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THE NEXT CONVENTION

EXT month-November 12-the an

nual convention of the I. W. W. will take place. This convention will be one of the most important ever held. This belief is based on the new spirit that is perading the whole organization. This spirit s expressed in a desre for better and bigger organization, for more co-ordination and expansion. It is best put in practical form by the whole-hearted support which the encire I. W. W. is giving to the steel drive of Metal Machinery Workers' Industrial Union No. 440. It is the spirit that realizes hat the I. W. W. must organize the workers in more of the big- basic industries and must adapt its plans accordingly, if it is ever to win in the struggle with modern giant industrialism as it aims to do.

The existence of this spirit is a great fact. It refutes the old claim that "the I. W. W. is merely an organization of western migratory workers". And it upsets the efforts of communists and others to make the I. W. W. such exclusively. With this spirit back of it, the I. W. W. should more truly become, to an even greater extent than at present, the Industrial Workers of the World.

The convention will have many practical problems to tackle along the lines of growth above indicated. The small industrial unions are clamoring for more aid in organization work. This is especially true of the Textile Workers' Industrial Union, No. 410, which operates in one of the largest and most promising industries for the I. W. W. in the country. And the textile industry is only one of the many big industries that should claim the convention's attention in any program of expansion. The railroad, building construction and food industries might also be added; but this will do as an indication of some of the work that the convention might tackle, to the greater growth of the I. W. W. and the greater benefit of the working class.

It is hoped that the next convention will not unduly emphasize relatively unimportant internal matters to the exclusion of the really great and important work of devising ways and means to organize the unorganized. This was one of the criticisms levelled at the last convention; this and its long and costly sessions, consuming time and money that would have done more good

if spent in other directions. With some one million of migratory workers still to organize and about 25 millions of homeguards, it is hoped that the next convention will have greater scope and considerably more vision.

Probably the most important of the convention's problems will be financial ones. Organization improvement and extension are impossible without funds. How shall they be raised? By dollar dues? Compulsory assessments? The I. W. W. also needs abler and more experienced officers. How is it going to get them? By permitting reelection? By increasing salaries? The I. W. W. needs more intensive local development. How shall it secure the same? By per capita, branch and district council organization? Or by adherence to universalism and centralism? The I. W. W. needs better parliamentary training and more internal co-ordination! How shall they be brought about? The I. W. W. needs more definite immediate demands; more practical literature explaining its functions as an organization. It needs many reforms that the convention will have to consider, if it is intent on improvement and growth. Other matters such as daily newspapers, the Work People's College, new headquarters, relations abroad, and co-operation with other labor organizations, will also be on its order of business, without doubt.

If the convention is wise, however, it will spend most of its time planning an organization drive on a big scale. Relatively picayune internal tinkerings awaken no great enthusiasm. They only remind one of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Their aftermath is generally one of disgust and discouragement. What is wanted is something to fire the imagination, arouse interest and awaken such activity as will shake the organization out of its ruts, into a realization of its tremendous tasks and responsibilities to the working class.

This is the opportune time for such an organization drive. It has already begun in the 440 Steel campaign. Let's keep it up! Let's study the methods therein pursued!! Let's extend its spirit of organization. With the working class largely unorganized, and with revolt seething in the A. F. of L., let the I. W. W. be up and doing. Let the slogan be:

Organize the big, basic industries! Organize them into a big, basic I. W. W. All together!

AUTOS FOR WORKERS

N four years every auto in this country will be duplicated, such is the rate of auto production just now. That is, 1923 auto production runs over 3,000,000 cars. Where's all of them going to? People sneer at the idea of workers owning autos. But if they don't, who will?

Henry Ford is wise! He's selling autos to workers on the instalment plan. They'll go into hock to him; supply him with an endless stream of cash and at the same time be his main outlet.

Soon production will be so overwhelming in every line, that the only escape will be to make a luxuryconsuming class of the working class. It seems a crazy idea, but what other answer is there?

