SOCIALIST RECONTRUCTION OF SOCIETY - 4/4 - .BY DANIEL DE LEON

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4 GREATEST ORATORY SPEACHES IN WHOLE HISTORY OF SOCIALISM
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Socialist
Reconstruction of Society

by

Daniel DeLeon

An address delivered in
Union Temple, Minneapolis, Minn.,
July 10, 1905
Originally titled The Preamble of the IWW

Workingmen and Workingwomen of Minneapolis:
Our chairman did not overstate the case when he
said that the Industrialists’ convention, which closed
its sessions day before yesterday in Chicago after
two weeks of arduous labors, marks an epoch in the
annals of the labor movement of America. I may
add, although his words imply as much, that the
Chicago convention marks also a turning point in the
history of the land.
What was done there? You will be able to obtain
an approximate idea, a hint, from the public
declaration” the Preamble to the
Constitution―adopted by the convention.
The document is short; I shall make that shortness
still shorter by picking out just three of its clauses,
the clauses which I consider most important, and by
the light of which the significance, not only of all the
others, not only of the document itself, but of the
movement which uttered it may be appreciated,
gauged and understood.
The three clauses are these:

There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are
found among millions of working people, and the few,
who make up the employing class, have all the good
things of life.
The second clause declares:
The working class and the employing class have
nothing in common.
Lastly, but not least, the third clause is as follows:
Between these two classes a struggle must go a until
all the toilers come together on the political, as well as the
industrial field, and take and hold that which they
produce by their labor through an economic organization
of the working class without affiliation with any political
party.
These three clauses I propose to take up with you
in the order in which I have read them.

THE FIRST CLAUSE
I consider the first clause pivotal. Does it state a
truth? Does it state a falsehood? Is it true that the
condition of the working class is one of hunger and
want? Or is the contrary statement, heard so often,
the correct one? Upon this subject the men engaged
in the social question are irreconcilably divided.
Deep is the cleft that divides them.
On the one side stand those who were gathered, or
were represented, at Chicago. They maintain that the
condition of the working class is one of hunger, want
and privation; that from bad it is getting worse and
ever worse; that the plunder levied upon them
mounts ever higher; that not only does their relative
share of the wealth which they produce decline, but
that the absolute amount of the wealth that they
enjoy shrinks to ever smaller quantity in their hands.
That is the Socialist position.
Over against that position is the position of our
adversaries of various stripes” from the outspoken

capitalist down to the A. F. of L.-ite. They assert that
the condition of the working class is one of well-
being; they claim that from good it is getting better
and ever better; they maintain that both the absolute
amount of the wealth that the workingman enjoys
and his relative share of the wealth that he produces
is on the increase; some of them, like the English
organ of the New Yorker Volkszeitung Corporation,
the Worker of February 5 of this year, go so far in
their assault upon the Socialist position as to
pronounce “a wild exaggeration” the claim that “the
capitalist system filches from the working class four-
fifths of all that class produces.”
The two positions are irreconcilable. If the latter
be true, or even approximately true, then the other
two clauses that I am considering from the Preamble,
aye, the Preamble itself, together with the whole
work of the Chicago convention, fall like the
baseless fabric of a nightmare; contrariwise, if the
former; if the Socialist position is true, then all the
rest are conclusions that cannot be escaped, and the
Chicago convention built upon solid foundation. All,
accordingly, centers upon this first clause. Is it true?
Is it false? Let us see.
Let me introduce you to this document. You will
find it excitingly interesting. It is entitled, as you see,
“Uncle Sam’s Balance Sheet.” As you notice, it is
full of figures. Be not alarmed by them. I shall need
but two of these columns, the last two, for my
purpose. I have not cut out the others, in order not to
lay myself open to the charge of presenting a
“garbled document.” This poster is intended to give,
both statistically and pictorially, a convincing
presentation of the progress in affluence made by the
people of this country.
Let me introduce you a little closer to the
document. The columns of figures that you see were
not gathered by me; they were not gathered by any
Socialist; quite otherwise. This document was issued
or circulated by the National Committee of the
Republican party during last year’s presidential
campaign. Seeing, moreover, that on this first

column are given the successive Democratic and
Republican administrations that presided over the
nation’s destiny during the last fifty years, it is fair to
consider that the statistical, aye, also pictorial,
presentation of conditions cast upon this canvas, is
the joint product of both the ruling parties.
You may ask why I trot be fore you the figures of
the foe; why not present you with my own. I shall
tell you. If I say, “John Jones is a thief,” the charge
may or may not be believed: I would have to.prove
it. But if John Jones himself says he is a thief, then I
am saved all further trouble. It is a fundamental
principle of the law of evidence that a man’s own
testimony against himself is the best evidence
possible. By tacking that poster before you, I have
clapped the highest spokesmen of the capitalist class
upon the witness stand. They cannot go back upon
their own words. I propose to make them convict
themselves.
I must earnestly request you to desist from
applauding. The heat in this hall with this vast
audience is intense. We must all be anxious to get
out as soon as possible. These frequent interruptions
by applause only deter the hour of our joint
deliverance.
There is one more thing I wish to introduce you to
on this document before I take up the figures. As I
stated, the document is intended to be a pictorial,
besides a statistical presentation of affairs. Let me
invite your attention to this picture on the poster’s
extreme left. You will notice it is Uncle Sam” but
how lean, how hungry, how poor, how shabby, how
scraggy he looks! That is supposed to represent the
country as It started. Now look at this other picture
on the poster’s extreme right. You will notice by the
goatee and other tokens that it is still Uncle Sam” but
how changed! No longer are his clothes in tatters;
they must be of good material because they do not
burst despite his immense girth. He has a gay, jaunty
appearance; judging from that, from the tip of his
hat, the twirl in the feather that surmounts it, and the
twinkle in his eye, he is probably on a spree, half

overseas” his face shining with the oil of
contentment. That picture is intended to symbolize
the country today. Now let us find out who this
Uncle Sam is” the working man or the idle man, the
capitalist. The figures will tell us exactly.
This first column is headed “Product of
Manufacture.” It gives, from decade to decade, the
value of manufactured goods in the country, from
1860 down to 1900. I shall not read off the figures in
detail; they would be too cumbersome to carry in
your minds. Nor is that necessary. I shall mention
them only in round numbers.
For the decade of 1860 the value of manufactured
products amounted to nearly $2,000,000,000 in lump
sum.
For the decade of 1870 it amounted to over
$4,000,000,000.
For the next decade, 1880, it amounted to over
$5,000,000,000.
For the decade following, 1890, it was over
$9,000,000,000.
Finally, for the decade of 1900, the value of
manufactured products was over $13,000,000,000.
This is a magnificent progression, as you’ will
notice. From nearly $2,000,000,000 in 1860, the
wealth produced by labor rose steadily, until in 1900
it reached the gigantic figure of nearly seven times as
much” $13,000,000,000 ! This, no doubt, indicates a
vast increase of wealth with a corresponding
potential increase of well-being. So far so good.
But be warned in time. The existence of a good
thing is no evidence of its being enjoyed by the
working class.
I must right here request you to get your thinking
caps ready. Let me take an illustration. Suppose I say
that in this hall, with a thousand people, there is

$10,000 to be found. That fact alone is no indication
as to how that $10,000 is distributed. It may be that,
on an average, each one has about $10: It may also
be that of that $10,000 I alone have $9,999.99 in my
pocket, in which case only a lone copper would be
left to straggle in the pockets of the remaining 999
people in this hall.
This first column of the poster informs us what the
value is of the goods produced. It does not tell us
how that wealth is distributed. It only gives us an
idea of the increasing magnitude of labor’s
productivity. As to distribution, it is to the next
column that we must look; and now make ready for
the exciting interestingness that I promised you.
The next column is headed “Wages Paid.” Here
also the amounts are summed up from decade to
decade. I shall run over them, again in lump.
In the decade of 1860, the total wages paid to the
workingman was over $300,000,000.
In the next decade, 1870, the total wages rose
$400,000,060” they were over $700,000,000.
In the decade of 1880, they rose by $200,000,000
more, and amounted to over $900,000,000.
In 1890 the increase in the total wages paid was
double. The wages paid to the workingman was over
$1,800,000,000.
Finally, in 1900, the wages were over
$2,300,000,000, or $500,000,000 more than in 1890.
If we take a bird’s-eye view of this wages column,
its purpose is obvious. The way the figures are
arranged they are meant to convey two ideas” first,
that the share of the individual workingman is vast;
secondly, that his rise toward affluence is steady and
still vaster.
It is expected that when a workingman is told or
sees, black upon white, that in 1860 his class

received the gigantic pay of over $300,000,000, he
feels quite sure that he has a big chunk of that
amount. The largeness of the total is intended to act
as an opiate on his feverishly pinched purse. And
when, black upon white, that initial total is seen to
swell and double, from decade to decade, until it
reaches the giddy height reached in 1900, then he is
expected to be so thoroughly dazed and muddled that
he knows not whether he stands upon his feet or his
head, and is utterly incapable of thinking. The
gigantic wealth, that is supposed to be his, positively
crazes him.
Now let us look closer at these figures. From now
on until I get through with this poster, I must ask you
put your thinking caps on, and keep them tied firmly
to your heads.
Whenever figures of wages are presented to you,
you must submit them to two tests. Not until you
have done so will the figures convey to you any
practical information. I propose to submit with you
this column of wages to the two tests that I have in
mind.
The first test is to ascertain the relative size, or
percentage, that the wages bear to the total wealth
produced. The test is easy. It merely involves a plain
arithmetical calculation. Any fourteen-year-old child
should be able to do the sum. Let us apply the test.
The poster informs us that in the decade of 1860
the wages paid were over $300,000,000. It also
informs us that the wealth produced by labor during
that same period was nearly $2,000,000,000.
Applying that arithmetical calculation to the two full
sets of figures, we ascertain that the wages were
twenty per cent of the wealth produced.
Now we are in possession of a fact. It is not a very
cheering fact, but it is a useful fact to know. It is the
first fact that conveys practical information. By its
light the huge total wage of over $300,000,000
shrinks to its real, its social, dimensions. We now
know, from the figures given by the poster itself, that

