Fellow Workers: A General Strike Committee composed of all the Chairmen and Secretary-Treasurers of the various Industrial Unions, also Secretary-Treasurer of the General De 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 making 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 the march-fall in! at th unis e th: are tending, we could better judge what to Oil and Automobiles Let us first consider the amount of organization, or lack of it, in the major American industries. At the top of the list comes the automobile industry. In the year 1922 the value of the total number of automobiles, trucks, and parts and accessories amounted to the stupendous figure of $2,725,000,000. Hundreds of thousands of workers are employed in this industry. What portion of them is organized? Everybody who is acquainted with this industry knows that hardly any of them belong even to craft unions. In every automobile factory there are no doubt a few scattering craftsmen, such as carpenters, machinists, and others, who are members of their respective craft unions, but since the great bulk of the employes are not organized, these craftsmen might as well not carry union cards for all the good it does them or anybody else. The industry as a whole is to be put in the category of unorganized industries. When we consider the second largest industry in the United States-the production and refining of oil-we will find the six same open shop conditions prevailing there. Here again we will find a few mechanics carrying craft union cards, but by reason ea of the workers not being organized, their ma power is negligible. In the oil fields, especially of the southwestern states and California, the Industrial Workers of the World ec have started a vigorous campaign of orTganization, but as yet it is in its initial of stages. It is highly encouraging to note me that the Oil Workers' Industrial Union Fes gives signs of vigorous growth. In the huge oil refineries in various states, he controlled and operated as a rule by the Standard Oil companies, only some of the more highly skilled mechanics, such as firstclass machinists, boiler makers, engineers, carry craft cards. In regard to the condiof the many tions, hours, and wages of the many thousands of other workers, the Standard MAY, 1923 Oil is the court of final appeal, and the Textiles, Steel, Wood and Rubber Textiles form the third largest industry. Here, also, there is no organization to speak of, until we come to the tailoring trades. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers, representing the workers engaged in the manufacture of men's and boys' clothing, have a membership of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand. In other branches of the tailoring trades we find several tens of thousands more, organized in craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Besides this there is a scattering en, cotton and silk mills in Pennsylvania, of independent unions in the various woolwhose total membership numerically is New Jersey and the New England states, negligible. By far the greater number of workers in ers engaged in the raising of cotton in the all the textile mills, and also those worksouthern states, are without any form of organization. Especially down south the conditions in the textile industry are unof children of tender age are employed in speakably bad. Thousands upon thousands wage barely sufficient to feed them, to say the fields, the sheds, and the mills, at a any of the other things necessary to sustain nothing of clothing them and providing life. Women in the southern cotton mills work ten and eleven hours a day for as little as eight or nine dollars a week. Everybody knows that there is no organization of the workers in the steel industry, nor in the woodworking and rubber industries. Owing to the failure of the great steel strike of 1919, neither is there a chance to ever organize the steel workers into craft unions modeled after, or affiliated with, the American Federation of Labor. Transportation and Food Of course, the railroads are supposed to be almost one hundred per cent organized. However, the brand of unionism that pre Eleven |