Unionist

“ Such being the efficacy of unionism, there is no difficulty in accounting for its popularity without resorting, in explanation of unionist loyalty, to any of those terrorist theories, the exaggerations of which have already been exposed, and on which no additional words need here be expended. ”

“ I have heard Imperial questions discussed by working men in excellent speeches, not only eloquent speeches, but speeches showing a broad grasp and a truly Imperial spirit, and I should like speeches of that kind to be heard in the House of Commons as an antidote to the sort of preaching which we get from the present Labour members. And what I say about the higher posts in the Unionist Army applies equally to all other ranks. No Unionist member or Unionist candidate is really well served unless he has a number of men of the working class on what I may call his political staff. ”

“ Where, however, a question is, rightly or wrongly, represented to involve a principle directly affecting the common interests of all workers, the Trade Unionist has been so well drilled in the virtue of solidarity that he will, generally, range himself under the banner of organized Labour. ”

“ It is true that suffrage is at last accorded to the colored race; but their masters are left in power to domineer, and even to organize. With experience, craft, and determined purpose, there is too much reason to fear that all safeguards will be overthrown, and the Unionist continue the victim of Rebel power. ”

“ The majority of the Unionists were well-intentioned men, led away by specious demagogues; but among them were lawless ruffians, who, ignorantly prejudiced against their superiors and even their equals, who had risen in life by the exercise of industry and thrift, were capable of any villainy, not even stopping short of arson and bloodshed. ”

“ Progress (with the Parish Councils Bill) has been slow enough, but it is impeded with an artfulness which indicates a certain division of labour among the different sections of the Unionist army. The first section includes the Liberal Unionists, whose rôle is ... to take no overt part in the game of mere talkativeness; the second is the official Tories, who mostly hate the Bill ... ”

“ They seldom, if ever, hesitated to do the white Unionists a service, at the risk even of life, and, under the most trying circumstances, revealed a devotion and a spirit of self-sacrifice that were heroic. ”

“ If we look over into Europe we will see that our brother unionists have got quite a start on us in the matter of industrial unions, and in every case their method has been that of Amalgamation. The old craft unions are being lashed together, yea, rivited, never to be torn asunder. Over there industrialism is more clear to them than it is to us. ”

“ On the contrary the whole trend of Colonial experience confirms, in the most striking fashion, the essential soundness of the position which Unionists have maintained throughout, that the material, social and moral interests, alike of Ireland and of Great Britain, demand that they should remain members of one effective, undivided legislative and administrative organisation. ”

“ Sometimes the unionists gained an advantage, but more often they suffered defeat, lost courage and abandoned the union, only to return to the scene of disaster with renewed determination to fight the battle over again and again until victory should at last perch upon the union banner. ”

“ XLIV. That every Member of this Union do use his best endeavours, by fair and open argument, and the force of good example, and not by intimidation or violence, to induce his fellows to join the brotherhood, in order that no workmen may remain out of the Union to undersell them in the market of labour; as, while that is done, employers will be enabled to resist the demands of the Unionists, whereas, if no operatives remain out of union, employers will be compelled to keep up the price of Labour. ”

“ The most experienced Trades Unionists will be the first to admit that any scheme which could deal adequately with the out-of-works and others who hang on to their skirts and form the recruiting ground of blacklegs and embarrass them in ever way, would be, of all others that which would be most beneficial to Trades Unionism. ”

“ The Trade Unionists at this time were the advanced guard of the working class party; and although, early in the day, the sense of superiority to the unskilled workers began to show itself among the members, much of the success which was obtained could never have been got without their aid. ”

“ Among labor leaders the struggle centred largely about the control of the Trade Union Congress; in the world at large, the efforts of the new unionists were characterized by the attempt to organize the unskilled workers of the cities, with the ultimate object of forming a large party in favor of municipal ownership, and later of introducing municipal socialism. ”

“ Unionism” remind the student, not of the mystic rites and skeleton mummery of the Owenite movement, but rather of the restless energy and political ingenuity of the Junta or the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee in those early days when the old Trade Unionists were fighting for legislative reforms with a faith which was as wise as it was fervent and sincere. ”

“ Strong, that ideas spring up with nothing behind them? All those who are acquainted with the history of unionism know that 'close unionism,' the refusal to work with non-unionists, arose from the persistent preference given by employers to non-unionists, which was a victimising of unionists. ”

“ The working men had, in fact, picked up the weapon of their opponents and left these without defence. But in so doing the leading Trade Unionists of the time drifted into a position no less inconsistent than that of the employers. ”

“ The unions, that is, are helping most effectively to accomplish the task, traditionally attributed to the American democratic political system—the task of raising the general standard of living; and the unionists claim that they deserve on this ground recognition by the state and active encouragement. ”

“ In intention, indeed, we are all Unionists alike, but the Union which they refuse to modify is in its present shape a paper union, obtained by force and fraud, and never sanctioned or accepted by the Irish nation. They are not Unionists, but paper Unionists. ”

“ During this agitation the number of members in the Lodge has been steadily increasing, until it comes to include a good propor- tion of the trade in the town. The non-Unionists have also been approached as to their willingness to assist the movement, and the bulk of them readily agree to come out with the Society men if these undertake to maintain them. ”

