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N May the tenth, sixty people, representing the Farmer-Labor, Socialist and Workers' parties, met in the Morrison Hotel in Chicago to outline and make announcement of the purposes and program of the labor party convention to be held in Chicago on July third. It was a meeting of heterogeneous elements - wage workers, farmers, politicians, intellectuals, and members of the middle class. A collection of over four hundred dollars was taken up.

The Morrison Hotel is one of the finest in the city of Chicago. A collection of over four hundred dollars for sixty people averages seven dollars apiece. We leave it to the judgment of the reader to make of these two observations what he will.

The I. 'W. W. is concerned with the welfare of the man who works in industry for wages. The industrial proletariat as a class is the strongest numerically of any in the United States, not excepting even the farmers. The thing for us to decide, therefore, is whether or not this class has anything to gain through political action, engaged in by a party such as has been proposed at this meeting.

In the first place, can any ground be found on which such divergent elements as were here represented could work in concert for the common good? Is there any precedent either in current or past history that this can be done?

We will have to admit that there is not, and that, therefore, to advise the industrial workers to spend time, money, and energy in political action is pure and simple opportunism. Opportunism is a mortal enemy of the working class. Witness the present rulers of capitalist Europe.

Working Class Renegades

Premiers Mussolini and Branting of Italy and Sweden respectively, and presidents Millerand of France and Ebert of Germany, are all of them ex-socialists, political op

portunists and traitors to the working class. Almost the whole of Europe is ruled today by politicians who once professed to befighting in the interests of the working class. Now they are the henchmen of capitalism.

Is the same thing to be repeated in the United States? If such be not the professed purpose of the proposed labor party, the results undoubtedly will be the same, should it ever attain the same strength reached by the European political movement.

The agitation for working class political action rests on the fallacy of popular democratic government; it is the duty of all those who have the interests of the industrial worker at heart to do everything in their power to check the spread of these wrong and injurious ideas.

No such thing as democracy exists on the earth today, nor is there the least chance for it to come into being for a long time to come. The electoral system in all countries is part and parcel of capitalist dictatorship. By telling the workers that they can gain anything by taking part in the electoral system, we are miseducating them and merely blinding them to the facts as they actually are.

The powers that be are not afraid of political action by the workers, no matter how revolutionary this action may be proclaimed to be. As a matter of fact, they would welcome it if they realized how serviceable it is to them; and sometimes they do. It is one of the safety valves through which popular discontent fizzles off without doing any damage to the capitalist system.

Futility of Political Action

If anybody wants to be convinced of the futility of political action, let him consider some of the European countries: Italy, England, Germany and France. Is anybody. rabid enough to say that if the workers

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in these countries had not been misled and miseducated for so many years by their political leaders, that they would be in such a deplorable condition today?

England has close to a million and a half unemployed. Many millions more are receiving wages of from $5 to $8 per week. There is a housing shortage of about one million homes. In short, the British worker is in as sorry a plight today as he could well be. Yet the Labor Party is one of the three strongest parties in Parliament. The working class is represented by over one hundred members.

In the face of this, the mass of workers are helpless and starving, and will no doubt continue in that condition for quite some time to come. Their bodies are enslaved to the master class and their minds are enslaved to the fetish of political action, which prevents them from doing anything to rid themselves of the bonds of slavery. All they have been able to attain has been a lot of fine sounding phrases, such as the resolution introduced in Parliament by Phillip Snowden to abolish capitalism and substitute in its place socialism; it sounds nice and revolutionary, but that's about all the good it does to the unemployed and starving British workingmen.

The classic illustration of the failure of political action is, of course, Germany. There they have the socialist Frederick Ebert as president of the German republic. Yet the whole of Germany is today in the hands of a few industrial magnates who practically exercise powers of life and death over the working people. In no other country has trustificaton of industry reached such an advanced stage and in no other country are the industrial workers so absolutely at the mercy of their industrial overlords; yet to all intents and purposes Germany is today a republic run by socialists who are supposed to be the representatives of the working class. Of course, the truth in the matter is that these so-called representatives of the workers are nothing but puppets in the hands of the big capitalists who are masters of the situation by virtue of their control over industry.

