Industrial Workers of the World

“ By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.'' Such are "dangerous" notions to capitalism. The Industrial Workers of the World propagates these very ideas, it has and will continue—of this we feel sure and satisfied—to meet with the opposition of the employing class. ”

“ Industrial Workers Of The World
A GLANCE through the files of Solidarity for the last six years presents a vivid picture of the activities of The Labor Movement during this period, and the rise and development of The Industrial Union Idea to the promise of today. Intimate first hand accounts of all the stirring action; records of the accumulating experiences and theories tested—all have made Solidarity the one real live news and educational paper of the revolutionary labor movement. This year it is to be better than ever. ”

“ The machine—aye, industry itself—must be the basis of organization.
The structure of the Industrial Workers of the World provides that all who labor in a given industrial plant or in an industry, of which there are one or more plants in the same locality, shall be gathered into one Industrial Branch, without reference to the tools they may use and without prejudice as to skill, race, color, sex, age or creed. The combined Industrial Branches from the Industrial Union. Wage earning is the "open sesame" to membership. ”

“ When the workers understand how the industrial system of today has developed, how one industrial pursuit dovetails into another, and all comprise an inseparable whole, they will not wantonly destroy what generations of industrial and social forces have brought forth. ”

“ What do we mean by an industrial union? All the workers, all over the world, have a common interest and are interdependent — the workers of one country upon the workers of all other countries. So, likewise, the workers in one industrial calling are dependent upon the workers in all the other callings and these other workers upon them. Yet, in industry, national and international, there are more or less clearly defined divisions which we know as industries, such as coal mining, railroading, lumbering, farming, steel, manufacturing, etc. ”

“ When will you workers see?
The only way you'll gain your economic liberty,
Is One Big Industrial Union.
How the masters holler when they hear the dreadful sound
Of sabotage and direct action spread the world around ”

“ Yet, the whole superstructure of modern society is upreared and rests upon the working class. To exist and to progress capitalist society must control the labor power of the working class. It must, and it will, use any means or any weapon which will assist it in achieving this end. Political pretensions only conceal industrial ambitions. The important thing, therefore, for the workers to recognize, is the industrial character of our society, and the true nature of the state. ”

“ In presenting this plan of organization of industries, as it exists today, we have in mind only the object before explained. The workers, forced by capitalist ownership of the means of production to do service in all these industries, must organize themselves in their proper places in the industries in which they are engaged. Every worker who studies this map will find where he will fit in when the industries are organized for the control of the workers through industrial organization. ”

“ The workers will utilize the knowledge of ages to build and to plant on a solid rockbed the foundation of a new industrial and social system.
The foundation must be firm and solid. The revolutionary climax, after an incessant course of evolutionary processes by which forms and methods undergo changes, will eliminate forever the cause for the industrial division of society into two hostile camps. Harmonious relations of mankind in all their material affairs will evolve out of the change in the control and ownership in industrial resources of the world. ”

“ They are organizing for the battles of today, for better conditions, and for the final clash in the future when the general lock-out of the parasite class of non-producers will end the contest for industrial possession.
If you are one of the millions needed to accomplish the task, join the industrial union composed of workers in the shop or plant where you work. If none exists be the first to get busy. Get others, organize them. Learn to tackle the industrial problems, show others how the workers will be able to run the industries through agencies of their own creation the world over. ”

“ The toilers of the world they hear its cry.
In line with the Industrial Workers they are falling,
By their principles to stand and fall or die.
DON'T FORGET that eight hours a day would put thousands to work.
Why does a short work day and a long pay always go together?
PAINT 'ER RED.
Ry Ralph H. Chaplin.
(Tune: "Marching Through Georgia.")
Come with us, you workingmen, and join the rebel band;
Come, you discontented ones, and give a helping hand,
We march against the parasite to drive from the land
With ONE BIG INDUSTRIAL UNION!
CHORUS:
Hurrah! ”

“ Come into our ranks, ye shirkers, for we now rule this land.
Work or starve, the workers said, for you must earn your bread.
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song;
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song.
All workers, "The Army of Production," in One Big Union, regardless of age, creed, color or sex, is invincible.
Labor is entitled to all it produces. An injury to one is an injury to all. ”

“ The labor movement has grown up in less than a century as one of the many products of the industrial revolution.
Where the labor movement has become conscious of its destiny and of the immediate tasks which it faces, it understands:
1.That human life is now organized on a world scale. Individual nations can no longer contain within their boundaries the economic and social pursuits of their citizens. The ends of the earth are tied together by the exchanging of raw materials and of finished products; by the activities of investors; by the migrating masses of workers ”

“ Any wage worker wishing to become a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, may proceed in the following manner:
1. If you live in a locality where there is a union of your industry already in existence, apply to the secretary of that local union. ”

“ If his work is to assist railroading, no matter what the nature of his task, he is put in the Railroad Workers' Industrial Union No. 520. So with any worker in the textile mill; whether he be an engineer, loom fixer, or janitor, he takes his place in the Textile Workers' Industrial Union No. 410; and so on until the whole field of working class activity is covered. All the time the I. W. W. is organizing, it is educating the workers, giving them a new viewpoint, filling them with a new consciousness. ”