in 1860, out of every $100 that he produced, the
workingman got only $20: somebody else got $80;
from it we learn that in 1860 the workingman was
plundered out of $80 for every $100 worth of wealth
that he brought into existence. Immediately a
suspicion arises in our minds as to who this fat and
festive Uncle Sam must be. But we snuff out the
suspicion; twenty per cent of one’s product is not
much; indeed, it is very little; but we remember that
this is only a start, and that the soaring figures
promise progress. Encouraged by this hope, we
proceed to test the next decade.
Applying the same arithmetical calculation to the
figures given on the poster for the decade of 1870,
we again ascertain the percentage of labor’s share”
the relation that the increased total wage bears to the
increased total production. What we there discover
gives such a shock to our nerves that the pencil
almost drops from our hands. Remember that in the
previous decade the share of labor was twenty per
cent; remember also that we were promised progress.
The expectation started by the promise justified the
hope that we would be getting at least one per cent
more. Vain hope! The share of labor, as brought out
by the test of the figures furnished by the poster
itself, is” eighteen per cent!
A curious progress, this. It is the progress of the
cow’s tail - downward. In 1860, the share of labor
was $20 out of every $100 worth of wealth that it
produced; in 1870, we find its share has gone down
to eighteen per cent. In 1860, the plunder levied
upon the workingman was $80 out of every $100; in
1870, the plunder, as revealed by the figures
furnished by the poster itself, is $82 out of every
$100 worth of wealth produced by the workingman.
The suspicion, started in our minds by the
revelations in 1860 as to who this stout and lusty
Uncle Sam is, revives. But again we suppress it. Our
hopes are buoyed up by the consideration that many
a babe, instead of immediately growing, is assailed
by the whooping cough, measles and bronchitis, and
declines, but only temporarily; he rallies quickly, and

then grows strong uninterruptedly. That may have
been the case with us in 1870. Cheered by these
thoughts we rush on to the next decade.
Again we apply that simple arithmetical
calculation, now to the figures of the wages paid and
the wealth produced in the decade of 1880. The
percentage traced by our pencil looks absurd. We
must have made a mistake. We go over the sum once
more. No mistake. The workingman’s share in 1880
is lower than the twenty per cent that it was in 1860;
it is lower than the eighteen per cent that it was in
1870; it is now seventeen per cent!
Arrived at this point, we are no longer able to
suppress the suspicion as to who this rotund and jolly
Uncle Sam is. Nevertheless, we do not yet lose heart.
Still mindful of the promise held out by the poster
regarding our progressive affluence we proceed to
the following decade.
The same arithmetical calculation is gone through.
We compute the ratio of the wages paid in 1890 to
the wealth produced in that decade. Lo, a surprise!
The decline has stopped, the percentage of labor’s
share in 1890 has risen above the percentage in
1880; it has risen above the percentage in 1870; it is
now again twenty per cent as it was in 1860.
Thankful for small favors, we look back. Having
expected another decline our agreeable surprise
almost makes us feel happy. Nevertheless, we
wonder where the “progress” comes in.
The figures furnished by the poster itself reveal
that we are in 1890 just where we were when we
started in 1860. After thirty years of arduous toil;
after thirty years, during which the soil of the land
was literally drenched with the sweat and blood and
marrow of the workingman; after thirty years during
which the American working class produced more
heiresses to the square inch than the working class of
any other country, to purchase European noblemen
for husbands; at the end of thirty years during which
the working class, as this poster itself shows,

produced a phenomenal amount of wealth” at the end
of these thirty years the American working class is
just where it was thirty years before, the wretched
retainer of only $20 out of every $100 worth of
wealth that it produced!
This is hardly a progress worth bragging about. It
is conservatism of misery. Nevertheless, hope
springs eternal in the human breast. Perhaps the long
lean years are at last over. Perhaps a brighter day is
suddenly to burst upon us, and we are suddenly to
make up for lost time so as to look in 1900 like this
affluent, well-fed, well-clad, jolly Uncle Sam who,
according to the poster, typifies the worker.
And so we apply the test to the figures for 1900,
the last ones furnished on the poster. The same
arithmetical calculation is resorted to. Woe is us!
Our hopes are dashed. The percentage of the share of
labor comes down kerslap. It is as low as it ever
was” seventeen per cent! The temporary rise in 1890
was but the flicker in a dying man’s eye” the
precursor of collapse.
The lie attempted to be given to the Socialist
regarding the outrageousness of the plunder that he
maintains the working class is subjected to by the
capitalist class, rolls down the throat of its utterer.
Even making allowance for the value of imported
raw material to which the labor of other countries
has given value, even making generous allowance
for all that due allowance should be made for, the
figures to which this poster testifies establish the
conclusion that the pittance of one-fifth of its product
is a liberal estimate of the share that the working
class is allowed to retain.
The first of the two tests, to which these figures of
“Wages Paid” must be put, dispels their halo; it
exposes a good portion of the naked and hideous
reality; it points to the conclusion that, not this lusty
Uncle Sam, but that other miserable being at the
other end of the poster typifies the American
workingman. The second test will establish the fact
beyond peradventure.

Let me go once more over the figures on this
column of “Wages Paid” so as to refresh your
memory. The wages paid in the manufacturing
industries are here given as:
Over $ 300,000,000 for 1860;
Over $ 700,000,000 for 1870;
Over $ 900,000,000 for 1880;
Over $1,800,000,000 for 1890; and
Over $2,300,000,000 for 1900.
The purpose of such a presentation of the run of
wages is obvious. The intention is to convey the idea
that the condition of the individual workingman
improves; that it has improved gigantically. The
presentation of figures in that way is intended to
convey the idea that the wages or earnings of the
individual workingman have soared upwards—and
to convey the idea crushingly. I shall prove to you
from the attitude of this witness, whom I have here
pinned on the stand, that his purpose is to obtain a
snap judgment upon imperfect information; that he is
guilty of that worst form of deception which consists
in stating a half-truth and suppressing the other half;
in short, that he is a swindler.
Keep your thinking caps tight on your heads. Is the
fact that in 1860 the output in wages amounted to
$300,000,000 and that in 1900 the output ran up
$2,000,000,000 more” is this fact enough to warrant
any conclusion as to the improved condition of the
work- ingman?
Let me illustrate with a simpler instance. Suppose
I were to tell you that last month I paid out $10 in
wages, and that this month I am paying out $20. I
would now be paying out double the amount in
wages that I paid out last month. Does that mean that
my workingmen are now getting twice as much
wages as they did last month? They may” and they
may not. Whether they do or do not, depends not
merely upon the increased total of the wages paid; it
depends upon something else besides. What is that
something else? Obviously, the number of men that I
employed last month, and the number of men that I
employ this month.

If last month I employed only two men, it would
mean that their wages averaged $5 apiece; if this
month, however, I am employing ten men, then,
although the total amount that I am now paying out
in wages doubled, the wages of my men would have
gone down by over fifty per cent. The total wage
may rise mountain high,. and yet the individual wage
may decline perpendicularly.
Let us now bring this column of dazzling figures
paid out in wages to the touchstone of the principle
that I have just elucidated. The first thing noticeable
is the total absence from this, or from any of the
other columns on the poster, of any statement with
regard to the number of men among whom these
successive grandiose figures have to be divided. No
statement of their number for 1860; no statement of
their number for 1870; no statement of their number
for 1880; no statement of their number for 1890; no
statement of their number for 1900.
The witness on the witness stand is dodging; he is
prevaricating; he is perjuring himself. We should
need no more than that to know what to do with his
case. Nevertheless, I do not propose to convict him
by indirection; I propose to convict him explicitly.
The census, furnished by the agents of the
identical class that got up this poster, informs us that,
in 1870, there were 2,053,966 workingmen
employed in the manufacturing industries. The
wages paid to them, according to this poster, were
$775,584,343. By dividing the total number of
workers to whom these wages were paid into that
amount we obtain the figure of $377 as the average
annual wage for that decade. Stick a pin there.
In the next decade, 1880, when the total wage
stated on this poster was $947,953,795, there were
according to the census 2,732,595 workingmen
engaged in manufacturing. Dividing this figure into
that grand total of wages we shall obtain the average
wages paid then, and thereby also an idea of the
workers’ condition. The figure obtained is $346” $31
less than before! Although the total wage had risen

during the last ten years about $200,000,000, the
individual wages went down $31!
We proceed to the following, the decade of 1890.
For that period the poster gives $1,891,228,321 as
the wages paid. The census informs us that that
amount must have been distributed among 4,251,535
workingmen. Again dividing this number into the
total wage paid to them we obtain $445 as the
average wages. This denotes a rise. What these
absolute rises amount to, that they vanish like mist
before the sun, that they are a snare and a delusion,
in fact a cheat” that I shall make clear presently. For
the present, sticking closely to the present line of
inquiry, we shall consider it an absolute gain.
So considering it, it is legitimate to contrast the
gain made by the workingmen with the absolute gain
made by the class whom we now know this fat Uncle
Sam represents. After twenty years of such toil as I
need not describe to you, we find that the wages of
the average workingman increased by the giddy
amount of $68 a year, or nineteen cents more a day,
while the small class that this jolly customer—this
rotund Uncle Sam” here represents, progressed
during that same period only to the tune of the
modest figure of $3,228,883,529” and there were no
four million of them among whom to divide that
little windfall.
We proceed to the next and last, the decade of
1900, when, according to this poster, the total wages
paid were $2,330,578,010, and, according to the
census, there were 5,306,143 workingmen engaged
in the manufacturing industries. Dividing the latter
figure into the former we obtain the average wages
received by the workingmen. It was $439” $6 less
than in 1890! Take notice” notwithstanding the total
amount of wages paid had increased by
$439,349,689, the actual earnings of the average
workingman decreased by $6!
I stated a minute ago that the average increases in
wages credited to the individual workingman are

“paper increases,” and I promised to prove it. I shall
proceed to do so now.
As we have seen, the wages declined $6 between
1890 and 1900. Nevertheless, the figures actually
show that from 1870 to 1900 there is an increase in
the average wage amounting to $62 a year. Even if
this paltry figure could stand, it would be a mockery.
What else but a mockery is an increase of $62 a year,
after thirty years of toil, for the class the sweat of
whose brow and the marrow of whose bone raised
the total wealth during that period by the gigantic
figure of $8,806,954,124! It is a tragic mockery.
There is but a step even from the tragic to the
ridiculous. 1 shall prove to you that even that paltry
$62 increase dwindles down to the proverbial “thirty
cents.” The line of argument that I shall now take up
is but a subdivision of that second test to which I
have been submitting this column of “Wages Paid,”
and which has knocked the bottom from under it.
The secondary test to which I shall now submit it
will smash the remaining fragments. 1 must request
you not to drop your thinking caps. You will need
them.
You saw how misleading, because insufficient,
were all comparisons of wages paid at different
epochs, without a simultaneous statement of the
number of wage earners, among whom the wages
were distributed in the respective periods. I shall
now prove to you how such comparisons of wages
paid at different epochs, even to the identical wage
earner, are also misleading, and given with “intent to
deceive,” unless other factors are considered.
Let me begin the argument on this head with an
illustration. Say that last year my wages were $1 a
day and that this year my wages are $1.25 a day. Is
the mere fact that I am receiving in cash twenty-five
cents more than last year sufficient premises from
which to conclude that this year I am better off by
twenty-five cents’ worth of wealth?

