Eugene V. Debs

“ If you think that these horrors ought to be; if you, as a workingman, think that you ought to have a master—just as the ignorant chattel slave on the plantation in the south used to think that he had to have a master to rob him of what he produced—if you think that you are so helpless that you would die unless you had a master to give you a job and take from you all except just enough to keep you working for him; if you think that workingmen ought to fight each other; if you think that unity, the unity of the working class, would be a bad thing for the working class ”

“ They have been recruited in capitalist society; they are the product of the capitalist system.
A man is out of work a good while and he gets hungry; he still has a little self-respect and steals rather than beg. That is how men become tramps and thieves and criminals: that is why we have an army of tramps; that is why all the penitentiaries are crowded: why the insane asylums are overflowing and why thousands commit suicide. All these shocking evils are the outgrowth of the capitalist system, to which the Industrial Workers proposes to put an everlasting end. ”

“ Thousands who once belonged to unions have become not only non-union men, but scabs and strike-breakers, and in their desperation have turned upon the union and become its most bitter enemies. If you will call the roll of the strike-breakers who gather here in Chicago and elsewhere when union workers are out on strike, you will find that nearly all of them are ex-union men; men who once wore the badge of union labor, believed in it, and marched proudly beneath the union banner. ”

“ At such a time Chicago is hit, and hit hard; and you workingmen find yourselves out of employment, a drug on the market. Nobody wants your labor power, because it cannot be utilized at a profit to the capitalist who owns the tools, and when he cannot use your labor power at a satisfactory profit to himself he doesn’t buy it. And if he doesn’t buy your labor power you are idle, and when you are idle you don’t draw any wages, and you can’t buy groceries and pay rent; you can’t buy clothing and shoes, and you begin to look seedy and shabby. ”

“ What is the condition there today? You have innumerable unions represented there, but no unity. You have this great body of workers parceled out among scores of petty and purposeless unions, which are in ceaseless conflict with each other, jealous to preserve their craft identity. As long as this great army of workers is scattered among so many craft unions, it will be impossible for them to unite and act in harmony together. ”

“ You have been taught in the old union school to look to some leader; to depend upon some master. You have been trained to submit; to follow and obey orders. You have not developed your own capacity for clear thinking; you are lacking in the essentials of sturdy manhood. Many of you have become satisfied to blindly follow where others lead; and so you are often deceived, betraved; and when the smoke of battle clears away you find yourselves defeated and out of jobs. You have often felt disheartened; you have quit the union in despair and disgust, and some of you have turned into scabs. ”

“ At that time one man worked for another, not in the capacity of a wage-worker as we understand that term today, but simply to learn his trade, and having become the master of this, he was in a position to command most, if not all, his labor produced. It was when the simple tool of the hand laborer was supplanted by the machine and the workingman lost control of the tool with which he worked, that the modern industrial revolution had its beginning. The small employer became the capitalist and the employee became the wage worker ”

“ I appeal to you to join the union that truly represents you, the union that unites you, the union in which you can stand shoulder to shoulder, regardless of your occupation; the union in which you will move forward, step by step, marching to the inspiring music of the coming emancipation. ”

“ Now, they, like you, are looking out for their jobs. It is perhaps too much to expect them to discharge themselves. It is to their personal interest to keep the workers of the country divided into a thousand different organizations, so that a thousand different sets of officials will be required; so that a thousand sets of officials may draw salary from the scant wages of the working class. You may be told that the reason I am in favor of a new union is that I am a discredited labor leader and that I am trying to create a new job for myself. ”

“ That is to say, he will understand that when the workers are united in one great economic organization and one great political organization; when they strike together and vote together, they can put their class in power in every council, in every legislature and in the national congress; they can abolish the capitalist system, take over the industries to themselves, and rule the land forevermore. ”

“ That is the twentieth century tool of production. Work is now done with that kind of gigantic social agencies, made by you workingmen and used by you workingmen. Nobody but workingmen can make them; nobody but workingmen can use them. You have made all these marvelous machines and now your employment, your very lives depend upon your having access to them. But these large grown tools, made by labor and used by labour, are not owned by labor in the capitalist system, but belong to a capitalist or group of capitalists who live in New York or some other remote point ”

“ As an individual worker you cannot escape from wage-slavery. It is true that one in ten thousand wage workers may become a capitalist, to be pointed out as a man worth a million who used to be a clerk, but he is the exception that proves the rule. ”

“ The simple fact is that industrial conditions have undergone such a complete change that now the trade union, instead of uniting the workers, divides them, incites craft jealousy, breeds dissension, and promotes strife—the very things capitalists desire; for so long as the working class is divided, the capitalists will be secure in their dominion of the earth and the seas, and the millions of toilers will remain in subjection. ”

“ James O’Connell is at the head of the machinists’ union, and he is also a labor lieutenant of the capitalist class. He sits at the same banqueting table with the capitalists and is hand in glove with August Belmont—the emolover of James Farley, the professional strike-breaker, who when you go on strike, steps in and gets as much pay in a day as you get in a year.
You can hardly blame the men who get disgusted with unions as they are run in Chicago. ”

