have other intentions or are to be counted on for sympathetic action in the general labor movement.*

*Since the above was written officers of the brotherhoods sustained members in their refusal to transport the militia into the strike zone of the coal miners of Colorado.

CHAPTER IV

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

Its inception Preamble-Relation to Socialism, to SyndicalismCriticism of trade unions-No contract with capital-Direct action vs. political-War on the trade unions-Organization features realized and planned for-Centralization of power-Membership-Its present position.

INTEREST in a well-established organization centers around what it is doing and what it has accomplished. Interest in a new organization centers chiefly around what it is doing, in the light of what it proposes to do; and how it differs from other organizations in the same field, and its relation to them.

The Industrial Workers of the World proclaimed that its coming was due to the failure of existing labor unions-the failure in the methods adopted, as well as failure in conception of the ultimate purpose of the labor movement.

The new organization was called into existence by a manifesto issued in January, 1905, which concluded its survey of an outworn industrial system with a statement of the failure of trade unionism, and the task which a new organization must accomplish:

The employers' line of battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the mechanical and industrial concentration, while laborers still form their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions. The battles of the past emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago, weakened by the disintegrating effects of trade divisions; the machinists on the Santa Fé, unsupported by their fellow workers subject to the same masters; the long-struggling miners of Colorado hampered by lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized. This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of labor. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief from wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools which they operate and the product of which they alone should enjoy. 1

The last sentence marks off the ultimate purpose of the Industrial Workers of the World from the American Federation of Labor and the Railway Brotherhoods, which are not concerned with the dispossessing of capital, but with maintaining contracts advantageous to labor.

The preamble to the constitution further elucidates the revolutionary purposes which characterize and distinguish the Industrial Workers of the World among the labor organizations of America:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people, and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. 2

There is nothing in the preamble or manifesto which does not conform to Socialist doctrines, or to which the International Socialist movement might not subscribe. It is the interpretation of the preamble by individual members of the organization which has attached the Industrial Workers of the World to the Syndicalist rather than to the Socialist move

ment.

The declaration in the manifesto that the workers should own and operate their own tools, and that they alone should enjoy the fruits of their labor, would mean, according to American Socialists, that all workers, through a political state, or regulated by it, would operate, own, and enjoy collectively all tools and the product of industry.

Moreover, Socialists who are not bureaucrats see in the labor unions the future administrative units of industrial democracy. With this point of view, they can subscribe to the section of the preamble which reads, "by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." But this sentence, interpreted by the leaders of the Industrial Workers, is directly opposed to the political Socialism of America. It is the declaration of the Syndicalists that the new social order will not be dependent on political action or a political state, but it will be an industrial commonwealth in which all governmental functions as we know them to-day will have ceased to exist, and in which each