Let me help you to the answer by giving you a
further illustration. Suppose that last year, when my
wages were a hundred cents, the cost of living-rent,
food, clothing, the absolutely necessary necessaries
of life-was ninety-nine cents. What would follow? It
would follow that I had a penny over and above my
wants. I could either put that in the savings banks, or
invest it in stocks, as we are told that workingmen do
extensively.
But suppose further that now, when my wages are
one hundred and twenty-five cents, the cost of living
has gone up so as to run up to one hundred and
twenty-six cents. What is the result? The result is
that I am “busted.”
You see the point. He who tells us that our wages
have gone up without stating how the cost of living
is conducting itself” such a man is attempting a fraud
upon us. That, once more, is the case with the
witness whom I have nailed on this board. On that
subject also he is silent as the tomb. His silence,
however, need not leave me in the lurch. I don’t need
him. I shall, with your consent, turn you into living
statistical columns.
I request all those of you, the women included,
who certainly know a good deal on this head” all
those of you whose experience it is that the cost of
living is now lower than it was twenty or ten years
ago, to raise your right hands. I shall request the
chairman to count the hands.
I shall now request all those to raise their right
hands whose experience it is that the cost of living is
now just what it was twenty or ten years ago, no
lower and no higher. Kindly raise your right hands,
those of you who can testify to that. I shall again
request the chairman to count the hands.
I shall take a third poll. Let all those raise their
right hands whose experience it is that the cost of
living has gone up and gone up perceptibly. Will the
chairman count?

From the Atlantic, across and beyond the
Mississippi, that is the identical response I have
everywhere received from the audiences that faced
me. Beginning with rent, the necessaries of life have
everywhere gone up. There goes a big chunk” the
bulk, probably even more” of that wondrous $62
increase in wages since 1876!
I shall now proceed to knock out whatever fraction
may possibly still remain of the “increase.” You
have seen that a knowledge of the cost of living is
indispensable in order to form a correct idea as to
whether an increase in wages means improved
conditions. You have seen that there may be an
increase in wages and yet no proportional
improvement in conditions if the cost of living has
increased. Intimately connected with the subject of
the price paid for goods is the subject of the quality
of the goods. Again let me illustrate before entering
upon the subject itself.
Suppose that twenty years ago I paid $10 for a suit
of clothes and that that suit lasted me two years, say
two winters. Now, suppose again that this year a suit
of clothes, that looks as good. lasts me only one year,
say one winter. What does that show in point of
price? It shows that, whereas twenty years ago a $10-
bill furnished me with clothing for two years, now a
$ 10-bill furnishes me with clothing for only one
year. In other words, if I do not wish to be in rags the
second year, the clothing that twenty years ago cost
me only $10, now costs me $20. The conclusion
from this fact is that “deterioration” of goods spells
“increased price.” On the face of things the price has
remained what it was; in point of fact it went up.
Now then, both in food and clothing the extent to
which deterioration has gone during the last twenty
years staggers imagination. The reports of the
shoddy turned out by our factories would be
incredible were they not so well authenticated. This
is a matter of general experience. It is particularly the
housekeeper who makes acquaintance with this fact.
Inquire from any woman fifty years old today and
she will be able to tell you upon the subject tales that

are sad. One elderly housekeeper whom I
interrogated upon the subject put it this way: “When
I married and bought a suit of underclothing for
Henry it lasted two years, often longer; now when I
get any underclothing I have to start darning the
darned thing from the time it is put on.”
Similarly with food. There is hardly an article of
food, especially the food that the workingman can
afford to buy, that is not adulterated, consequently,
that has not deteriorated in quality. Essays galore are
cropping up upon the extent to which this baneful
practice has gone. These essays show that health is
thereby undermined, even if life is not thereby
speedily snuffed out. One of these essays of recent
date claims that the food adulterations are directly
responsible for the death of over 400,000 infants a
year; and it traces the sickness and death of
thousands upon thousands of adults to the same
cause.
Let me quote another authority upon this head.
You will find on page 132 of the Congressional
Record under date of last December 12, the
following passage. It is a passage from the speech
delivered by Senator Stewart in the course of the
debate on the food bill:
“I do not think the country has any idea of the extent of
the poisons that are administered in the food that is sold
and eaten in this country. I think it is sapping the
foundation of the constitution of our people. If we had to
raise soldiers now as we did in 1861 I do not believe that
throughout the country we could find as large a
percentage of young men fit for hard service as there
were at that time.”
The proof of the pudding, in this as in everything
else, ever lies in the eating. If wages really increase,
and the cost of living does not rise, and the
necessaries of life” food and clothing” do not
deteriorate; if they remain good or even improve,
what must be the result? Obviously the people who
enjoy them must be hale and hearty; they must be
healthy while they live, and their lives must be long.
If, on the contrary, earnings barely increase and that

increase is more than eaten up by higher prices and
by the deterioration of such necessaries of life as
food and clothing, the fact is bound to appear in the
condition of the class that is affected thereby.
If you ever are in New York, take a walk in the
evening on 42nd Street, or Fifth Avenue where the
clubs are located of the Republican and Democratic
parties, and of several other capitalist societies.
There must be similar clubs here in Minneapolis;
they are found in all our large cities, even in some
smaller manufacturing towns. Peep through the large
pier-glass windows into the gorgeous precincts. You
will see grey heads abound. Is it that these gentlemen
are prematurely grey? Is it that they are so poorly fed
and clad that it has turned their hair? Hardly! I admit
that their aged appearance is somewhat to be
accounted for by their lives of dissipation, and their
covert Mormon practices. Nevertheless, they have
reached old age. Such is the good quality of the
goods that they consume that all their dissipations
and immoral practices do not prevent their reaching
old age.
Having taken in that sight, move into the wards
which the working class inhabit, and drop into the
places where workingmen congregate. Make sure
and take along a little pad of paper and a pencil. On
that pad jot down a tally mark for every grey head
that you come across. You will find few indeed to
record. Why, look at this assemblage of
workingmen. There is hardly a grey head among
them. In an assemblage of half this size, but of
capitalists, you would find the grey heads numerous.
Among workingmen they are far and few between. Is
it that the workingmen are so well-fed and so well-
clothed that their hair preserves its color even into
old age, and thus conceals their years? Oh, no! The
grey heads are few among them because their hair is
not given a chance to turn. Long before the season,
they have sunk into early graves, the victims of
intense toil, aggravated by small earnings, and this in
turn aggravated by the adulteration of the goods that
alone their earnings can purchase.

An interesting sidelight is thrown upon this subject
by the official report recently made to his
government by the British consul in Chicago.
Speaking of the machinists in particular, he said that
if a machinist in the United States is forty-two years
of age and out of work, it is difficult for him to get a
job; and he proceeds to explain why” said he, if the
man has worked as hard as he is expected to, then he
is worn out at forty-two; if he is not worn out, then it
is a sign that he did not work so hard as he is
expected to, and they have no use for him either way.
I wish to furnish one more piece of testimony
under this head before I dismiss the subject. The man
I am about to quote is not a “fire-brand agitator";
although he often spoke in public, his subject never
was of the sort that might tempt a man to
exaggeration. It is Huxley, the slow, plodding,
accurate scientist. He said that four-fifths of the
people die of slow starvation. There may be those
among you who are of a statistical turn of mind. If
such there be, they may have nosed among the
statistics of mortality furnished by the census and
other official sources. Such friends of statistical turn
of mind may say: “Why, that’s nonsense; a man or
two may occasionally die of starvation; but hundreds
and thousands of them, impossible! I have seen the
statistics on mortality; I have seen the list of
diseases; there are consumption, pneumonia, all sorts
of other diseases; but I never saw starvation entered
among the causes of death.”
People holding such views are in error; in serious
error. A man may be dying of slow starvation and
not know it. His stomach may be full; he may never
have felt the gnawings of hunger; and yet he may be
dying of slow starvation. If in summer a man is not
properly clad, he is emitting more heat than his
system can stand” he is dying of slow starvation; if
in winter he is not clad warm enough, he is
consuming more heat than his system can afford” he
is dying of slow starvation; his stomach may be
replete, he may imagine himself well-fed, but if the
matter in that stomach is adulterated food, then the
organisms that carry the nutrition from the stomach,

