its industrial ventures will likewise be social in
character because of the fundamentally social character of the working
class. 
		For the unemployed workers, there is no hope for
alleviation of their lot, or for emancipation from their condition of
helplessness, except through such an organization as the
I. W. W.; and propagation of its principles should be their
constant care and business. 
		
			Migratory Labor and the Social Revolution 
		
		The
self-satisfied among the labor intellectuals pronounce the
I. W. W. anathema because it is composed principally of
migratory workers. "Wise" in their conceited estimate of themselves, it
does not dawn upon these "superior" persons that the migratory worker,
the worst denied and one of the most essential of working class
elements, is the proper custodian of correct labor principles, and of
proletarian revolutionary organization and program. The migratory wage
worker is the particular product of machine production, and in this
element all the experiences of the working class under capitalism are
incorporated. 
		Fundamentally and economically, there is no difference
between those workers who move about from job to job and from one
industry to another in one city or neighborhood, and those who travel
the United States and Canada shifting from locality to locality, and
following now one and again another industrial calling. The only thing
that distinguishes or rather differentiates one from the other is the
radius in which they move about. 
		To change residence from one part of the city to another,
is not different to changing from one city, or state, to another. The
necessity to move arises from a common cause. The problem of the one
element is the problem of the other, and they must unite to solve it. 
		The migrant is an unemployed wage-worker in search of
employment. He may find a job within reaching distance of his
residence, or he may have to travel thousands of miles to find one. But
find a job he must, or perish. Upon this is his life conditioned. 
		The homeguard may balk at the term "tramp," but the
workman who is out of work must tramp to find another job. To sell his
labor power is the sentence of capitalism upon the wage worker. To try
to sell it is his pressing business when unemployed. How far he must
travel before he succeeds in doing so depends upon circumstances and
the man. Between the city’s unemployed, who tramp the streets from
factory to factory, and those who go from place to place by way of the
boxcar, there is no difference substantially. The difference is only
psychological, not material.

		The condition is identical, resulting from the same cause,
springing from the same source, and demanding the same remedy. They
must unite to solve that problem, and the I. W. W. offers the
only means for doing so. The existing ownership, and the class
relationship growing out of it, makes it imperative for the migratory
workers to seek permanent access to the means of life—the earth’s
resources and the instruments of production. This element is where it
must move for its own preservation, and the only objective toward which
its condition and experiences are driving it entails a revolutionary
change. It must have access to its means of livelihood. The present
system of ownership stands between it and the social destination toward
which it must travel—it must remove and replace that system of
ownership before it attains security for itself. Hence the tenacity,
with which the migratory workers cling to the I. W. W. 
		Again, if the workers can only learn by experience,
surely these migratory workers, all of them at some time resident or
stationary workers, have a fund of experience excelling that of other
working class elements. They have, besides, the stimulus of a condition
that qualifies them to lead the vanguard of labor. 
		
			Labor and the "Intellectuals"

		
		Had the I. W. W. entrusted its destiny
to the unrestricted control of parlor intellectuals whose experiences
were not those of the industrialists, the organization would long ago
have disappeared from the labor arena. The I. W. W. is not
unmindful or neglectful of the need for intelligent guidance and
action. It stresses education for the workers, but it has drawn its
intellectual material from, and been guided by the experiences of the
actual workers in industry and they are slowly and painfully building
this organization into power which will bring to the working class the
recognition to which it is entitled, and give the control of society
into the hands of those who alone are capable of administering its
affairs in the interest of all and for the benefit of all—the workers. 
		The future belongs to the I. W. W.
			
		
		 
		
			For The Most Accurate And Timely News 
							Of The Worldwide Class Struggle
			Read
		
		INDUSTRIAL SOLIDARITY
		
			Official Organ of the I. W. W. 
			555 West Lake St., Chicago, Ill.
			and
			THE INDUSTRIAL WORKER
			Official Western Organ of the I. W. W.
			Box 1857, Seattle, Wash.
			 
			FIVE CENTS A COPY, TWO DOLLARS A YEAR 
			FOR EITHER OF THESE LIVELY LABOR PAPERS
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		Transcribed
by J. D. Crutchfield from an original copy kindly lent by FW Steve
Kellerman, Boston GMB. Spelling and punctuation silently corrected.
Layout slightly modified for easier reading on the web. Links to other
web sites do not constitute endorsement. Please report errors and dead
links to classify @ iww.org.


     From : THE I. W. W. — What It Is And What It Is Not

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     The I. W. W. — What It Is And What It Is Not -- Added : January 19, 2021

     The I. W. W. — What It Is And What It Is Not -- Updated : January 06, 2022

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