William Dudley Haywood

“ We, the officers of the National and Internation Trades Unions of America, in national conference assembled, in the capital of our nation, hereby pledge ourselves in peace or in war, in stress or in storm, to stand unreservedly by the standards of liberty and the safety and preservation of the institutions and ideals of our republic.
In this solemn hour of our nation's life, it is our earnest hope that our republic may be safeguarded in its unswerving desire for peace; that our people may be spared the horrors and the burdens of war ”

“ It is the prison, the bludgeon, the rifle and the maxim gun—all of them instruments of destruction—these which lurk behind the order and the law, are the real power of the master class.
The power of the worker is of quite a different nature and much more effective. He, when he is bold enough to know it, is master of the situation because he is the maker of all the things upon which the master class depends. Their power is that of destruction, ours is that of construction. Their indeed is the army of death, and ours the army of life. ”

“ But, despite all our endeavors and hopes, should our country be drawn into the maelstrom of the European conflict, we, with these ideals of liberty and justice herein declared, as the indispensable basis for national policies, offer our services to our country in every field of activity to defend, safeguard and preserve the republic of the United States of America against its enemies, whomsoever they may be, and we call upon our fellow workers and fellow citizens in the holy name of labor, justice, freedom and humanity to devotedly and patriotically give like service. ”

“ We cannot admire the position of a man so placed though we may perhaps make excuses for it on the ground that the owners of the country have, by hoarding all the wealth, compelled him either to join the army or starve. Thus is the freedom of our Empire maintained.
The man of true courage is he who thinks as boldly as he acts and acts as boldly as he thinks. Now if we remember this we shall see that neither we, as workers, nor the rich people—the politicians, pressmen, and junkers, who have organized this war—are really brave. ”

“ The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace as 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.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. ”

“ The great European war has come. The truth has almost staggered our imagination, we do not know what to do and the one only definite thought is that we must win. To this end all our efforts are bent. We fight, we pray, we die, and we pay all to attain victory for our arms. It is the same with the men and women of France, of Russia, of Belgium. It is exactly the same, alas! with the men and women of Germany and Austria. We are all prompted by the same strong feelings of patriotism. ”

“ It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. ”

“ TEN MILLION HUMAN LIVES STAND AS A MONUMENT TO THE NATIONAL PATRIOTIC STUPIDITY OF THE WORKING CLASS OF EUROPE! WHO WILL BE TO BLAME IF THE WORKERS OF AMERICA ARE BETRAYED AND LED INTO THE BLOODIEST SLAUGHTER OF HISTORY? ”

“ How thin is the mask of hatred that the rich and respectable have managed to stretch over the faces of the opposing countries! Through the mask we are constantly seeing appears that look of comradeship and fellow feeling which is destined by and by to bring together the workers of all lands in a common brotherhood. How clearly we may see how the last war will be reached—when the workers "will be fed up and refuse to go on shooting." ”

“ With the European War for conquest and exploitation raging and destroying the lives, class consciousness, and unity of the workers, and the ever-growing agitation for military preparedness clouding the main issues, and delaying the realization of our ultimate aim with patriotic, and, therefore, capitalistic aspirations, we openly declare ourselves determined opponents of all nationalistic sectionalism or patriotism, and the militarism preached and supported by our one enemy, the Capitalist Class. ”

“ It is to this great contradiction in human affairs—on the one hand our undoubted power to achieve great things of infinite worth, and on the other our inability even to fill our stomachs or supply ourselves with clean beds on which to lie—it is this that demands the first attention of all who would work in any great cause. It is exactly this subject, however, that is avoided by all our great movements, which are financed by the very people who have captured the wealth of our countries, and who thus produce poverty. ”

“ I argue this point because I want it to be clear that if we are really to understand what is wrong and how to ensure that the last of all wars shall soon be reached, then we must be guided in our judgment by something greater than this patriotism which allows us to see one side of the question only.
Let us frankly confess to ourselves what we have done. We are certainly not a savage or blood-thirsty people in our everyday life, and yet we are now doing, or helping others to do the bloodiest deeds that imagination and science can make possible. ”

“ I feel now that I would hate to be in Buccafori's place. It is better, when charged with crime by a capitalist or by the capitalist class, to hold a prominent office in a great labor organization. You will then draw around you support—support sufficient to protect and to save your life. Had I been an ordinary member of the rank and file of a labor organization no more prominent than a shoe worker of Brooklyn I would not be here to-night. ”

“ So, on this great force of the working class I believe we can agree that we should unite into one great organization—big enough to take in the children that are now working; big enough to take in the black man; the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities—an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries, to obliterate national boundaries, and one that will become the great industrial force of the working class of the world. ”

“ Many a man in each army engaged today knows in his heart that the enemy soldiers are men just as he is, no better and no worse. These dim thoughts only lack boldness, and they would make of each such soldier a revolutionist, who would refuse to fire in such a cause.
It is by this growing courage that the industrial workers will presently form their army—not indeed an army like that which their masters possess, where the soldiers blindly obey their officers and care not if their cause is right or wrong. The workers' army organized for a different purpose must be a very different affair. ”