“ Nothing," he writes in January, 1867, " will force the governing classes to re- cognise [the workmen's] claims and judge them fairly, until they find them wresting into their own hands real political power. Unionists who, till now, have been content with their Unions, and have shrunk from political action, may see the pass to which this abstinence from political move- ments has brought them." x Within a few months of this advice the Reform Bill of 1867 had enfranchised the work- ing man in the boroughs. The Trade Union leaders were not slow to use the advantage thus given to them. ”

“ The unions as well as their common organizations, the Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party, and the General Federation of Trade Unions are drawing closer together, while the Socialists and revolutionary unionists are everywhere taking the lead—as evidenced, for example, by the election of the most radical Socialist member of Parliament, Mr. ”

“ Industrial Unionism bids all workers rally to its standard. To all sons and daughters of toil who yearn for a better day we appeal for Solidarity.
Let a sordid crowd of kept men and women imbued with sordid ideals oppose this new redeeming movement of labor—it is bound to succeed in spite of all opposition, whether it be that which show its hideous form in the uniform of the hired and armed Hessians with rifle in hand, or it intrigues and conjures under the cloak of Law, Authority, Order, Religion, et al., or even under the greasy smile and brass face of the "labor leader." ”

“ Now there are strong unions and weak unions—both arrayed against a capital better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history. Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a state, of a country, but the unions of the world...hundreds of millions of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for generations. ”

“ In the great fights that have since occurred the industrial form of our union has stood us in good stead, Had we been so organized that one part of the working force remained at work while the rest were striking, we would have been defeated and our organization broken up long ago. Speaking from experience, we heartily recommend industrial unionism to the labor movement as a whole, and we pledge ourselves to do whatever we can to bring it about. ”

“ The painful spectacle of unions going down to defeat before the onslaughts of combined capital, while allied unions stand by with seeming indifference and give their fallen brothers no helping hand, will be a thing of the past, Such preposterous unionism will be buried so deep it will never be revived except in scornful memory. It will then be difficult to imagine that the workers ever had such short-visioned, narrow-minded, self-centered unionism, as our present system. ”

“ And now a far greater organization has come to take its place—as much greater as the American Railway Union was greater than the old union—and that organization is the Industrial Workers of the World. This great union is organized on the basis of the class struggle. It makes its appeal to the intelligence of the working class. It commands you workingmen to open your eyes and see for yourselves; to use your brains, and think for yourselves; to cultivate self-reliance and depend upon yourselves. ”

“ Throughout the country the organised constituents of the Grand National fell back upon their local trade clubs.
The records of the rise and fall of the " New Unionism " of 1830-4 leave us conscious' of a vast enlargement in the ideas of the workers, without any corresponding alteration in their tactics in the field. In council they are idealists, dreaming of a new heaven and a new earth; humanitarians, educationalists, socialists, moralists : in battle they are still the struggling, half -emancipated serfs of 1825, armed only with the rude weapons of the strike and boycott ”

“ Don't tell me, Susan Ketler. Afraid? What of? Could the Union kill them for it? Could the men be hung, drawn and quartered for leaving it? Who is the Union? Giants that were born with thunderbolts and power from the Creator to control people's wills?--or just simple men like themselves: workmen too, once, some of 'em, if reports are true. You'd better not try to come over me with your fallacies. Facts is facts. If these men chose to do it, they could send the Trades' Union to the right about this very day, and return, with one accord, to work and their senses tomorrow. ”

“ The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, also offer you a Union; a Union based upon deception unscrupulously practiced, upon great promises treacherously violated, upon the National faith scandalously broken; a Union whose entrails are once more to be lacerated by the irrepressible struggle between slavery and liberty; a Union in a part of which the rules of speech will be proscribed by the terrorism of the mob, and free thought silenced by the policeman's club and the knife of the assassin ”

“ Every new movement, be it religious, political or economic, has its birth like a volcano, and unionism was no exception to this rule. The labor unions at first had their violent agitators who, possessing greater physical than mental calibre, laid the crude foundation of a [42] force in an arbitrary manner that consequently had its gradual evolution of development. ”

“ The guilds of the Middle Ages, with which the unions are often identified, were confederations of all engaged in the trade, masters as well as men, against outsiders. The Unions are confederations of the men against the masters. They are the offspring of an age of great capitalists, employing large bodies of hired workmen. The workmen, needy, and obliged to sell their labour without reserve, that they might eat bread, found themselves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their masters, and resorted to union as a source of strength. ”

“ But this enthusiastic conception of the Nation's grandeur, this lofty Unionism constantly appearing as the inspiration of his public conduct, gave to his policies, as they stood forth in the glow of his eloquence, a peculiarly potent charm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Compared with this modern system of organization the present craft. unions, each going its separate way and duplicating the union work of the industries as many as thirty times, is confusion worse confounded. The departmentalized union will be like an army, with its separate branches of artillery, cavalry, infantry, etc., but all welded together into one powerful machine.
Under the industrial system of unionism the workers will obtain tremendous power compared with the craft or federated form. Unity of action will at all times be obtainable. ”