TO THE WORKING CLASS.

fense, located here in Chicago Headquar

ters, has been formed. Fellow Workers:

The purpose of this committee is to de. A General Strike Committee composed vise ways and means of propagating the of all the Chairmen and Secretary-Treas- General Strike IDEA, in all industries, and urers of the various Industrial Unions, also as a means of effecting the release of ClassSecretary-Treasurer of the General De- War Prisoners.

MAY, 1923

This is in accordance with the ruling of thorized by the rank and file, and not by the 14th General Convention, and also in its officials. accordance with many demands for such a These men must be released, fellow committee, coming to the Main Office from workers, and let us all put our shoulders the rank and file.

to the wheel in the one absolutely certain There is one point, however, to be em- way, viz., by Economic Industrial Action. phasized in order to avoid possible mis- Let us put this IDEA of a general strike takes: There is as yet, no General Strike over, till it rings from the lips of workers called for all industries, but rather it is the everywhere, and manifests itself sufficiently IDEA, that is, and must continue to be put in job-action, to open wide the prison doors. over.

HARRY G. CLARK, Strikes by the I. W. W. can only be au

Chairman of the G. E. B.

If you're game to fight with no end in sight and

never a band to play, If you're fit to toil with no hope of spoil and the

toiling itself for pay, If you'll bear the irk of the thankless work of mak

ing the dream come true, If you'll march along through a hooting throng that

bellows its oath at you, If you'll learn to meet each new defeat with the

gritty old grin of yore, And lift your lance in a new advance with hardly

a chance to score, · Then you're just the breed that we sorely need;

you're one of our kith and kin, So get the swing of the song we sing and join in

the march-fall in!

We promise no loot to the young recruit, no glory

or praise or fame, No gold you gain in this long campaign-but plenty

of jeers and blame. The quarters are mean and the rations lean; the

service is harsh and grim, The war is on from dark to dawn, from dawn to the

twilight dim; But there's ever the cheer of a comrade near, and

the touch of his sturdy arm, And his help in call if you faint and fall where the

harrying foemen swarm. If you scorn reward for the fight that's hard, if you'd

rather be right than win, Just get the swing of the song we sing and join the

march-fall in!

If comradeship of heart—not lip is more to your

taste than cash,
If ancient frauds and tinsel gods are idols you long

to smash,
If your patience breaks at the honored fakes that

the pursy priests have decked,
If you're not content till the veil is rent and the

temple of lies is wrecked,
Then your place is made in our stern brigade that

never can halt or pause
Till the war is done and the fight is won—the fight

for the human cause,
So take your place and our step and pace in spite of

the old world's din,
And get the swing of the song we sing and join in

HE outstanding fact in regard to the So we see that in the United States at the labor movement in America is, that present time only one out of every six or

there is no labor movement in America. seven industrial workers belongs to a union. A great many faults in our tactics, and mis- Is anybody foolish enough to imagine that understandings of an injurious character, the working class as a whole will be able could be avoided were we always to keep to get anywhere if this ratio is to be mainthis fact in mind.

tained in the future? We would not be far from the mark in

The obvious lesson of this deplorable consaying that in the United States there are

dition is : Organize the Unorga'nized! This about twenty-five million men, women and

is just what the Industrial Workers of the children working in the various industries. Of these only about three or four million World has been trying to drive home to are organized in any kind of labor unions the working-class with all the facilities at

its command. whatever. The bulk of them belong, of course, to the craft unions, which in the Nobody has ever got anywhere by hug. majority of cases function merely as job ging illusions. Neither will the American trusts. A few hundreds of thousands be- working-class. Let us first learn the con long in other organizations, such as the ditions that we are up against, and then semi-industrial unions, which possess more let us act accordingly. To put it in the

. of the characteristics of genuine class or- words of Abraham Lincoln, “If we could ganizations.

first know where we are and whither we

are tending, we could better judge what to Oil is the court of final appeal, and the
do and how to do it."

supreme ruler. Of course, the chances are

that the same would hold true even if all Oil and Automobiles

these workers carried membership cards in Let us first consider the amount of or

craft unions.
ganization, or lack of it, in the major

,
American industries.

Textiles, Steel, Wood and Rubber
At the top of the list comes the automo-

Textiles form the third largest industry. bile industry. In the year 1922 the value Kere, also, there is no organization to speak of the total number of automobiles, trucks, of, until we come to the tailoring trades. and parts and accessories amounted to the The Amalgamated Clothing Workers, repstupendous figure of $2,725,000,000. Hun- resenting the workers engaged in the manudreds of thousands of workers are em

facture of men's and boys' clothing, have a ployed in this industry. What portion of membership of approximately one hundred them is organized ?

and fifty thousand. In other branches of Everybody who is acquainted with this the tailoring trades we find several tens of industry knows that hardly any of them thousands more, organized in craft unions belong-even to craft unions. In every auto- affiliated with the American Federation of mobile factory there are no doubt a few Labor. Besides this there is a scattering scattering craftsmen, such as carpenters,

of independent unions in the various woolmachinists, and others, who are members

en, cotton and silk mills in Pennsylvania, of their respective craft unions, but since

New Jersey and the New England states, the great bulk of the employes are not

whose total membership numerically is organized, these craftsmen might as well

negligible.

By far the greater number of workers in not carry union cards for all the good it does them or anybody else. The industry

all the textile mills, and also those workas a whole is to be put in the category of

ers engaged in the raising of cotton in the unorganized industries.

southern states, are without any form of When we consider the second largest in- organization. Especially down south the dustry in the United States—the produc- conditions in the textile industry are unatt tion and refining of oil—we will find the speakably bad. Thousands upon thousands

of children of tender age are employed in same open shop conditions prevailing there.

the fields, the sheds, and the mills, at a unir Here again we will find a few mechanics carrying craft union cards, but by reason

wage barely sufficient to feed them, to say eat of the workers not being organized, their nothing of clothing them and providing power is negligible. In the oil fields, espe

any of the other things necessary to sustain

life. cially of the southwestern states and Cali

Women in the southern cotton mills fornia, the Industrial Workers of the World

work ten and eleven hours a day for as ec have started a vigorous campaign of or

little as eight or nine dollars a week. ' Ti ganization, but as yet it is in its initial

Everybody knows that there is no organ

ization of the workers in the steel industry, It is highly encouraging to note ne that the Oil Workers' Industrial Union

nor in the woodworking and rubber inFes gives signs of vigorous growth.

dustries. Owing to the failure of the great In the huge oil refineries in various states, chance to ever organize the steel workers

steel strike of 1919, neither is there a ha controlled and operated as a rule by the

into craft unions modeled after, or affiliated i Standard Oil companies, only some of the

with, the American Federation of Labor. more highly skilled mechanics, such as first.h class machinists, boiler makers, engineers,

Transportation and Food carry craft cards. In regard to the condi- Of course, the railroads are supposed to tions, hours, and wages of the many

many be almost one hundred per cent organized. thousands of other workers, the Standard However, the brand of unionism that pre

sis

ma

oft stages.

Eleven