“ Certainly, if you can stand this arrangement the capitalist can. He has no grievance. He does nothing and gets everything, and you do everything and get nothing.
If you can stand this he can: and if you don’t put an end to it he won’t. And why should he? And why shouldn’t you? Mr. Workingman, you are a man. You ought not to be satisfied to be a mere wealth-producing animal. You have a brain, and you ought to develop it. You should aspire to rise above the animal plane. ”

“ Here we have a large body of machinists engaged in a life and death struggle and they hold out wonderfully well. They levy assessments on all other machinists who keep at work to help these strikers in idleness for many weary months and then at last, when all the resources are exhausted and the men are on the point of starvation, they have to surrender, and they go back defeated, and the open shop system is established, and the union, so far as any usefulness to the machinist is concerned, is practically wiped out of existence. ”

“ If it were not for you, the capitalist would have to walk, and if it were not for him, you would ride.
You don’t need the capitalist; he is, in fact, a curse to you. What has the capitalist owner of a modern plant to do with its operation? Absolutely nothing. He might as well live in the moon; as far as you are concerned. There may be a group of them, but they have nothing to do with the mill. They simply get what is produced there, because you will have it so. ”

“ The capitalists are rich: the loss of a few hundreds or thousands of dollars doesn’t hurt them, because they get it all back again. So they can wait until this detachment of the working class army is defeated and its stanchest supporters are out of jobs. Many of these quit the union; it is no use. They tried the union and are disgusted with it, and in all probability some of them will stay at work in the next strike and help defeat the union.
Next comes the strike of the Chicago machinists, and that lasts a long time. All their fellow-unionists remain at work. ”

“ He is the economic master and the political ruler; and you workingmen are almost as completely at his mercy as if you were his property under the law. It is true that he has no title to your bodies; but he is the master of your jobs: he controls the employment upon which your lives depend: he has it in his power to decide whether you shall work or not ”

“ The trade union, itself the product of industrial evolution, is subject to the laws of change, and the union that may have served some purpose a quarter of a century ago is now as completely out of date as the tools of industry that were then in use. ”

“ The Industrial Workers propose first to unite all workers within one organization, classified in the various departments representing their several trades and occupations, to bring them all into harmonious economic relation with each other. The next thing is to co-ordinate them within their several industries with an eye to operating these industries when they secure control of them. That is the central function of the new union, and by far the most important one. ”

“ Then the workers will be the sovereign-citizens, the rulers of this earth. They will build houses and live therein; they will plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof. The labor question will have been settled, and the working class, emancipated from the fetters of wage-slavery, will begin the real work of civilizing and humanizing the human race. ”

“ The very suggestion is abhorrent to every worker with a spark of manly blood coursing in his veins. Why, you men, you workingmen, are more than the salt of this earth. Without you society would perish. Society does not need the idle capitalists. ”

“ If you can work in a mill and produce wealth for a capitalist, who holds you in contempt, you can also work in that mill as a free man and produce wealth for yourself and your wife and family to enjoy. ”

“ Doesn’t it occur to you that instead of fighting the capitalist enemy. who are always united, who always act together—that instead of fighting them by companies and regiments, the thing for us to do is to fight them as they fight us, with a united army? ”

“ Because of this, the capitalist who does no useful work has the economic power to take from a thousand or ten thousand workingmen all they produce, over and above what is required to keep them in working and producing order, and he becomes a millionaire, perhaps a multi-millionaire. ”

“ Upon the one hand the capitalists are combining. It will be but a short time until practically all the lands, railroads, telegraphs, steel mills, sugar refineries, breweries, and other great establishments will be controlled by a gigantic trust composed of a few triumphant capitalists. But while they are combining and centralizing their capital, we are organizing the workers that they may act together, economically and politically, and possibly in other ways, before the struggle is ended and the victory won. ”

“ And this brings an important fact to our attention, and that is that the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle; and labor unionism to be of any real value to the working class, must be organized, not along craft lines, but along class lines.
The Industrial Workers is a working class organization, so all-inclusive, so comprehensive, that it will embrace every man and woman who does useful work for a livelihood. ”

“ Most capitalists heartily approve the old form of trade unionism and encourage and liberally support it, for the very reason that this outgrown unionism does not truly represent and cannot actually express the economic interests of the working class. ”

“ Our business is to put the exploiters of labor out of business.
You, Mr. Workingman, don’t need a capitalist; and if you think you do, it is because of your ignorance. It is because you don’t understand your own interest. You don’t need him. You imagine that he gives you a job ”

“ There are only a few capitalists as compared to you. And yet, they own practically everything and rule the land: and will keen on owning and ruling the land as long as you workingmen allow them to; and you will allow them to as long as you persist in remaining divided in trade unions and being used against each other, instead of uniting and acting solidly with and for each other and against the capitalists. ”

“ This kind of reasoning may have some effect with the unthinking. but if you are a student of this great question you know that it is historically impossible for an old and outgrown and out-of-date labor organization to adapt itself to a new economic situation.
Reform unions rarely, if ever, become revolutionary bodies.
It is admitted that there are thousands of unions in the field. These unions all have staffs of officers, whose names are legion and on the payroll. They all draw salaries and expense money. They don’t want the working class united—that would mean an army of jobless leaders. ”