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THE FOUR-HOUR DAY

TEINMENTZ'S declaration that in another century electricity will reduce the workday to four hours, worries the bourgeois press. The later can't conceive of a civilization founded on leisure for all. It believes that man can't be happy unless he works himself to death-for the bourgeois, of course.

However, the ancients had a different idea. They believed that leisure meant time to prepare for the higher social duties. It meant the accumulation of the knowledge so necessary to government and science. Perhaps in the future, even the humblest workers will have time to become industrial managers. and statesmen of the best kind. Who doubts it? We don't! And so, we're for Steinmetz's four-hour day.

THE JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE

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SIDE from its appalling character, which has aroused both the horror and the sympathy of the world, the Japanese earthquake has had two noteworthy effects. First, nobody has, as yet, insisted that it is a visitation of God on a heathen nation. Perhaps, people are getting disgusted with a God that indulges in such terrible pastimes, and, consequently, prefer not to refer to him. Anyway, they seem very much disposed toward the scientific explanation, which gives the slide of the Asiatic continent into the Pacific Ocean as the cause of this stupendous catastrophe. This mental attitude, therefore, seems to denote progress towards the scientific viewpoint.

Second, everybody (at least, in the editorial sanctums), seems to conclude that the earthquake will put Japan out of running as a world-power, for the time being. The loss of wealth, calculated at over three billions of dollars, it is believed, will be more than Japan can repair in a generation, at least. In the meanwhile, the other worldpowers will rush into Korea and China, to the detriment of Japanese capitalism. They will thus secure advantages from which it will be hard to dislodge them in the decades to come. The earthquake thus, apparently, changes the course of history. It is not only a colossal geological, but also sociological event.

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WHY NO GERMAN COLLAPSE?

ERMANY presents an amazing study, that defies analysis from any other standpoint than that of modern industrialism. Here is a nation, defeated in war and harrassed, apparently, to the verge of destruction in peace, that refuses to either collapse or turn to "red revolution." What's the secret of this phenomenon?

When Robert Owen speculated upon the extraordinary wealth of Great Britain, despite the immense drains of the Napoleonic wars, he found an explanation in the invention of machinery and the exploitation of labor which it enhanced to hitherto unknown proportions. Multiply Great

Britain of the first two decades of the last century many times and you have modern Germany in all the essential similarities, with some additions, to boot.

Germany should not be expected to collapse as Russia did. Russia is the very anthithesis of all that Germany stands for. It is of primitive peasant development primarily; while Germany is the most highly technical and industrial nation on the globe. Excelling in nearly every phase of modern existence, Germany is practically one vast productive and distributive organ, with extensive rammifications, and as such, capable of sustaining a pressure, as events have proven, such as would have broken down any other nation not similarly organized.

In addition, bear in mind that Germany is at once, paradoxical as it may seem, the victim and the object of support of allied capitalism. While the governments of England, France and the U. S. are wrangling over Germany, their financiers are absorbing its industries and effecting combinations with its financiers. Even "red" Russia is in on the deal; as Germany is the bridge that will bind it to French imperialism. Stinnes, with his Russian concessions, Polish mines and German industries, with their French, English and American backing, personifies the international Germany that, in the new modern industrialism, withstands the pressure brought against the national Germany of old. Stinnes' saying, "I'm a businessman, not a German," typifies the new and unbreakable era.

Of course, in all this the German workers are getting the worst of it. They believe they are saving old Germany, when they are simply weapons in the forcing of new international alliances. Accordingly, they are patriotic and political, when they should be economic and industrial. Instead of seeking to capture this new industrialism at its heart, through industrial union organization, they aim to capture the institutions which it has thrown into the discard. They'll get over it some day, in common with their fellow victims of world-capitalism, everywhere.

