maintains that even if the president of the American Federation of Labor is a saint, the fact that he receives $7,500 a year from the Federation and another salary from the Civic Federation alienates him from the working class. No matter how honest he is, the labor leader who receives a salary far above the standard of reasonably good living, who is slapped on the back by capitalists, and hailed by the newspapers as a truly wise guide of the working class, is a lost soul. Though he may retain the loyalty of the more prosperous workmen he is liable to lose whatever contact he may have had with the less prosperous, and his reactionary policies confirm the tendency of the workmen whom he influences to look down upon and neglect the unorganized mass.

The I. W. W. deals with material which is at once most difficult and most inspiring, the unskilled, the unnaturalized, women, children, seasonal job chasers, and unemployed. It is inspiring because of its needs, its miseries, its courage, and endurance. It is difficult because it has only begun to hear the message of unionism and because its whole attention is absorbed in the daily struggle for a living. If the American Federation should march by it

would present itself as an army of white men, healthy-looking citizens decently dressed, officered by proud fellows on horseback with sashes across their chests. The I. W. W., reviewed from the grand stand, would be a dusty army of men, women, and children, speaking twenty languages, not very well dressed, but enlivened with some splashes of color and officered by a few picturesque figures on foot. There would be the textile workers, men, women, and girls, mostly from the Eastern States, then the forest and lumber workers, harvesters, "blanket stiffs" from the South and West, marine and transport workers from both seacoasts, and a few propaganda leagues and local unions that have not numerical strength to form a national union. One would be struck by the youthful appearance of the marchers, for the I. W. W. is young in fact and in spirit, and it has the virtues and the defects of youth.

How did this young thing in ten years become such a bogy man, incurring the enmity of political Socialists, conservative labor men, and respectable citizenry in general? Not by its numerical strength; the disparity between the membership of its scattered locals and its great plan for organizing the world should console

its enemies. Not by the number or extent of its victories in the struggle for higher wages; all its strikes have been local and have not realized anything like nation-wide or tradewide organization; indeed they have come no nearer to catastrophic universality than many strikes of the old labor unions. Not because it has proposed an order of society which implies a subversion of the present order; the Socialists have done that all over the world. years before the I. W. W. came into existence. The contribution of the I. W. W. to date is simply this: it has taught labor and capital and politics that the real power of labor must be exerted at the seat of production. It has compelled the old labor unions to consider the need of reorganization, the need of organizing women, children, wops, negroes, and bums. It has reminded political Socialism of what it is supposed to have known long ago and seems to have forgotten, that its only hope of winning is through a united working class, and that the natural place for the working class to unite is where it works. And with a corporal's guard of leaders and a rag-tag army it has forced from capitalism and all its agents a gratifying intensity of hatred which civic-federationized union

ism and vote-hunting Socialism have long since ceased to enjoy. Whether the I. W. W. increases in power or goes out of existence, the spirit which animates it is the spirit which must animate the labor movement if it is to have a revolutionary function. The I. W. W. possesses in simple and concentrated form all that is essential in Socialism and would call itself Socialist, as many of its members do in fact call themselves, were it not that the word has a political connotation irrelevant or hostile to revolutionary unionism.

CHAPTER X

INTERNATIONALISM AND MILITARISM

IT HAS been the boast of Socialists that they are part of a world organization which transcends the boundaries of nations. They maintain an International Socialist Bureau and send delegates to International Congresses. It is a common idea among them that the interests of the working people of one nation are not antagonistic to the interests of the working people of another nation, and that to meet the growth of international capitalism there must be a crescent solidarity between the Socialist parties of the world. The International Congresses have been the occasion of some fine speeches and stimulating debate about general tactics and policies, and they have had at least the sort of value which can be attributed to international congresses of physicians, scientists, or others associated in a common work. But International Socialism has so far remained a name and a form, an affair of speech and