and spread it throughout the body, find no nutrition
to carry, the tissues that are consumed are only
partially replaced” that man is dying of slow
starvation.
The fact is brought home to him when it is too
late; aye, it is concealed from him and from his
friends even then. He catches a cold; a robust
constitution would cast off the distemper without
difficulty; his constitution, however, is not robust;
his constitution has long been drained by slow
starvation; the slight distemper throws him on his
beam ends; it develops into pneumonia; he dies; the
physician reports pneumonia as the “cause of death”
” but starvation it was.
And so down the line of consumption,
rheumatism, diabetes and most of the other ills
plentifully bestowed upon the working class by the
“increased wages” that the capitalist class lavishes
upon the working class. Because” never lose sight of
this fact” it is the identical capitalist class which
regulates wages, on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, raises the cost of living, and adulterates the
goods needed to live on, which, as you saw, is but
another form of raising prices.
We are through with the witness. He stands
convicted out of his own mouth. The condition of the
working class has gone from bad to worse. Not this
roly-poly of an Uncle Sam, but that other emaciated
being typifies the wage earner of the land.
Some say, and I am of those, that craft or pure and
simple unionism has promoted, aye, urged on these
wretched conditions. Others, I know, claim that pure
and simple or craft unionism is not to be held
responsible; they claim that, on the contrary, were it
not for pure and simple unionism, conditions would
now be even worse. Those who are of this opinion
hold that, instead of being decried, pure and simple
unionism should be praised for what it does.
Even accepting this, the most favorable summary
possible of the work of pure and simpledom, it

would follow that pure and simpledom is, at best, a
brake to check the downward run of the chariot of
labor; it would follow that pure and simpledom not
only is utterly incompetent to emancipate the
working class, but that it is not even able to prevent
decline; that all there is in it is the capacity to
slacken or reduce the downward trend of things.
Even accepting this most favorable of views, it
would be an argument to cast the thing aside.
The mission of unionism is not to act as rear guard
to an army defeated, seasoned in defeat, habituated
to defeat, and fit only for defeat. The mission of
unionism is to organize and drill the working class
for final victory” to “take and hold” the machinery of
production, which means the administration of the
country.
I shall, however, prove to you that pure and
simpledom deserves no credit whatever. I shall prove
that it is directly responsible for existing evils, that it
is an accomplice in capitalist crime, and has become
a scourge to the working class.

THE SECOND CLAUSE
This takes me to the second clause of the three
clauses of the Preamble that I proposed to take up
with you, the last two of which are, as I stated in
opening, pivoted upon the first which I have just
demonstrated. The second clause” I shall read it
again” is as follows:
The working class and the employing class have
nothing in common.
In a way, this clause also stands proved by the
figures on this poster, together with the obvious
conclusions that flow from them. Whatever the
interests may be of a class whose material welfare
steadily towers up, and the interests of the class
whose material welfare, and all that thereupon
depends, sinks perpendicularly and in even tempo

with the former’s rise, as illustrated by these
figures—whatever these two sets of interests may be,
they can have nothing in common. The relations
between these two sets of interests are not even the
relations of two, though opposing, yet supplementary
forces, such as physics tells us of. They are the
relations between the vampire and the victim, whose
blood it drains” and such relations surely establish
nothing in common. Of all one-sided relations, these
relations “take the cake and the pie.” Indeed, people
who prate about the “mutuality," the “brotherhood,”
the “identity” of interests of the capitalist, or
employing class, and the working class, demand of
the workingman that for which they would spank
their own children if they believed it possible. They
want of you that you believe it possible to divide an
apple between two men in such a way that each shall
have the bigger chunk. An impossibility!
If the workingman produces four dollars and the
capitalist takes two, there are only two left to the
workingman; if the capitalist takes three, the
workingman has to put up with one; if the capitalist
appropriates three and a half, there is nothing but
fifty cents left to the workingman. Inversely, if the
workingman hangs on to a whole dollar, the
capitalist’s share is reduced to three; if the
workingman pushes forward and keeps two, there are
but two left for the capitalist; should the workingman
preserve three, the capitalist would have to put up
with one; and should the workingman “divide” in
such a way that he “takes and holds” all that he
produced, my capitalist will have to go to work. In
other words, he would cease to be a capitalist.
Now, then, the figures on this poster quite clearly
illustrate the law that underlies the capitalist system
of production. That law does not aid the workingman
to preserve an increasing share of his product; it aids,
aye, it requires the capitalist to intensify his plunder
increasingly. His chunk must be ever thicker, ever
and correspondingly thinner must be the
workingman’s slice. No common interest there! As
far as this aspect of the clause which I have just read
is concerned, it is too obvious to require further

proof. But weightier sense and meaning, meaning
and sense of more immediate, practical pith and
moment lie imbedded in that clause.
It is an inevitable consequence of the falsehood
regarding the hand-in-hand prosperity of capitalists
and workingmen that their relations are mutual, and,
consequently, that they stand upon a footing of
equality. Of course, if the two are getting along
swimmingly, they must be peers, even if it be
conceded that their peerage may be of different rank.
Down from that parent falsehood, set afloat by the
capitalist professors, politicians and pulpiteers, and
zealously carried into the ranks of pure and simple
unionism by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist
class, a long line of descent of increasingly insidious
and practically pestiferous falsehoods may be traced.
The ancestral falsehood of the hand-in-hand progress
of capitalist and workingman begets the son-
falsehood of the equality of workingman and
capitalist; the son-falsehood begets the grandson-
fraud of “contracts"; and you will see how the
grandson-fraud litters a prolific progeny of its ilk to
labor’s undoing.
What is a “contract"?
I am not going to give you any Socialist definition
of the term. The term has nothing to do with
Socialism. It is a term the meaning of which has
grown up with the race’s experience. The definition I
shall give is the law book definition. It is the
definition accepted and acted upon in all the courts
of equity.
A contract is an agreement entered into by two
equal parties; a contract is an agreement entered into
between peers; a contract is an agreement entered
into by two freemen. Where the parties to a thing
called a contract fall within these categories, they are
said to be of contracting mind and power, and the
document is valid; where that which is called a
contract lacks any of these essential qualities,
especially if it lacks them all, the thing is null, void

and of no effect; it is a badge of fraud of which he is
guilty who imposes the contract upon the other.
Let me illustrate:
Suppose that some Minneapolis agent of a lecture
bureau, anxious to secure my invaluable services as a
speaker for this evening, had written to me in New
York, asking for my terms; and suppose I had
answered that I would come for $500. He would
have written back wanting me to come down a peg
or so. I would have replied. Suppose that after
considerable chaffering I had agreed upon $400 and
he had yielded, whereupon a document would have
been drawn up reading somewhat like this:
John Jones, party of the first part, and Daniel De Leon,
party of the second part, have mutually covenanted and
agreed that the party of the second part will deliver an
address in Minneapolis on the 10th day of July, and the
party of the first part will pay the party of the second part
for his services the sum of $400 in U.S. currency.
This document being signed would be a contract.
If on the appointed day I came, delivered the goods,
and John Jones failed to pay me, I would have a just
cause of action against him for breach of contract. If,
on the other hand, I failed to put in an appearance, he
could sue and recover damages from me on the
ground of my breach of contract. Whatever people
may think of the steepness of my price, the contract
would stand. It would stand” why? Because both he
and I were free to accept or reject; neither of us acted
under compulsion; we were both free agents.
But now suppose that, instead of writing, he came
down to New York, rushed into my office, whipped
a Colt’s horse pistol out of his hip pocket, cocked
and held it with the muzzle an inch from my head,
and said: “Sign this!” laying before me a sheet of
paper containing this legend:
John Jones, party of the first part, and Daniel De Leon,
party of the second part, have mutually covenanted and
solemnly agreed and bound themselves as follows, to wit:
that the party of the second part will deliver an address in
Minneapolis on the 10th day of July, and the party of the

first part will pay the party of the second part for his
services the sum of five cents, which sum of five cents
the party of the second part hereby, acknowledges to be a
liberal payment for his services, the said sum being
agreed upon after a friendly and mutual understanding
between the said party of the first part and the said party
of the second part.
Would I sign? Why, of course, I would! I would
sign above, below, to the right, to the left. I would
never stop signing. I would keep on signing like a
“moving picture,” until that pistol was removed from
its close proximity to my temple.
That is the situation of labor when it signs
“contracts.”
Now, say that he, John Jones, returns to
Minneapolis with (he “contract” in his pocket, and a
glow of righteous, patriotic contentment on his face.
Say he hires a hall, prints and circulates posters
announcing the meeting and address, and inserts
advertisements in the papers; say he even pays the
bills, and does not cheat in that also. The day of the
meeting, the hour arrives” but not I. The hall fills”
but not with me. Hour upon hour passes” whoever
else may be there, I am absent. The audience storms
at him; calls him names; insists upon and gets its
admission moneys back. Say that, indignant at my
“breach of contract,” John Jones were to institute a
suit for damages against me.
What would happen?
He would be thrown out of court for a swindler, he
might even be prosecuted for “assault with intent to
kill.” That “contract” is null, void and of no effect; it
is a badge of fraud of which he is guilty; it is all that
because I was not free, because he held me under
duress.
Exactly so with the workingman who signs
“contracts"; exactly so with the capitalist who extorts
them.
The workingman does not stand upon a footing of
equality with the capitalist; he is not of contracting

mind and power with the employer. The latter holds
over him the whip of hunger that the capitalist
system places in the hands of the master, and with
the aid of which he can cow his wage slave into
acquiescence.
Why, among themselves, and even in their public
utterances, when anger throws them off their guard,
the apologists for capitalism blurt out the fact that
“only the lash of hunger” can keep the workingman
in the treadmill. At the bar of man and of justice the
“contracts” that labor signs are null, void and of no
effect.
And yet what do we see? The spectacle is of such
daily occurrence that it has assumed the nature of a
“system,” of a deliberate maneuver, indulged in by
employers jointly with their labor lieutenants to
paralyze the labor movement; aye, worse yet, to give
it the aspect of a rat pit.
This is the way it works. Say I am a railroad
magnate. I make my “schedules” or contracts, not
with all my employees together, but with each craft
separately” and there cannot be too many
autonomous crafts among them to suit me.
Incidentally, let me call your attention to the
circumstance that the A. F. of L. is steadily
disintegrating its national and international unions
into autonomous crafts. Its candle holders endeavor
to make much out of some few exceptional
instances, in order to make it appear that “the A. F.
of L. itself is steadily becoming industrialist.” The
increasing volume of jurisdictional feuds tells the
opposite tale. As I proceed you will be able to
appreciate the meaning of the absolute craft
autonomy tendency that manifests itself in the A. F.
of L. But to return.
I make my separate contract with each of the
separate crafts engaged on my railroad line” and
there cannot be too many of them to suit me. My
contract with my locomotive engineers is drawn up
to expire, we shall say, on April 15; my contract with
my switchmen is drawn up to expire on September 3;