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Foods

CCORDING to press diagnosis the late Gamaliel Harding died from at least six or eight causes; all high sounding names Arterio-sclerosis, Thrombosis, Apoplexy, Cirrhosis, Hyper-cardiac, Leucocytosis, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. In their regular order these symptoms are, in plain United States: Hardening of the arteries, blood clot, blot clot again, diseased liver, enlarged heart, transient increase of the white corpuscles or leucocytes of the blood stream. This is all in addition to the information contained in the slip of some reporter's pen that he might have gotten some ptomaine poisoning from crab meat that was served on the boat. And old fossilized Sawyer quickly rushed in to save the poison food interests by saying that it is a well known fact that Alaskan streams are tainted with "copper salts," and many people are poisoned by eating fresh fish from these streams. Chemists please take note!

The only reason for using this recent example of medical murder in our magazine is because of the prominence of the victim. It is not that we are grieved over the demise of the so-called great president of the United States, more than we would be for any other citizen. The event is spectacular, dramatic, has received world wide publicity, so we seize the opportunity presented in this connection to state a few very important facts pertaining to health.

Harding did not die a natural death, and millions of others who are dying annually are not going the natural way. Once in a great while you read of a man dying of old age. That is natural death. His symptoms were produced by the insane rush of modern life, and the doctors finished the job. Men of high office, usually of mediocre minds, are burdened with a multitude of duties that a corps of alert workers would be unable to perform, and then prevented from attempting the work by being constantly compelled to attend innumerable banquets where huge gobs of devitalized, degerminated, artificial substances mistakenly called food are piled into the belly. Convention requires that one must stuff it down.

The Workers' Food

The lower strata, industrial workers mostly, though we might include that conglomerate middle class, when they do eat, usually do so with about the same disregard for the laws of nature as the upper bunch. If he owns a consumptive flivver he will insist upon having the best of gasoline and oil to energize it, or if he is a fireman he will grow about having to shovel slate and dirt into the firebox; but never a murmer against the sticks, trash and poisons

the food owners push into his body mechanism. His sticky, starchy, indigestible white bread is made from the poorest by-product of the wheat grain, the grain that was produced and gathered by his miserable hands. He helps to remove the precious alkali and other mineral salts from it. This flour, deenergized as it is, is rendered further harmful by mixing with putrid, rancid old fat and alum. Feel it roll up and stick to your You are forpalate as you try to masticate it. tunate if it does not adhere to the oesophagus before it reaches the lunch tank.

But he has been superficially reading current literature that advocates whole wheat bread, On bran bread, bran crackers, bran cereal, etc. the same page he reads advertisments of these products. They are guaranteed to cure everything from Lethargy Encephalitis to plain, everyday constipation. So he buys bran breakfast food, which is nothing but the most ordinary kind of sawdust. (Go to the library and find the chemical process by which sawdust, through distillation, yields alcohol, and the residue mixed with certain sugars is used for cattle food). He buys a brown loaf labelled "whole wheat," which, in most instances, derives its color from black molasses.

That beautiful white frosting on his bakery pie is made of chalk, eggosee, cornstarch and water. The filling is cornstarch and glucose. His jams, jellies and fruit butters are loaded with saccharine, a sweet product that positively has no food value. His rice has been subjected to a polishing process that removed all the vitamines. His fresh vegetables, if he has the money to buy them, have been preserved several days in transit. And his meat has been embalmed long that the specie from which it was obtained is almost extinct.

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Ignorance, General and Otherwise The workers' ignorance of food chemistry is more colossal than their ignorance of history, nomics and industrial processes. A study of one of these subjects without properly relating it to the others would be of little benefit. Trained they are to think of disease as a natural condition, an entity, is it to be wondered that they creep on in the self sufficient thought that they may eat whatever they like whenever they like. All sorts of combinations are heaved into the stomach at divers hours, and usually when the mind is in a turbulent state. Meat, potatoes, white bread, sugar, coffee and canned garbage are all piled in with about the same zeal as he later drives into his work. His teeth are falling out, his heart skips a beat now and then, dizzy spells attack him, he has a headache and is constipated, but all of this he seems to regard

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as a natural condition, and relief is to be had in swallowing more poisons in the form of medicine.

