Industrial army

“ Efficiency stared at us from posters which carried minute instructions to be followed in case of an air attack, and about the occupations most peacefully industrial always the tattered garment of war. In a shoe shop thousands of pairs of stumpy, studded black boots busied an army of workers. ”

“ This army sure will go,
To win the world for labor
And vanquish every foe.
Stand up! Stand up! Ye workers;
Stand up in every land.
Unite, and fight for freedom,
In ONE BIG UNION grand.
Put on the workers' armor,
Which is the card of Red,
Then all the greedy tyrants
Will have to earn their bread.
Arouse! Arouse! Ye toilers,
The strife will not be long.
This day the noise of battle,
The next the victor's song.
All ye that slave for wages,
Stand up and break your chain:
Unite in ONE BIG UNION—
You've got a world to gain. ”

“ Wherefore those who worked for Parmenter and Henchell formed an industrial army, some fifty thousand strong, generalled, officered and disciplined to the highest point of efficiency, and faithful to the death. ”

“ If to casualties on railroads we could add those in the mining, manufacturing, building and lumber industries, the totals would show a very considerable industrial army killed and a very large industrial army wounded every year. ”

“ For mechanics we had all the men skilled in trades at home who were as ready to give up high wages for a soldier's pay, and to work double union hours, as they would have been to stick tight in a fox-hole against a counter-attack, if they had had the chance. These came in their thousands, living under conditions far more miserable, in contrast to their habits, than their officers—from railroad trains and shops, bakeries, cement factories, contractors' firms, and every industry on the list—the typical American army, which has made industrial America. ”

“ Our object can not be more intelligibly explained than by stating that it is proposed to organize an industrial army, which, instead of ravaging and desolating the earth, like the armies of civilization, shall clothe it luxuriantly and beautifully with supplies for human wants ”

“ When this is being written the year is barely finished that saw the first American transports sail for France. Yet over hundreds of miles of territory behind the battle lines our men, with hard and grueling labor, have built the industrial forts that in this practical age are necessary to an army’s life. They have established a base of supplies for millions of fighting men. They have built barracks, airdromes, hospitals, warehouses, factories and repair shops. ”

“ The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, service army--a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of 35free men everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire. ”

“ If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual, by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete [112] industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, [6] ”

“ Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and that while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger army is being drawn into industrial production to equip and support the army and navy directly on the lines of defense. ”

“ Once the Army, in cooperation with the Air Force and Navy, has taken the most important positions, industrial production will cease to flow into the bottomless pit of the Army’s battles, and can be diverted to benefit the Air Force and Navy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
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. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. ”

“ His machine, with the countless machines which followed it, in the spinning industry and in all other industries, made it possible to organize masses of individuals into industrial regiments which required captains and majors and colonels and generals. ”

“ There are also several machine shops, factories and warehouses which contain vast stores of war material of every sort sufficient to equip an army at a fortnight's notice. About twelve hundred men are constantly employed in the arsenal and shops making and repairing military arms and equipments. ”

“ Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation. ”

“ In the largest fuse shop known, quite new, fourteen hundred girls, in one shift, are at work.
"An endless spectacle of gun-carriages, naval turrets, torpedo-tubes, army railway-carriages, small Hotchkiss guns for merchant ships, tool-making shops, gauge shops, seems to be going on forever, and in the tool-making shops the output has risen from forty-four thousand to three million a year." The vastness of the work, and the incessant and enormous multiplication of all the products for war must be as overwhelming as it is monotonous. ”

“ Today thousands of England's industrial plants are being operated as government factories for the production of war materials, and many other thousands of plants, still under private control, are centering their energies in this same direction.
"We have here in the United States vast resources in manufacturing and producing equipment, but they are unorganized and uneducated for the national service. Our observations of the European War have taught us that it is upon organized industry that we must base every plan of military defense. ”