“ The Czar of Russia and his friends, who have been hanging or imprisoning every thinker in Russia for many years, they have their reasons for joining in this great game of finance and murder. The politicians of France and England too know what they are about—but what of us? We who are not politicians, or kings, or czars, or kaisers; we who serve in the shops, who work in the factories, drive the trams—and, in a word, make and distribute all that is necessary for life; we surely have a very different view of things from those who have organized this war and who call on us to fight it. ”

“ If there is ever to be a time when there is no poverty and no slums, in other words, if the time is coming when the wealth manufactured in our factories will be kept and used by those who labor, and when the land will be free to those who alone can make it bear fruit, then it is certain that that class which now owns it will die hard, and fight to maintain its happy existence living on the labor of the poor. ”

“ Is it to be supposed that England will maintain unquestioned for all time her position as ruler of the waves and owner of vast colonies all over the world, when we know that young and vigorous races and nations are developing? So long as national ideals, the world over, lead men only to rejoice in the extension of their nation, so long will there be ceaselessly war and preparations for wars. ”

“ The German also, when this sad business is over will return to his daily work, and should he, with his friends, try also to capture a little of the country and its wealth for the workers, instead of the wealth-owning class, he will find soon that the German military are ready to shoot him. These facts surely force us to think. And we pause before we rejoice in the honor of dying for our country, for is it not true that we who are asked to die this glorious death in a foreign land are compelled even by the military to live but sad, inglorious lives here at home? ”

“ Instinctively we feel reverence for him who stands in the shadow of death, for strangely enough we have more respect for the barren and useless end of things than for the active, fruitful course of life itself—but more of this hereafter. Let us for a minute consider the life he has lived rather than concern ourselves with the death he is possibly about to die.
Perhaps our man is a volunteer, or a reservist, and till the start of the war was engaged as a miner or railwayman, or it may be working in some factory. ”

“ Is it war or peace while the babies die in the slums and the rich grow richer on the cheap labor of their mothers.
It is war we proclaim, the last war, the international war in which the workers of all lands shall be united against the invaders—the rich who have seized the land and lived on the labor of the poor. ”

“ This is the class war, about which the socialists have so often talked but which they have never waged. It is the only war which can bring the final settlement, and until it is reached nation after nation will rise and fall, and in the process millions will be slaughtered and millions more degraded and depraved in the trade of murder. ”

“ To be so powerful to produce richness and yet so powerless to prevent abject poverty and starvation is surely an absurdity. At the whim of any rich man a palace of infinite beauty and luxury is hewn out of the stone and takes shape and form, but the thousands in our slums live and die generation after generation in fruitless longing, for they are ever surrounded in their hovels by dirt and poverty. ”

“ But tomorrow, when we have peace, these same kind people who now can think of nothing but woolen comforts and shrapnel, will be quite well satisfied when the soldier now in the trench is commanded to fire on the crowd of workers outside the factory, whose only sin has been that they loved their country and their kith and kin, so much that they have tried to reconquer some of the wealth of the land for their unhappy brothers. ”

“ We workers who have organized our petty strikes, and found nine out of ten of the strikers wavering and timidly wondering if they were quite justified in so upsetting the work-a-day world; we who have sometimes, in a strike, known a comrade to break a window or seen a policeman's bludgeon answered by a well-aimed bottle, and then have had to listen to the apologies of the labor leaders and the timid among the strikers, who declare that such actions are confined to hooligans and outsiders ”

“ You must not be content to come to the ballot box on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, the ballot box erected by the capitalist class, guarded by capitalist henchmen, and deposit your ballot to be counted by black-handed thugs, and say, "That is political action." You must protect your ballot with an organization that will enforce the mandates of your class. I want political action that counts. I want a working class that can hold an election every day if they want to. ”

“ If we had a clear idea of life and its purpose, if we knew what we wanted as clearly as do these great men, might we not organize our own wars for our own purpose, instead of merely fighting in their wars for their purposes—much better still—might we not finally organize an universal peace? ”

“ If those who today spend their lives in toil and service, were to turn "patriotic" in a new sense of the word, and were to tell each other that the love of their country was so great that in future they themselves meant to possess it, then indeed we should see how far goes the patriotism of those rich people who today are asking us to fight in their quarrel. ”

“ A yet more fatal result there is to this so thoughtless attitude of so many, who while half opposed to war still maintain that we must defeat the Germans. The politicians in this democratic land are very fond of what is termed secret diplomacy, by which the people are kept in ignorance as to the friendships and enmities of the various governments. By this plan our government may be secretly pledged by our politicians to fight, say, with France against Germany without our knowing anything about it, and without parliament itself knowing. ”

“ The Industrial Workers of the World is an economic organization without affiliation with any political party or any non-political sect. I as an Industrialist say that industrial unionism is the broadest possible political interpretation of the working-class political power, because by organizing the workers industrially you at once enfranchise the women in the shops, you at once give the black men who are disfranchised politically a voice in the operation of the industries ”

“ His little world, his country and his life have been rendered unbeautiful to him because the best of all which the worker can produce goes to make rich the master class. He has fought against this, fought so that he might bring a little more beauty into the lives of those he loves, and to help the class of which he is one. ”

“ And so, taught by the crowd, the politicians continue to settle matters first, and to manufacture the causes of war in private, knowing that the people will be willing to fight when the enemy is on the march. What is the alternative it may still be asked. How can we do other than defeat the Germans by helping our government, even though we may know that the latter is composed of the politicians who, tomorrow will send the army to shoot us? ”