“ The workers, conscious of their mission, must recognize the fact that the industries are developing to the highest state of perfection, and will be ready for operation under a new arrangement of things, namely after the class now in possession and control of them have gone the way of decay under the pressure of the advancing force of a new civilization. But it is imperative to arrange the human forces of production for the operation of the vast resources and implements of production under a system wherein commodities will be made for use alone. ”

“ As a consequence, the apprentice system was a live question with the journeymen, and every effort was made to regulate it. It threw many journeymen out of work as boys were substituted, because their wages were lower. The printers, tailors, ropemakers, bakers, and many trades in other branches of manufacturing were affected. There was great complaint that there was much hardship endured by workers in the various trades because "labor is so divided that what made one trade formerly, now makes half a dozen, and every working tool is simplified or improved—to say nothing of machinery." ”

“ It served the purpose of directing the attention and energies of the workers from the industrial field, where they might have made themselves formidable, to the political arena, where they became the playthings of capitalist intrigue—a decidedly capitalist purpose, which politics served well. ”

“ Trade lines have been swallowed up in a common servitude of all workers to the machines which they tend. New machines, ever replacing less productive ones, wipe out whole trades and plunge new bodies of workers into the ever-growing army of tradeless, hopeless unemployed. As human beings and human skill are displaced by mechanical progress, the capitalists need use the workers only during that brief period when muscles and nerve respond most intensely. ”

“ Both methods depend for success upon the blindness and internal dissensions of the working class. The employers' line of battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the mechanical and industrial concentration, while workers still form their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions. ”

“ In consideration of the due and faithful performance of the above requirements, the Industrial Workers of the World is hereby bound to sustain and support the said organization in the exercise of all the rights, privileges and benefits as a chartered organization. ”

“ The working class uses the machinery of production and accepts the authority of school, press, and state. Out of the product created in the industrial process the workers receive a subsistence. The owners of the system enjoy surplus and leisure.
4.That the workers as a whole can no longer hope to gain by co-operating with the owning class. The struggle between the owners has reached too acute a stage. Class collaboration merely means that the workers are assisting the owners to prepare for another world war and thus to destroy what the workers have produced by their labor. ”

“ From 1849 to 1852, tailors, shoemakers, printers, bricklayers, carpenters, painters, common laborers, longshoremen, and others are recorded as having struck. Some of the building trades struck twice in a year—in the spring for an increase in wages, and in the fall to prevent reductions. The printers, shoemakers, tailors, and the building trades appear to have maintained some form of organization throughout. 113. What do we find in particular about this time? A tendency on the part of the skilled workmen to disregard the unskilled workers. ”

“ It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools they operate, and the product of which they alone should enjoy.
It shatters the ranks of the workers into fragments, rendering them helpless and impotent on the industrial battlefield.
Separation of craft from renders industrial solidarity impossible.
Union men scab upon union men; hatred of worker for worker is engendered, and the workers are delivered helpless and disintegrated into the hands of the capitalists. ”

“ While commemorating the labours and honouring the names of those who have striven to elevate man above the material and mechanical, the labours of the important industrial class to whom society owes so much of its comfort and well-being are also entitled to consideration. ”

“ One day as I lay dreaming, this vision came to me:
I saw an army streaming singing of liberty;
I marked these toilers passing by, I listened to their cry,
It was a triumphant anthem—an anthem filled with joy;
It was a triumphant anthem—an anthem filled with joy.
CHORUS:
One union, industrial union;
Workers of the world unite,
To make us free from slavery
And gain each man his right. ”

“ All workers in blast furnaces, steel mills, rolling mills, tin plate mills, wire mills, nail mills, rail mills, including all workers in plants where by-products are manufactured. All workers engaged in the building of engines and machinery, such as pattern makers, core makers, molders of iron, and other metals, machinists, all other workers in all these plants, including the workers in the power departments of such plants, machinery movers and teamsters, etc. ”

“ They have served as lift attendants, ticket sellers, post office sorters, mail carriers, gardeners, dairy lassies, grocery clerks, drivers of delivery wagons and vans, commissionaires. More than a million were added to the industrial workers in England during the first two years of war. ”

“ The workingman, skilled or unskilled, is a worker; a man, and, whatever his occupation, has all of the wants and aspirations and is entitled to all the rights and opportunities of a human being for self-development. The machine is rapidly reducing workers to a common industrial equality, making the unskilled man the productive equal of the 398skilled man. The machine is the skilled man, and when he gets through, that question will have answered itself.
Q. Does the Industrial Workers make any provision for a wage scale? ”

“ But day by day you are increasing the sum of your revolutionary knowledge. You are becoming wiser by experience. The Industrial Workers would not have been possible a few years ago. It is an outgrowth of the very conditions I have described. It has become an imperative necessity. The workers everywhere are beginning to recognize it, and that is why they are flocking to its standard. ”

“ We have also seen central labor unions disintegrate in times of industrial strife because they proved a disappointment to the workers belonging to the affiliated unions, who felt that the central body was a local body to achieve industrial unity of its affiliations. The workers can think only in terms of industry, and politics has no appeal to him. While the central bodies do not serve labor in an industrial way, while they hinder advancement through industrial action, they are the one valuable feature of the craft union system. ”

“ Social relations are the reflex of the grouping of industrial possessions. The owners of all resources and means of wealth form a class of their own; the owners of labor power as their only possession in the market, another. Political, judicial, educational and other institutions are only the mirror of the prevailing system of ownership in the resources and means of production. ”