He ate his weight in artificial sugar last year, never dreaming that this crystally white stuff is so made by bleaching with the fumes of poisonous acids. Nor is he aware that when it combines with other elements in his digestive tract the combustion that occurs, and which produces alcohol, sucks up all the available oxygen, thus leaving the other foods to ferment. You have fermentation your choice or digestion. In his cellar or clothes closet he sees the terrific explosion occuring in the home brew vessel, but it never occurs to him that the same thing is happening in his food pouch.

Some Progress

A few idealists in some of the larger cities have undertaken the tremendous task of enlightening the people as to dietary. Some of these have established little places of business where wholesome foods may be bought, but the very nature of such an effort is futile. The primary motive was to aid, but now they are occupied with the thought of maintaining the business. And presently they are selling substitutes. Only a few people ever find them. Their prices, in the very nature of things, must be higher than is charged by big business for substitutes.

There is just one way to assure ourselves of real live food, and consequently normal health: Industrial Organization to the end that we may fully and absolutely control the entire process, from soil to ultimate consumption, of food production, transportation, milling and canning preparation and distribution. This will entail more than a knowledge of operating technique. In the educational departments, and by that I mean the colleges that we should be establishing soon, it is imperative that we have a well trained corps of HEALTH teachers.

(Next article will deal with methods of "cure")

HENRY FORD

(Concluded from Page 38)

rates are too high, the employes because wages are too low and hours too long, the owners because no adequate returns are realized on money invested."

Ford says that the men who know railroads are not allowed to manage and run them-the idea of service is subordinated to profit. The bankers' groups have control of the railroads and manipulate stock and bond issues. The price of stock is hammered down or up according to the desired end. The book propounds questions concerning railroad methods that might well be termed socialistic. For it seems that Ford has been stealing socialistic ideas and adding it to his thunder. For instance he asks: "Why are live cattle hauled thousands of miles, from Texas to Chicago and then shipped back dead as dressed meat? or why are enormous shipments of wheat sent from Kansas

to Minneapolis, over hundreds of miles of roads, entailing tremendous labor and motive power, and then sent back to Kansas as flour?" He answers, "We need instead of mammoth flour mills, a multitude of smaller mills distributed throughout all the sections where grain is grown. Wherever possible, the section that produces the raw material ought to produce also the finished product. The same with food products and other products of manufacture."

The New Decentralization

This brings to mind that Ford stresses very heavily on DE-CENTRALIZATION of industry. Not on the DE-CENTRALIZATION of the ownership however, but in manufacturing processes.

The Ford organization, we are told, is now carrying out an extensive plan of de-centralization in the production of Ford cars. All parts are to be made as near as possible to the source of raw material. The glass wind shields, wheels, etc., are to be made in different plants and from there shipped to assembling plants according to the amount needed. The big plants in Detroit and River Rouge now make mostly parts and assemble only enough cars for the Detroit and nearby markets. Assembling plants in different large cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, will receive parts and assemble them for their own market and with their own conveyor system.

There is too much waste in the centralized plant. Under the new de-centralized system a part is only shipped once; from the place where it is produced to the point where it is to be assembled and sold. Under the old system of centralized production the parts were shipped into Detroit to be assembled and sent back as a part of the finished automobile.

The book is well written and interesting from end to end. It is the sort of book that can be read twice and still hold your mind. It is certain that Ford did not write the book, but his ideas are there. He furnishes good arguments which will require discerning reason to pick out whatever flaws there may be, for it must be remembered that the book finds much fault with modern business methods, or capitalism, and on this head no one will doubt that Ford has an argument. As the head of a large corporation, Ford views things from the heights. He qualifies himself by discarding the pronoun I and using the plural WE in his discussion, maybe having his own suspicions that some others besides himself had something to do with building up the Ford organization.

Ford's critics are many. His Jewish campaign, "Peace Ship" expedition, the mere fact that he is rich, have brought forth critics of a type. There remains yet to come from an employe of the Ford plants a criticism of the working conditions.

Next month we will deal with some of Ford's critics and discuss what they have to say against Ford and the Ford organization.

(Publishers, Doubleday, Page and Co., Garden City, New York.)