among the laborers, are imposed by the employers that workers may be pitted against one another and spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions.

While encouraging these outgrown divisions among the workers the capitalists carefully adjust themselves to the new conditions. They wipe out all differences among themselves and present a united front in their war upon labor. Through employers' associations, they seek to crush, with brutal force, by the injunctions of the judiciary, and the use of military power, all efforts at resistance. Or when the other policy seems more profitable, they conceal their daggers beneath the Civic Federation and hoodwink and betray those whom they would rule and exploit. Both methods depend for success upon the blindness and internal dissensions of the working class. The employers' line of battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the mechanical and industrial concentration, while laborers still form their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions. The battles of the past emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia, and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago, weakened by the disintegrating effects of trade divisions; the machinists on the Santa Fe, unsupported by their fellow-workers subject to the same masters; the long-struggling miners of Colorado, hampered by a lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized.

This worn out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of labor.

This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief within wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools which they operate, and the product of which they alone will enjoy.

It shatters the ranks of the workers into fragments, rendering them helpless and impotent on the industrial battlefield.

Separation of craft from craft renders industrial and financial solidarity impossible.

Union men scab upon union men; hatred of worker for worker is engendered, and the workers are delivered helpless and disintegrated into the hands of the capitalists.

Craft jealousy leads to the attempt to create trade monopolies,

Prohibitive initiation fees are established that force men to become scabs against their will. Men whom manliness or circumstances have driven from one trade are thereby fined when they seek to transfer membership to the union of a new craft.

Craft divisions foster political ignorance among the workers, thus dividing their class at the ballot box, as well as in the shop, mine and factory.

Craft unions may be and have been used to assist employers in the establishment of monopolies and the raising of prices. One set of workers are thus used to make harder the conditions of life of another body of laborers.

Craft divisions hinder the growth of class consciousness of the workers, foster the idea of harmony of interests between employing exploiter and employed slave. They permit the association of the misleaders of the workers with the capitalists in the Civic Federations, where plans are made for the perpetuation of capitalism, and the permanent enslavement of the workers through the wage system.

Previous efforts for the betterment of the working class have proven abortive because limited in scope and disconnected in action.

Such a

Universal economic evils afflicting the working class can be eradicated only by a universal working-class movement. movement of the working class is impossible while separate craft and wage agreements are made favoring the employer against other crafts in the same industry, and while energies are wasted in fruitless jurisdiction struggles which serve only to further the personal aggrandizement of union officials.

A movement to fulfill these conditions must consist of one great industrial union embracing all industries — providing for craft autonomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally, and working-class unity generally.

It must be founded on the class struggle, and its general administration must be conducted in harmony with the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class.

It should be established as the economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.

All power should rest in a collective membership.

Local, national and general administration, including union labels, buttons, badges, transfer cards, initiation fees, and per capita tax should be uniform throughout.

All members must hold membership in the local, national or international union covering the industry in which they are employed, but transfers of membership between unions, local, national, or international, should be universal.

Workingmen bringing union cards from industrial unions in foreign countries should be freely admitted into the organization. The general administration should issue a publication representing the entire union and its principles which should reach all members in every industry at regular intervals.

A central defense fund, to which all members contribute equally, should be established and maintained.

All workers, therefore, who agree with the principles herein se. forth, will meet in convention at Chicago the 27th day of June. 1905, for the purpose of forming an economic organization of the working class along the lines marked out in this manifesto,

Representation in the convention shall be based upon the nu.nber of workers whom the delegate represents. No delegate, how ever, shall be given representation in the convention on the numer ical basis of an organization unless he has credentials-bearing the seal of his union, local, national or international, and the signatures of the officers thereof-authorizing him to install his union as a working part of the proposed economic organization in the industrial department in which it logically belongs in the general plan of the organization. Lacking this authority, the delegate shall represent himself as an individual. Adopted at Chicago, January 2, 3 and 4, 1905.

(Pages 46, 47, 48, 49, "The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World," by Paul Brissenden, published by the University of California, November 25, 1913.)

CHAPTER II

Workers' International Industrial Union

A comparatively small but aggressive group of industrial unionists are represented in the Workers' International Industrial Union, familiarly known as the W. I. I. U. This organization is an offshoot of the I. W. W. The schism occurred at the annual convention of the I. W. W. in 1908, when the elements which wholly repudiated political action gained control of that organization. The leader of the seceding group was Daniel Le Leon, who, for more than twenty years, was editor of "The Weekly People," and one of the principal figures of the Socialist Labor Party. This group was first known as the Detroit I. W. W., but in 1915 the name was changed to the Workers' International Industrial Union.

This group claims to retain the original Socialist principles which were incorporated in the preamble of the first constitution of the I. W. W. It works in close harmony with the Socialist Labor Party whose leaders are active in its ranks. The similarity between the present preamble of the constitution of the Workers' International Industrial Union and the original preamble of the I. W. W. will be apparent from its reading.

It is as follows:

"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 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 toilers come together on the political field under the banner of a distinct revolutionary political party governed by the workers' class interests, and on the industrial field under the banner of one great Industrial nion to take and hold all means of production and distribution, and to run them for the benefit of all wealth producers.

"The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trades union unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trades unions foster a state of things 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. The trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

"These sad conditions must be changed, the interests of the working class upheld and while the capitalist rule still prevails, all possible relief for the workers must be secured. That can only be done by an organization aiming steadily at the complete overthrow of the capitalist wage system, and 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." (See pp. 54, 55, stenographer's minutes, Committee Hearings.)

It will be noticed from the foregoing that the W. I. I. U., while aiming at the destruction of the rights of private property, is distinguishable from the I. W. W. by its willingness to employ parliamentary methods as a means of propaganda until such time as direct action offers a prospect of success. The purpose of this organization is to facilitate the use of the general strike as a weapon of offense.

The success of this organization has been largely among metal and machinery workers. A typical example of the propaganda

distributed to workmen is as follows:

"ONE GREAT UNION

"THE WAGE WORKERS' MEANS OF EDUCATION AND DEFENSE, A LEVER FOR SOCIAL PROGRESS

"A PLACE FOR EVERY WORKER, EVERY WORKER IN HIS PLACE (Leaflet No. 4)

"If men should cease to aid each other, mankind would perish.

"Mutual help is one of the necessary conditions of exist ence. The working class labor together to produce the things required to sustain life. Producing plentifully, the workers have to live stingily; creating by their labor-skill, ingenuity and sacrifice the wealth of the world, they are restrained by conditions from possessing all that they produce.