my contract with my firemen is drawn up to expire,
say, on January 21; my contract with my trainmen is
drawn up to expire, say, on November 30” and so
forth, down the line of as many crafts as pure and
simple unionism splits my workingmen into, and it
can’t split them into too many for my comfort. Each
separate craft being tied up with a separate contract,
expiring on a separate date, I have the industry at my
mercy.
Say that, “contract” or no “contract,” obedient to
that underlying law of the capitalist endless screw,
that economic law that neither capitalist nor his class
can rein in, that relentless economic law which
dictates their conduct in their wrestlings with one
another and that causes the capitalists to interpret
these contracts to suit themselves” say that my
switchmen are driven to rebellion and strike. What
do I do? I telephone to my chief labor lieutenants”
the presidents, grand chiefs and superlative
secretaries of the national unions” and,
simultaneously, I touch the button and set the press
agoing, both the capitalist newspapers and the labor
papers, so called, edited by the pupils of the Civic
Federation. My labor lieutenants hasten to respond to
my call. Like blackbirds, they hie themselves to the
scene from the four quarters of the compass. And
then, to the orchestration of: “Infamous men, they
have broken their contracts! Scandalous men, they
have violated their sacred agreement!” and more to
this effect from the press that I have set agoing, and
that causes every old woman of both sexes and of all
ages to look askance at my striking switchmen as so
many serpents under the grass” to the tune of that
artificial concert my national labor lieutenants fall to
work. They do not turn their attention to the men on
strike; the contract-breaking miscreants are below
the contempt of my virtuous labor lieutenant. They
call around them the men in the other departments”
engineers, firemen, conductors, etc.-and with the aid
of their understrappers, the local skates, address
them in this language:
“Behold yonder sinks of iniquity! They have
broken their contracts! It is a wonder the lightning of

heaven does not come down and blast them. Surely
the bones of the patriotic founders of this Republic
are rattling in their graves at the discovery that there
can be such lawless men encumbering this soil of
freedom. Look at `em! They broke their contracts!
Surely you will not do the same? Surely you will not
be so base! Surely you will be true!”
And the men thus addressed cross their arms over
their manly chests, and bowing low to the Goddess
of Contract, that has been conjured up before them
for the occasion, make answer:
“Not we! We shall be loyal to our word. We shall
respect our agreements. We shall not break our
sacred contracts!”
Which, translated into English, means” “We shall
scab upon our fellow wage slaves.” And they do!
And thus we have seen union locomotive engineers
scabbing it upon union firemen, and union firemen
scabbing it upon union brakemen, and union
brakemen scabbing it upon union switchmen, down
the line; and we have seen all of these jointly
scabbing it upon union trolleymen and upon all
manner of other union men on strike by transporting
either the militia and military to dragoon the workers
into submission, or the hungry unemployed to take
the places of the men who went out. Thus we have
seen union molders scabbing it upon machinists;
union machinists scabbing it upon union elevator
men; union cigarmakers upon waiters; union waiters
upon brewers; union brewers upon glucose workers;
union teamsters upon carpenters; union bricklayers
upon cement workers; union soft coal miners upon
hard coal miners” and so down to the very last and
least of the craft organizations, and all against each.
It is a fact, deep with significance, though it seems
to escape the observation of superficial observers,
that it is not the unorganized scab who breaks the
strikes, but the organized craft that really does the
dirty work; and thus each craft when itself involved
in a strike fights heroically, when not involved

demeans itself as arrant scabs; betrays its class” all in
fatuous reverence to “contracts” !
Only the other day we had a glaring illustration of
this disgraceful performance in the city of New
York, when the men on the Belmont Interborough
struck for living conditions, and Gompers, together
with the other lackeys of the Belmont Civic
Federation, ably assisted by their local sub-lackeys,
such as Mr. Morris Braun of the Gompers
International Cigarmakers’ Union No. 144, howled
down the men on strike as contract breakers, revoked
their charters as “unworthy of unionism," proclaimed
directly to Belmont that “the men had done wrong,”
and meekly begged his pardon for the sinners.
Still another and even more pathetic instance was
that of the strike of the New York newsboys, to
whom Hearst had raised the price of his paper. These
little tots, who by their very appearance herald in the
open the merciless cruelty of capitalism even against
the defenseless child; underclad, underfed,
undershod; deprived of the innocent joys of
childhood that are so essential to the building up of
the future man; stunted in schooling; prematurely
thrown into the temptation of vice; walking, running,
yelling monuments of capitalist cannibalism” these
waifs walked before Typographical Union No. 6 and
asked for support, for the support of men many of
whom were fathers themselves and who, had they
struck with the boys, certainly would have insured
them victory. Did they?
“An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven,
Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?”
asks the scoundrel in Shakespeare.
“A contract! A contract! We have a contract in the
pocket of our master Hearst! Shall we lay breach of
contract upon our conscience?" asked the craft union
compositors. Of course they wouldn’t! They
slobbered over the boys their “sympathies"; they
bestowed upon them all the sweet words that butter
no parsnips” and the boys went down in defeat.

It should be here added, although a digression, that
when a year or so later the identical typographical
union had its strike against the Sun, those bearded
men went down upon their knees before the identical
boys whom they had left ill the lurch, and implored
their support. Let the fact be recorded as all evidence
of the inherent nobility of the human heart, and in
honor of childhood” the ever-renewing promise that
human feeling and human instinct shall not perish
from the earth — that when appealed to, the boys
returned evil with good, and helped the printers fight
their strike. It was a pure breath of industrialism.
And in Chicago, during recent months, what was
the spectacle presented there? We saw the garment
workers valiantly, with drums beating and colors
flying, march to the fray. They fought bravely and
were beaten off the field. Thereupon the teamsters
put on war paint and fell to in support of the routed
garment workers. They, too, fought with the
desperation of heroes, and went down. Possibly after
them some third division of labor may take the field
to avenge the cause of the teamsters, after these went
down in the attempt to avenge the garment workers
after their fight was lost!
Do you know what would happen to the general
who, in face of the embattled foe, instead of
concentrating his forces for the fray, were to send
first one small division into the field of battle; wait
until that was annihilated; then send a second small
division; again wait until that was routed; and then
send a third, likewise to be wiped out, until his whole
powerful army was demoralized and took to flight?
Do you know what would happen to that general? He
would be grabbed by the neck, courtmartialed and
shot in the back for treason.
Now I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet;
yet, concluding from the facts that are thronging to
the bar, I venture the statement on this 10th day of
July, 1905, that the day is nigh when the working
class of America will court-martial the Gomperses,
the Mitchells, the Stoneses whose generalship is

sacrificing the army of labor—court-martial them for
treason to the working class.
Thus we trace, in direct line of descent from the
ancestral falsehood concerning the mutuality of
relations between the employing class and the
working class, a long genealogy of fraudulent
principles, culminating in “contracting” the working
class into paralysis, and the crop of evils that flow
therefrom. Falsehood can only breed falsehood, and
falsehood’s spawn is evil; inversely, evil can be sired
and damed by falsehood only. In the framework of
the capitalist social system, the working class and the
employing or capitalist class have nothing in
common. The principle is a beacon on the track of
labor’s march to emancipation; the contrary principle
is a false light that lures to social wreck.

THE THIRD CLAUSE
The third clause of the three leading and typical
clauses in the preamble is the longest of the three; it
is of special importance. I must bespeak your
continued and close attention:
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until
all the toilers come together on the political, as well a on
the industrial field, and take and hold that which they
produce by their labor through an economic organization
of the working class, without affiliation with any political
party.
This clause contains two distinct ideas joined in
two separate sentences. The two ideas are so
distinct” the idea of the absolute necessity of
political unity, and the seemingly contrary idea of
the sufficiency of economic organization ultimately
to strike the shackles from the wage slave” that they
must be treated separately.

1. POLITICAL UNITY

I cannot claim for the industrialist movement and
its preamble, or declaration of principles, the palm of
originality over craft unionism for the thought that is
implied in the sentence that the toilers must “come
together on the political as well as on the industrial
field." The thought therein implied is that politics is
a concern of unionism. This is no new thought.
Strange as it may seem at first blush, it is a thought
that pervades craft unionism as well; stranger still, it
is a thought that the labor lieutenants of the capitalist
class, in charge of craft or pure and simple unionism,
have made themselves the special guardians of. On
this head, the merit of industrialism does not lie in
the utterance of a new thought. The great merit lies
in uttering loudly a fact. which, being kept secret by
the said labor lieutenants, enabled them to profit by it
at the expense of the membership. It is the case of a
guardian concealing from his wards the hidden
riches of their estate and, on the sly, trafficking upon
those riches himself. Much lies in the thorough
apprehension of these facts.
Who of you has not witnessed the sight of a labor
leader jumping up at a craft union meeting, as if a
torpedo had exploded under his seat, every time the
economics or sociology of labor was expounded?
The sight is common. Whatever the subject that
presents itself to a union, it cannot choose but be
handled from one of two viewpoints” either from the
viewpoint of capitalism, or from the viewpoint of
labor, that is, Socialist economics. Impassive,
complacently smiling, perhaps even blissfully
snoozing, the labor faker will sit in his seat so long
as the discussion is carried on along capitalist lines.
But let the first word be uttered that has the ring of
Socialist, that is, labor economics, and you will
notice a sudden transformation. Like a faithful
watchdog of capitalism, the faker will snarl, jump up
and bark.
I have more than once deliberately tested the thing
at the meetings of craft unions with which I
happened to be connected. I would join a discussion
that was in progress, peacefully in progress, with the
faker looking on unconcerriedly” discussions on

