took the position that labor as a class must control its political representatives through a political organization of its own as they controlled their representatives in their trade organizations. The Washington State Federation, chartered by the American Federation, at its convention of 1913, openly refuted the policy of its national organization of supporting candidates pledged to one of the regular parties. It resolved:

Whereas, the political parties now in control of our government are owned and controlled by our industrial

masters.

Whereas, the masters recognize the value of control of the state, and secure and maintain their control by electing members of their class to office, legislative, executive, and judicial.

Whereas, the statement that the interests of capital and labor are identical is absurdly false, and is intended to blind the workers to their own interests and to mislead them into giving support to interests diametrically opposed to their own;

Therefore be it Resolved, that we recommend to the workers that they vote for members of their own class to fill all legislative, executive, or judicial positions.

3

The Washington State Federation stands alone among the state organizations of the Federation in its revolutionary position and opposition to the more conservative and opportunistic policy.

The Industrial Workers of the World opposes all allegiance to political parties or indorsement of polit

ical action. Its theory of "Direct Action" is not necessarily a substitute for political action, as it is considered by many of its members, but it is the exclusive method of the organization.

CHAPTER XX

DIRECT ACTION

Is the antithesis of political action but not necessarily opposed to it-Comparative value as a labor weapon-Object of direct action-Present advocacy opportune.

DIRECT action is not necessarily opposed to political action, although the term originated in the desire to distinguish between organized labor's efforts to secure its objects by more direct methods than political representation.

It arose out of labor's disappointment in the efforts it had expended politically. Labor had found that its representatives sitting in state councils rife with the doctrines and influences of a capitalist society, gradually lost the point of view of those whom they were there to represent.

It found also that political action, delegating, as it does of necessity, all action to representatives, offered the mass of the workers little if any opportunity for experience or initiative in the solution of their own problems. Direct actionists claim that the object of the labor movement is to minimize the delegation of power and to increase the power of the mass of the workers, individually and collectively. The plaint of labor is, in fact, that one group

of people has assumed the direction and management of affairs of another group, that capital manages and speaks for labor, with a consequent weakness to labor of unused or enslaved powers.

Labor can only learn to do by doing, is the idea back of direct action. Representation gives labor no exercise and no opportunities to develop.

Even should political representatives legislate in the interests of labor, and even were it possible for representatives to hold and keep the labor point of view, they would not meet labor's chief need: the opportunity to exercise its own faculties and to develop initiative. What labor wants above all else is to gain in strength, the strength to do, and this is in itself more important than all the material advantages which might accrue through a Socialist state or a benevolent plutocracy.

This is the gist of the theory of direct action, and, unmodified, is the theory of anarchism, which is opposed in principle to delegated power. But all direct actionists do not oppose political action, and many indorse it. All direct actionists see or feel the necessity of organizations of labor which provide a large measure of latitude for initiative of the workers in their struggle with capital, of organizations which provide for the maximum amount of mass action. But all object to the tendency of political action to rob rather than supply the workers with opportunities to test and exercise their own powers.

Direct actionists also claim that political action is an instrument which people with formal education, sophisticated people, can handle more successfully and deftly than people who have never directed others. Moreover, labor's representatives, and those politically active in labor's interests, are invariably men and women who are more or less removed from the intenser forms of industrial employment, and many of them are people whose knowledge of the labor need and the labor movement is theoretical.

It is, moreover, less possible for workers, unaccustomed to initiate or direct, to hold their place in political life by the side of others who are in the habit of ruling or regulating the work and the lives of other people. The latter inevitably in political affairs will take the lead and will have no keen understanding of the ordinary working man, and less sympathy with his vital interests which are opposed to their own.

Specifically, then, direct action means the efforts of labor unions to transfer power in part or in whole from capital to labor without the interference of the political state.

While American trade unions never use the term, it applies, nevertheless, to all efforts of the trade unionist in collective bargaining, boycotts, strikes, limitation of output, and other trade regulations initiated and enforced by a union.

In America, the term is used by the Industrial Workers of the World in their appeal to workers to depend