The Italian Fascisti

But the greatest lesson is to be learned from Italy. There the workers were getting too strong to suit the purposes of the bourgeoisie. It is safe to say that what happened in Italy will be repeated in other countries as soon as the workers actually become strong enough on the political field to be even remotely a menace to the ruling class. At one fell blow the Fascisti demolished the Italian electoral system and substituted in its place the rule of brute force. When the disguise of democracy no longer serves the needs of the ruling class, it is done away with and other more drastic methods are used.

Let the dictatorship of the Fascisti in Italy serve as an example to all those who try to fool themselves and others by pointing to the great benefits to be obtained for the working class through parliamentary action. All political parties in Italy have been practically abolished. The Chamber of Deputies might as well be dissolved for all the good it does to anybody. Thousands of duly elected municipal and other officials have been put out of office; in hundreds of cases, they have been literally thrown out through the windows. Opposition newspapers have been mercilessly suppressed. Hundreds of buildings, newspaper offices, party and union headquarters have been razed and burned to the ground. Many thousands of men and women have been murdered by the Fascist bands the Ku Klux Klan of Italy-and over sixty thousand have been arrested on various charges, many of them being sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The very last vestige and semblance of popular government has been abolished.

The accumulated labors of many years of hard work by the workers and peasants to gain control over city, provincial, and federal governmental institutions have been done away with inside of a few months. That is what is to be expected whenever the working class begins seriously to encroach upon the prerogatives of the master class by the use of political action. The labor unions and the co-operative move

ment also suffered in this onslaught, but not to the same extent. The demoralization in the unions would not be near as great had they not been, not wholly excepting even the syndicalists, so closely linked up with the political movement.

The following statement by Premier Mussolini is highly illuminating: "Fascismo is not afraid to declare itself liberal or anti-liberal. It has already passed, and if necessary will pass again, without the slightest hesitation, over the body, more or less decomposed, of the Goddess of Liberty."

The dangers of reposing faith in a political party have been amply illustrated in Soviet Russia. The main concern of the Russian Communist party at present seems to be the enforcement of the new economic policy, which is tantamount to the reintroduction of capitalism with all its evils. The logic of events and the course of evolution no doubt demand it, but to imagine that on this score the immediate interests of the industrial workers and of the present government are identical, is to have a wrong conception of the Russian situation.

An American Labor Party

Bearing these things in mind, we can now return to the United States. No doubt a labor party will spring into existence in the future, and it might even attain considerable strength in some localities and might become a factor of national importance, but this will not prove anything one way or another. The question is, of what earthly use can it be to the industrial workers either in their struggle with the employers for immediate demands or in the ultimate struggle for the abolition of the wage system?

We claim that it can be of no use at all, and that for anyone who actually understands the modus operandi of capitalism to say and preach the contrary is to deliberately miseducate the working class. For any body of men which professes to have the interests of the industrial worker at heart to devote its energies toward the formation of such a labor party is to run

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wild with opportunism. We consider it our duty to warn the workers of the false prophets who are trying to lead them into the by-paths of confusion and political folly.

Five men sitting on the bench of the United States Supreme Court can declare unconstitutional any law passed by both houses of Congress and approved by the President. It can overrule all of the laws passed by any of the state legislatures and its executives. This was recently demonstrated by the Supreme Court declaring unconstitutional, by a majority of one, the Minimum Wage Act of the District of Columbia. In the face of this where does the usefulness of parliamentary action come in?

Economic Power

The basis of all power is the possession. of economic power. Just so long as their supremacy in industry is not menaced the capitalists are sure to remain safe in the saddle. They are, therefore, not afraid of anything which looks forward to a change in the personnel of political institutionsthe handmaidens of the big capitalists and financiers. As long as the industries are safely in the control of the powers that be, it makes no difference under what name the various political representatives might be put in office, the capitalists would remain masters of the situation. While economic power is still in the hands of the capitalists and the structure of the governmental machinery is not changed, Congress would continue to function in the interests of the capitalists even if every representative and senator were a socialist, laborite or communist.

The only place where the workers can fight the master class effectively is in industry at the point of production. Only there can they obtain their immediate demands for higher wages, better conditions, shorter hours; only there can they obtain their demands and ambitions of whatever character.