immigration, discussions on boycotts, discussions on
wages, discussions on tenements, discussions on the
liquor traffic, etc., etc. I would carefully avoid the
word “politics"; deliberately would I avoid it.
Neither the word “politics," let alone the name
“Socialist Labor Party” would drop from my lips.
They were as words tabooed, and alien to me while I
spoke. But lo, no sooner did I deploy my argument
so as to bring out the labor, which is the Socialist,
viewpoint of the subject, than up would jump the
watchdog of capitalism with the protest: “No politics
in the union.”
He was right; that is to say, labor or Socialist
economics is politics. By the same token capitalist
economics likewise is politics. Capitalist economics
is at home, capitalist economics is tolerated,
capitalist economics is safeguarded, aye, capitalist
economics is fought for in craft unionism” who
would dare gainsay that politics is a palpitating fact
in the union? Or who would dare deny that the labor
lieutenant of the capitalist class is the special
custodian of that treasure? It is proven.
Upon this particular head” the head that politics is
the concern of unionism” industrialism utters no new
principle, leastwise a principle that it would lie in the
mouth of craft unionism to dispute. Great, however,
is the merit of industrialism in the consequences that
flow from its utterance. Through craft unionism the
watchdogs of the capitalist class keep the treasure a
secret for their private gain. By openly proclaiming
the treasure, industrialism renders it public property.
The consequences that flow herefrom mark the
turning down of an old and the turning up of a new
leaf. That leaf is inscribed “political unity.”
It is not a political organization” as the preamble
indicates and I shall prove” that can “take and hold”
the land and the capital and the fullness thereof.
That” as the preamble proclaims and I shall prove” is
the function reserved for the economic organization
of the working class. Nevertheless, society moves
from stage to stage, not via a succession of
shipwrecks, but via evolution. Each succeeding

social stage connects with the one preceding. Before
the new is established and its methods are in
operation, the methods of the old are perforce
resorted to. They are the navel strings of the child
aborning.
The evolution from the capitalist system to
Socialism marks a revolution of first rank. The
methods of the Socialist Republic will be methods
that flow from its own material framework. The
latter is so diametrically the opposite of the capitalist
social framework that the two methods will bear no
comparison. Capitalist society requires the political
State; accordingly, its economics translate
themselves into political tenets; Socialist society, on
the contrary, knows nothing of the political State: in
Socialist society the political State is a thing of the
past, either withered out of existence by disuse or
amputated” according as circumstances may dictate.
For all that, Socialism is the outgrowth of the
higher development from capitalism. As such, the
methods of the Socialist movement on its march
toward Socialist society are perforce primarily
dictated by the capitalist shell from which Socialism
is hatching. Seeing that capitalist economics translate
themselves into politics, Socialist economics cannot
wholly escape the process. A part, the better, the
constructive part of Socialist economics translates
itself into the industrial organization of the working
class: it translates itself into that formation that
outlines the mold of the future social system; another
part of Socialist economics, however, inevitably
translates itself into politics: it inevitably takes that
form that matches capitalist methods.
Upon that plane the Socialist movement crosses
swords with the modern ruling class” these to
uphold, it to dislodge them from and dismantle their
robber burg. This is the fact that lies at the bottom of
the Marxian tenet to the effect that the labor
movement is essentially political. In a country like
ours, where, in keeping with full-fledged capitalism,
the suffrage is universal, the inevitable political

character of the labor movement is rendered all the
more marked.
The sentence of the preamble that we are now
considering, and which urges the necessity of
political as well as industrial unity, is planted upon
these facts. Where, for instance, one set of
workingmen imagine that they should pool their
votes with their free trade employers, it is out of all
question that they can be a unit on the industrial field
with another set of workingmen whose economic
views are that protection guarantees them work and
better wages. Where, to take another issue, one set of
workingmen share the capitalist economic notion
that the gold standard means good wages, they
cannot possibly be united on the political field with
those of their fellow wage slaves whose political
tenet on finance is that plentiful money means
plentiful wages. These two sets cannot be
industrially united, any more than politically, for the
simple reason that they do not stand upon the
bedrock of the class struggle. Trace their economic
and their political views to their respective sources,
and you will find them to be identical” the
fundamental error that the employee’s condition is
dependent upon the condition of the employer.
The baneful result of the error is obvious:
employers are economically divided into warring,
competing clans; consequently, if the workingmen
are appendages to their employers, they cannot
choose but be likewise divided. Class ignorance,
accordingly, scatters the ranks of the working class.
The rupture produced upon the industrial field is
reflected upon the political field, and there we see
the labor vote likewise scattered” cast for all the
scores of parties in the field, from the soundest
Socialist down even to utopian prohibitionist; and,
on the other hand, the rupture exhibited upon the
political reacts back upon and intensifies the division
on the industrial field where, thanks to the baneful
policy of craft unionism, we see labor’s hand at
labor’s own throat.

In this connection the speculative question has
sprung up in some minds whether political unity is
brought about by industrial unity, or industrial unity
by political unity. As a question of speculative
philosophy, it may be relegated to the realm of idle
discussion. In natural philosophy a similar question
appears in the conundrum: What was first, the hen or
the egg? One man answers: “Of course, the hen:
without the hen, there is no fowl to lay the egg";
another declares: “Nonsense, the egg must have been
first: without the egg, there is nothing for the hen to
be hatched out of.” We know that in material life the
evolutionary process is so gradual that result reacts
back upon cause in such an endless chain that, in the
limited span of man’s observation, the exact line of
demarcation is not always ascertainable. Cause and
effect become relative matters, frequently dependent
upon the viewpoint of the moment. It is likewise in
social matters.
As an abstract question, it is idle speculation
whether political clearness causes economic
clearness, or, inversely, economic clearness brings
about political clearness. We know that at certain
stages of the movement political clearness may be
ahead of industrial clearness, and will act upon and
stimulate it; likewise do we know that at certain
other stages, there is no political unity, consequently,
no political clearness possible except as a result of
economic unity, and that presupposes clearness. He
who is engaged in raising poultry will get the eggs
from which to hatch the hens; he who wants eggs for
the market will get the hens to lay them; and he who
wants both will cultivate both; he will not wear out
his energies in speculations regarding the “original
cause.”
That is the posture of the preamble of the
Industrial Workers of the World. It recognizes the
necessity of both political and industrial unity; it
proclaims the fact; nor does it conceal its opinion as
to which of the two, at this stage of the movement,
must precede in order to make the other possible.
The construction of the sentence under
consideration, proclaiming the necessity of unity “on

the political field, as well as on the industrial, field,”
amply indicates which of the two unities
industrialism considers to be the necessary
prerequisite at this stage of the labor movement in
America. The sentence proclaims the fact that, at the
stage reached by the labor movement in America, the
political unity of the working class can only be the
reflex of economic unity; it also proclaims the
underlying, the pregnant fact that the political
movement is absolutely the reflex of economic
organization.
A brilliant passage in Marx’s “Eighteenth
Brumaire” casts a brilliant sidelight upon this
particular subject. Referring to the conduct of the
feudal lords of England during the British
Revolution, Marx says they believed that the British
Crown and the Church of England were the subjects
of their enthusiasm, until the hour of danger wrung
from them the admission that what they really
enthused for was ground rent.
And so we see the editors of the privately owned
press of the Socialist or Social Democratic Party in
the land, called in this state Public Ownership Party,
conducting themselves today. They believed that
Socialism was the object of their enthusiasm, until
the hour of danger—the issuing of the Chicago
industrialists’ manifesto, and the holding of the
Chicago convention” has wrung from them the
admission that what they really enthused for was the
fleshpots of the A.F. of L. Political unity is a slogan
of Industrial Unionism.
2. THE FUNCTION OF UNIONISM
I shall now proceed to the second, the closing
sentence of the third of the three clauses that we have
been considering-the sentence which sets up the
theory that the final, the consummating act of
working-class emancipation must be achieved by the
toilers “taking and holding” the product of their labor
“through an economic organization of the working
class, without affiliation with any political party.”

In no country, outside of the United States, is this
theory applicable; in no country, outside of the
United States, is the theory rational. It is irrational
and, therefore, inapplicable in all other countries,
with the possible exception of Great Britain and the
rest of the English-speaking world, because no
country but the United States has reached that stage
of full-orbed capitalism” economic, political and
social” that the United States has attained. In other
words, no other country is ripe for the execution of
Marxian revolutionary tactics.
No wonder the theory has set all the owls, the
pseudo-Marxists included, afluttering; no wonder it
has set all the podsnaps of the A.F. of L., together
with its kindred craft “brotherhoods,” apondering
and aconning the “contradiction” of demanding
“political unity,” and in the same breath proposing to
take and hold the machinery of production through
an economic organization “without affiliation with
any political party.”
In this sentence of the preamble is condensed what
may be called the code of Marxian “tactics,” as
distinguished from the code of Marxian
“economics"; the code of “action,” as distinguished
from the code of “theory.” As a consequence, the
sentence outlines the form of the governmental
administration of the Republic of Labor. It involves
the vital question of the function of unionism, a
question that is so widely misunderstood that, on the
one hand, we see the “intellectual" ever sneering at
unionism and arguing, as is his wont, from partly
correct and mainly false premises, that “the union is
a passing institution,” not worth bothering about;
and, on the other hand, the “unionist,” so-called, with
a practical instinct that tells him the union is no
“passing institution,” but who blunders into the
superstition of revering as “unionism” that which is
purely a capitalist contrivance labeled “union” in
order to deceive, and calculated to block indeed the
path of unionism. The preamble of the Industrial
Workers of the World is the first pronouncement on
the field of practice that clinches this many-sided

issue. As becomes her opportunities, therefore her
duty, this fruit first ripened on the soil of America.
It does not lie in a political organization, that is, a
party, to “take and hold” the machinery of
production. Both the “reason” for a political party
and its “structure” unfit it for such work. I have at
considerable length dealt with some of the aspects of
this question in the address I delivered last year in
Newark, N. J., “The Burning Question of Trades
Unionism.” I shall now take it up somewhat more in
detail.
The “reason” for a political party unfits it to “take
and hold” the machinery of production. As shown
when I dealt with the first sentence of this clause”
the sentence that urges the necessity of political
unity” the “reason” for a political movement is the
exigencies of the bourgeois shell in which the social
revolution must partly shape its course. The
governmental administration of capitalism is the
State, the government proper (that institution is
purely political). Political power, in the language of
Marx, is merely the organized power of the capitalist
class to oppress, to curb, to keep the working class in
subjection. The bourgeois shell in which the social
revolution must partly shape its course dictates the
setting up of a body that shall contest the possession
of the political robber burg by the capitalist class.
The reason for such initial tactics also dictates their
ultimate goal” the razing to the ground of the robber
burg of capitalist tyranny. The shops, the yards, the
mills, in short, the mechanical establishments of
production, now in the hands of the capitalist
class—they are all to be “taken,” not for the purpose
of being destroyed, but for the purpose of being
“held"; for the purpose of improving and enlarging
all the good that is latent in them, and that capitalism
dwarfs; in short, they are to be “taken and held” in
order to save them for civilization.
It is exactly the reverse with the “political power.”
That is to be taken for the purpose of abolishing it. It
follows herefrom that the goal of the political
movement of labor is purely destructive.

Suppose that, at some election, the classconscious
political arm of labor were to sweep the field;
suppose the sweeping were done in such a landslide
fashion that the capitalist election officials are
themselves so completely swept off their base that
they wouldn’t, if they could, and that they couldn’t,
if they would, count us out; suppose that, from
President down to Congress and the rest of the
political redoubts of the capitalist political robber
burg, our candidates were installed — suppose that,
what would there be for them to do? What should
there be for them to do? Simply to adjourn
themselves, on the spot, sine die. Their work would
be done by disbanding.
The political movement of labor that, in the event
of triumph, would prolong its existence a second
after triumph, would be a usurpation.
It would be either a usurpation or the signal for a
social catastrophe. It would be the signal for a social
catastrophe if the political triumph did not find the
working class of the land industrially organized, that
is, in full possession of the plants of production and
distribution, capable, accordingly, to assume the
integral conduct of the productive powers of the
land. The catastrophe would be instantaneous. The
plants of production and distribution having
remained in capitalist hands, production would be
instantly blocked.
On the other hand, if the political triumph does
find the working class industrially organized, then
for the political movement to prolong its existence
would be to attempt to usurp the powers which its
very triumph announces have devolved upon the
central administration of the industrial organization.
The “reason” for a political movement obviously
unfits it to “take and hold” the machinery of
production. What the political movement “moves
into” is not the shops but the robber burg of
capitalism” for the purpose of dismantling it.

And now, as to the structure of a political party.
Look closely into that and the fact cannot escape you
that its structure also unfits the political movement to
“take and hold” the machinery of production. The
disability flows inevitably from the “reason” for
politics. The “reason” for a political party, we have
seen, is to contend with capitalism upon its own
special field” the field that determines the fate of
political power. It follows that the structure of a
political party must be determined by the capitalist
governmental system of territorial demarcations” a
system that the socialist republic casts off like a
slough that society shall have outgrown.
Take Congress, for instance, whether Senate or
House of Representatives. The unity of the
congressional representation is purely politically
geographic; it is arbitrary. The structure of the
congressional district reflects the purpose of the
capitalist State political, that is, class tyranny over
class. The thought of production is absent, wholly so
from the congressional demarcations. It cannot be
otherwise. Congress” not being a central
administration of the productive forces of the land,
but the organized power of the capitalist class for
oppression” its constituent bodies can have no trace
of a purpose to administer production. Shoemakers,
bricklayers, miners, railroadmen, together with the
workers in all manner of other fractions of industries,
are, accordingly, jumbled together in each separate
congressional district. Accordingly, the political
organization of labor intended to capture a
congressional district is wholly unfit to “take and
hold” the plants of industry. The only organization
fit for that is the organization of the several
industries themselves” and they are not subject to
political lines of demarcation; they mock all such
arbitrary, imaginary lines.
The central administrative organ of the Socialist
Republic—exactly the opposite of the central power
of capitalism, not being the organized power of a
ruling class for oppression, in short, not being
political, but exclusively administrative of the

producing forces of the land” its constituent bodies
must be exclusively industrial.
The artillery may support the cavalry; the cavalry
may support the infantry of an army in the act of
final triumph; in the act, however, of “taking and
holding” the nation’s plants of production, the
political organization of the working class can give
no help. Its mission will have come to an end just
before the consummation of that consummating act
of labor’s emancipation.
The form of central authority, to which the
political organization had to adapt itself and
consequently looked, will have ceased to be. As the
slough shed by the serpent that immediately
reappears in its new skin, the political State will have
been shed, and society will simultaneously appear in
its new administrative garb.
The mining, the railroad, the textile, the building
industries, down or up the line, each of these,
regardless of former political boundaries, will be the
constituencies of that new central authority the rough
scaffolding of which was raised last week in
Chicago.
Where the General Executive Board of the
Industrial Workers of the World will sit there will be
the nation’s capital.
Like the flimsy card houses that children raise, the
present political governments of counties, of states,
aye, of the city on the Potomac herself, will tumble
down, their places taken by the central and the
subordinate administrative organs of the nation’s
industrial forces. Obviously, not the “structure” of
the political movement, but the structure of the
economic movement is fit for the task, to “take and
hold” the industrial administration of the country’s
productive activity” the only thing worth “taking and
holding.”


THE BALLOT
The preamble of the Industrial Workers of the
World poses well both the political and the economic
movement of labor, and it places them in their proper
relation toward each other.
Inestimable is the value, dignified the posture of
the political movement. It affords the labor
movement the opportunity to ventilate its purposes,
its aspirations and its methods, free, over and above
board, in the noonday light of the sun, whereas
otherwise, its agitation would be consigned to the
circumscribed sphere of the rat hole. The political
movement renders the masses accessible to the
propaganda of labor; it raises the labor movement
above the category of a “conspiracy"; it places the
movement in line with the spirit of the age, which,
on the one hand, denies the power of “conspiracy” in
matters that not only affect the masses, but in which
the masses must themselves be intelligent actors,
and, on the other hand, demands the freest of
utterance. In short and in fine, the political
movement bows to the methods of civilized
discussion: it gives a chance to the peaceful solution
of the great question at issue.
By proclaiming the urgency of political as well as
of industrial unity, the preamble amply and
sufficiently proclaims the affinity of the economic
with the political movement. At the same time, by
expressly proclaiming that the “taking and holding”
is an act that falls wholly within the province of the
economic organization, the preamble locked a
dangerous switch, a switch into which to run there is
grave danger, the danger of rendering the Socialist,
which means the labor movement, illusory, and a
roosting place for the “intellectual” riffraff of
bourgeois society.
The ballot is a weapon of civilization; the ballot is
a weapon that no revolutionary movement of our
times may ignore except at its own peril; the
Socialist ballot is the emblem of right. For that very
reason the Socialist ballot is ―

Weaker than a woman’s tears,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night,
And skilless as unpracticed infancy,
— unless it is backed by the might to enforce it.
That requisite might might is summed up in the
industrial organization of the working class.
Now, mind you, that might the labor movement
needs, as much, I would almost say, against the
political movements which its own breath heats into
being as against the capitalist tyrant himself. It needs
that might against the capitalist tyrant to put the
quietus upon him; it also needs that might to prevent
the evil consequences to which, in this corrupt
atmosphere of bourgeois society, the political
movement is inevitably exposed. The two points are
vital. Much, infinitely more than appears at first
sight, hangs thereby.
Despite the sharply marked economic feature of
the labor movement, the principle that it is bound to
take on a political form also, is founded on no fine-
spun theory. Even discounting the force of the
sociologic arguments that I have presented to you,
and which point to the inevitableness of the political
manifestation of the labor movement, there is a
consideration that I have referred to only incidentally
so far, and which, when properly weighed, places the
matter beyond the peradventure of a doubt. That
consideration is the existence of universal suffrage in
the land.
The institution is so bred in the bones of the people
that, notwithstanding it has become a gravel in the
shoe of the capitalist, he, powerful though he is, dare
not abolish it outright. Among such a people,
chimerical is the idea of expecting to conduct a great
movement, whose palpable aim is a Socialist
revolution, to the slogan of “Abstinence from the
ballot-box.” The proposition cannot choose but
brand its supporters as freaks.
Whether the economic movement wills it or not,
its political phase will assert itself on the political

field. Men from its own ranks, and men from outside
of its ranks, will raise the standard of labor politics.
Nor will the capitalist be slow in endeavoring, while
humoring the thing, to draw the sting from it.
Watchfully though he guards his political burg, he
will, from time to time, carefully select some
“promising” candidate from the labor ticket and
allow him admission; or, maybe, he is sometimes
taken napping, and some labor candidate slips
through the fingers of his outposts at the ballot-box.
Subjected to the lures and wiles at the disposal of the
capitalist, these successful labor candidates in the
parliaments of capitalism, ten to one, succumb. They
succumb due either to their own inherently corrupt
souls, or to their muddle-headedness. In either case
they betray the working class; the effect is harmfully
felt by the economic movement.
Against this danger there is but one protection” the
industrial, that is, the classconscious economic
organization to keep that ballot straight. Nothing
short of such an economic organization will prevent
the evil, because nothing short of such an economic
organization can keep sharp the edge of the special
sword wielded by the political movement of labor.
What that special sword is I have shown before. It is
purely destructive. The economic movement may
take a little at a time. It may do so because its
function is ultimately to “take and hold” the full
plants of production and save them for the human
race. The political movement, on the contrary, has an
entirely different function: its function is wholly to
tear down the political burg of capitalist tyranny.
It follows herefrom that the political movement of
labor may not even remotely partake even of the
appearance of compromise. It exemplifies the
revolutionary aim of the labor movement; it must be
uncompromisingly revolutionary. This fact dictates
the conduct of the successful political candidates of
labor in the parliaments of capitalism.
The principle found expression in the celebrated
maxim uttered by William Liebknecht, when he still
was in the full vigor of his Socialist aspirations”