The master class knows this; that is one reason why it is so afraid of militant industrial action. That is the reason why it per

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HE World War withdrew workers by the millions from productive industrial occupations into the industries producing ammunition and other war supplies for the support of huge armies. It recruited millions of men from the army of peacetime production to carry on war, thereby causing a rapid increase in the prices of food, clothing and shelter. It decreased the number of unemployed to such an extent that the workers finally found themselves in such demand that they could ask for and get more wages and better working conditions than formerly. The employers had to give in. The shipowners were no exception; they had to grant some of the demands of their employes; they had to be "good" to their workers in order to obtain young men and boys for the fast-growing fleet of ships of the American Merchant Marine.

The International Seamen's Union

The unions affiliated with the International Seamen's Union of America were speedily built up, especially on the Atlantic Coast, mostly through the aid of the U. S. Shipping Board and the shipping commissioners. The functions of these unions were mainly to aid in insuring the necessary discipline and to supply the demand for seamen at the prescribed rate of wages and conditions given by the owners and agreed upon by the union through contracts. They thus served as a convenient medium by which the shipowners kept the marine workers down to the terms of the contracts during a time when the seamen, had they been differently regulated, or organized, would have been able to get much greater remuneration for their labor power.

During the latter part of 1920, shipping decreased to an alarming rate. The agreements of the shipowners with the unions of the I. S. U. of A. very wisely had been set to expire on the first of May, 1921, when shipping had decreased to the desired point for the shipowners to reduce the standard of living of the crews to the lowest possible limit. The many autonomous parts of the I. S. U. had been very carefully kept apart from one another and were but loosely federated through a per capita to the general office, with Andrew Furuseth as its president. Internecine strife and hatred between the crafts were openly maintained; the longshoremen and their international, which also was and is still affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, came in for a large share of this foolish hatred.

Owing to this state of affairs, and chafing under the iron-fisted rule of their well-fed, highly paid and conserv tive officials, who could not be removed from their positions, the members at last woke up to their own helplessness, the weakness of their separate craft unions and the corruption of their officialdom. In the fight that followed whatever good work had been done in the past was destroyed. The mem

bers got disgusted and deserted the unions by the thousands, until today there remains only the corrupt officialdom, reigning supreme, supported by finks and a few dupes who are offering their services to the shipowners, and are "stooling" on members and delegates of the Marine Transport Workers' Industrial Union No. 510, of the I. W. W.

The I. S. U. of A. has in this strike degenerated into a scab-herding outfit and the few members it still possesses were during this strike scabbing on the seamen under police protection. Every self-respecting seaman of today abhors it. Thus ends the last chapter in the history of the once prominent International Seamen's Union of America.

Industrial Union No. 510

In contrast to the above, another and greater organization sprang into existence, strengthened and purified in spirit by the many battles it has waged against the master class, and recognizing no craft divisions, creed, nationality, or color; an organizatino having great aims and ideals, without highsalaried officials, industrial in form and using up-todate tactics in the fight against the employers; an organization which declares that the workers are the producers of all wealth and that therefore all wealth must go to labor. This organization, international in scope, and having for its motto "An injury to one is an injury to all," is the Marine Transport Workers' Industrial Union No. 510, of the Industrial Workers of the World.

This union held in its ranks a few seamen illuminated by its ideals, who realized the greatness of its work and the importance of its mission. They were aware of the obstacles in the way of building up a powerful marine transport workers' organization, yet they were filled with hope and enthusiasm, energy and determination. They acted as missionaries of a new faith, always busy, always eager to learn from past mistakes in order that in the future they might be victorious. They got many converts who again in their turn got many more.

And so it came about that these seamen who had lost faith in their old leaders who had been proved to be blind leaders-began instead to place all confidence in themselves and to build up their own organization, in conformity with the principle of always keeping power in their own hands instead of delegating it to someone else.

This organization is steadily growing into still greater power and prominence. Since its inception it has been an inspiration and a fighting weapon to stop the encroachments of the masters and to gain improvements for the workers both ashore and afloat. Shorter hours, higher wages and better working conditions had been obtained on many ships even prior to the calling of the big strike.