“Parlamentiren ist paktiren” ” to parliamentarize is to
compromise, to log-roll, to sell out. When, in later
years, experience brought home to him the
unfortunate fact that the bourgeoisie of Germany had
not finished their own revolution; when he
discovered that that revolution had first to be
completed and that there was none to undertake the
task but the Social Democratic movement; when that
hard reality faced him and his movement, Liebknecht
wisely adapted his course to the requirements. To
parliamentarize is legitimate tactics with the
bourgeois revolution. The parliamentarizing that the
German Social Democracy thereupon, with
Liebknecht at its head, has been constrained to
practice, demonstrates that the movement in
Germany has been constrained to adopt the tactics of
the bourgeois revolutionist” precisely the reason why
such tactics are wholly out of place, wholly
inadmissible, aye, a badge of treason to the working
class when applied in America.
Without the might of the classconscious economic
movement back of the political, the political
movements that the labor movement inevitably
promotes in America will not only be divided but, as
a further result, will promote that confusion of
thought that runs into corruption and that, reacting
back upon the economic movement itself, helps to
scuttle its efficiency. It surely is no accident that,
without exception, all the labor candidates so far
allowed by the capitalist class to filter through their
garrisons at their election defiles, whenever the
office to which they were allowed to be returned
elected was of any importance, have uniformly
“parliamentaryized,” that is, “logrolled," in short,
sold out the revolution. We saw it happen during the
heyday of the K. of L.; we saw it happen more
recently in Haverhill, in Brockton, in the
Massachusetts legislature, in Paterson, in
Sheboygan; we see it happening now in Milwaukee.
It is a matter of self-protection with the economic
organization to watch and control the political.
Skilless as unpracticed infancy, a danger to labor
itself, is the sword of labor’s ballot without the might

of the classconscious economic organization to whet
its edge, to keep it sharp and to insist upon its being
plied over the skull of the foe, to insist upon that at
the peril of the muddleheads, of the weakling, of the
traitor.
There now only remains one point to consider, and
I am through. It is the point with regard to the
necessity of the industrial organization in order to
supplement the right of the ballot with the might
requisite to put the quietus upon the capitalist class
itself. The point implies what is generally, but
wrongly, meant by ...

THE GENERAL STRIKE
... a term that, through misuse by its own
advocates, who have hitherto placed the cart before
the horse, is greatly misunderstood, and should be
substituted by the more appropriate term of the
general lockout of the capitalist class.
Political power is reached through the ballot box.
But the ballot box is not an open field; it is a
veritable defile. That defile is held by the agents of
the capitalist class. The election inspectors and
returning boards are capitalist appointees; they are
veritable garrisons with which the capitalist class
holds the defile. To imagine that these capitalist
garrisons of the election defiles will complacently
allow the candidates of the revolution, whose
program is the dismantling of the political burg of
capitalism, peacefully to file through, is to indulge in
a mooncalf’s vision. The revolutionary ballot of
labor is counted out now; it has been counted out
from the first day of its appearance; it will be
counted out even more extensively in the future.
This fact is taken by some as a sufficient ground
from which to conclude that the political movement
is utterly useless. Those who arrive at that
conclusion fall into the error of failing to realize that
correct conclusions never flow from single premises.

They can be arrived at only by considering all the
premises in the case. While the Socialist ballot was,
is and may continue to be counted out, the political
movement accomplishes that which all the counting
out will not be able to counteract.
A man may monkey with the thermometer, yet he
is utterly unable to monkey with the temperature.
Place a lump of ice to the bulb of the quicksilver in
this room of suffocating heat, the column will sink
below zero, yet the temperature remains at fever
heat. Place a piece of burning coal to the quicksilver
bulb in midwinter, the mercury will rise to fever
heat, yet the temperature remains cold, unaltered. So
with the election returns. They are the political
thermometer. The political pickets of the capitalist
class may monkey therewith to their heart’s content”
they will be unable to alter by the fraction of a
degree the political temperature that prevails all
around.
Now, then, that political temperature, for reasons
that I have already explained, is preeminently the
product of the political movement of labor. Wait, I
have not yet proven the point. It still remains to be
clinched. The question may still be asked, aye, it is
asked: What does the hottest of political
temperatures avail, if the capitalist class retains the
power to nullify it by counting us out? It may avail
much; here, in America, it may mean the
consummation of that ideal so dearly pursued by the
Socialist” the peaceful solution of the social
question.
Look across at Europe. The feudal spirit still
prevails there in an important respect, as a
consequence of the continued prevalence there of
large chunks of feudal institutions. In Europe, even
the capitalist class is feudalized, let alone the
surviving feudal heads. Though guilty of all the
crimes of the decalogue, there is one vice that the
feudal lord is substantially free from. That vice is
cowardice. Valor is the burthen of the songs that
rock their cradle; valor is the theme of the nursery
tales to which they are raised; deeds of valor are the

ideals set up before them. Take as a type the semi-
crazy, semi-crippled Emperor of Germany. He will
fight whatever the odds. In Europe a peaceful
solution of the social question is out of all question.
But how is the lay of the land here, in America?
Was it songs of valor that rocked the cradles of our
capitalist rulers? Was it tales of noble daring that
formed the themes of the nursery tales to which they
were brought up? Were the ideals that they gathered
from their home surroundings the ideals of
manliness? In short, did they reach their present
position by deeds of valor? No! Daily experience,
confirmed by every investigation that one set of
capitalists institutes against another, tells us that they
reached their present status of rulers by putting sand
into your sugar, by watering their stocks, by putting
shoddy into your clothes, by pouring water into your
molasses, by breaches of trust, by fraudulent failures
and fraudulent fires, in short by swindle.
Now, then, the swindler is a coward. Like a
coward, he will play the bully, as we see the
capitalist class doing, toward the weak, the weak
because disorganized, working class. Before the
strong, the bully crawls. Let the political temperature
rise to the point of danger, then, all monkeying with
the thermometer notwithstanding, your capitalist will
quake in his stolen boots; he will not dare to fight; he
will flee. At least I, for one, expect to see him flee.
But, indeed, he will not unless, back of that ballot
that has raised the political temperature to fever heat
is the might of the industrial organization, in full
possession of the industrial establishments of the
land, organized integrally and, consequently, capable
of assuming the conduct of the nation’s production.
The complete industrial organization of the working
class will then have insured the peaceful issue of the
struggle.
But perhaps the capitalist may not flee. Perhaps, in
a delirium of rage, he may resist. So much the
worse” for him. The might, implied in the industrial
organization of the working class of the land, will be
in position to mop the earth with the rebellious

usurper in short order and safeguard the right that the
ballot proclaimed.
The futility of the ballot alone, however
triumphant, was strikingly illustrated nine years ago
during the first Bryan campaign. The political
temperature against the plutocratic rulers of the land
had risen to a point that they, for a moment,
considered the battle at the ballot box lost in
advance. That, however, did not disconcert them.
Through their national mouthpiece, Mark Hanna,
they threatened to stop production. In other words,
they threatened to go on strike. The threat was no
idle bombast. They could. It was known that they
could. Craft unionism placed it in their power to do
so. The threat had its effect. But let the capitalist
attempt, under the pressure of the political
temperature raised by the ballot of labor” let him
attempt to strike. In possession of the might
conferred and implied by the industrial organization
of their class, the working class would forthwith lock
out the capitalist class.
Without political organization, the labor
movement cannot triumph; without economic
organization, the day of its political triumph would
be the day of its defeat.
Industrialism means might. Craft unionism means
impotence. All the plants of production, aye, even
the vast wealth for consumption, is today in the
keeping of the working class. It is workingmen who
are in charge of the factories, the railroads, the
mines, in short all the land and machinery of
production, and it is they also who sit as watchdogs
before the pantries, the cellars and the safe-deposit
vaults of the capitalist class; aye, it is they who carry
the guns in the armies. But this place of vantage is of
no avail to them under craft unionism. Under craft
unionism, only one craft marches into the battlefield
at a time. By their idly looking on, the other crafts
scab it upon the combatant. What with that and the
likewise idle onlooking of those divisions of the
workers who man the commissary department, so to
speak, of the capitalist class, the class struggle

presents, under craft unionism, the aspect of petty
riots at which the empty stomachs and empty hands
of the working class are pitted against the full ones
of the employing class. Was this ignorance? Was this
treason? Whether treason or ignorance, the turning in
the long lane has been reached.
Both the present conduct of craft unionism and the
future conduct of Industrial Unionism was well
portrayed by one of the delegates at the Chicago
convention. Illustrating the point with the five
fingers of his right hand far apart, he showed that to
be the posture of the craft or autonomous unions”
disconnected from one another for all practical work,
and good only to act as a fan, a fan that had hitherto
done nothing but scare the flies away from the face
of the capitalist class; and, proceeding thereupon to
illustrate the further point by drawing his five fingers
tightly into a compact fist, he showed that to be the
posture of Industrial Unionism” a battering ram, that
would leave the face of the capitalist class looking
materially different from the way it looked when it
was merely fanned. The impotence wherewith the
right of the working class has hitherto been smitten,
is now to be organized into a might without which
that right is but mockery. The signal for that
organization was struck last week at the conven- tion
of the Industrial Workers of the World; and the word
has gone out, as it could go out from no other
country but America, in language that fits our
fullgrown capitalist development.
“Unite! Unite on the economic field upon the only
basis that economic unity is possible” the basis of the
solidarity of the working class, the only solid fact
from which political unity can be reflected! Unite!
Unite upon the only economic principle capable of
backing up the right of the labor ballot with the
might to enforce it! Unite for the general strike at the
ballot box, to overthrow the political robber burg of
capitalism, backed by the general strike against, or,
rather, the general lockout of the capitalist class from
the industrial fields that it has usurped. Unite for the
emancipation of the working class, and to save
civilization from a catastrophe!”SOCIALIST LANDMARKS