“ In enormous factories, such as the world had never seen, tens of thousands of workmen toiled in casting great guns, while by their [25] side, in workshops and laboratories, every invention which the disinterested genius of neighbouring peoples had been able to achieve was immediately captured, bent from its intended use, and converted into an engine of war. Reciprocally, the army and navy which owed their growth to the increasing wealth of the nation, repaid the debt by placing their services at the disposal of this wealth: they undertook to open roads for commerce and outlets for industry. ”

“ These people were expected to make trouble when we went to war, especially as two of the largest local industrial concerns, the General Electric Company and the American Locomotive Company, were engaged on munitions and other war work. ”

“ All the appliances of science, industry, and art are brought into use to make it the best army the world ever saw.
It is the business of the government to bring the materials together, and the business of the generals to organize it into brigades, divisions, and corps,—to determine the number of cavalry and batteries of artillery, to place weak materials in their proper places, and the strongest where they will be most needed. ”

“ That which suggests itself to him as the most feasible way for securing a provision of heavy ordnance is, for the Government to make arrangements for obtaining a supply of tempered steel from private industries, and provide for the fabrication of the guns—that is, for the machining and assembling of the parts, and the sighting of the guns—in its own factories, of which there should be two, one for the army and one for the navy. ”

“ Railway workers, coal miners and various classes of skilled mechanics had to be brought back from the trenches. It was found necessary to reserve and organize labor for the shipyards and the munition factories. Agriculture had to be stimulated to the utmost. For a time there was a degree of industrial confusion, and under-production of essential war materials because men had joined the colors who could give better service to the Empire in the shops and mines than they could give in the field. ”

“ Nearly two hundred industrial recruiting offices throughout the country opened at six o'clock last night, and, judging by reports already to hand, the voluntary system seems again likely to justify itself.
"To British Workmen: Your skill is needed," runs one advertisement. "There are thousands of skilled men who are burning to do something for King and country. By becoming a war munitions volunteer each of them can do his bit for his homeland. Get into a factory and supply the firing line." ”

“ After we have doubled the pyramid, we shall proceed to treble it.
"By spring we shall be going full steam ahead. After that our production will increase from month to month; and we have the labor and raw materials for keeping up the pace indefinitely.
"The male working forces available between the ages of seventeen and sixty, as provided by the Auxiliary Service Law, will cover our requirements into the distant future, but ultimately, aside from the children, aged and sick, every man and woman will be enlisted for home defense, if necessary. The home army will be the whole nation. ”

“ To produce in quantities such as we were capable of producing would ordinarily require a year of maximum industrial effort to equip our manufacturing plants with the machines, tools, and skilled workmen necessary for the production of parts. ”

“ So apparently war work is not only making shell factories out of sewing-machine and tobacco works, munition contractors out of enamel-button makers, munition machines from bicycle- and clock-factory lathes, but is also manufacturing as a by-product engineers60 and mechanics from milkmen and all sorts of similar unlikely material. ”

“ The attention and admiration of the country were directed to the fact that the Labor administration was the first to build small arms factories, to revise the military establishment so as to secure the greatest efficiency and to prepare the nation for deeds of valor on the battlefield. ”

“ On the lessons taught by actual war we must [Pg 230] figure out carefully what our country lacks in raw materials and accumulate great stores of these which shall never be utilized until Der Tag of the future. We must organize the industrial mobilization as perfectly as the military mobilization. ”

“ A first-class arsenal, which can renew the matériel and equipment of a large army, embraces a gun factory, carriage factory, laboratory and small-arms ammunition factory, small-arms factory, harness, saddlery and tent factories, and a powder factory; in addition it must possess great store-houses. In a second-class arsenal the factories would be replaced by workshops. The situation of an arsenal should be governed by strategical considerations. ”

“ Shipyards and factories for armaments and ammunition should be owned by the nation and manned by officers and enlisted men. The army and the navy can be made self-supporting nearly as easily as the post office. ”

“ Control of Industry and Transportation.—The establishment of huge war industries for making guns, munitions, clothing, and the varied supplies for a vast army put a great strain on the industry and transportation of the United States. The country was called upon to feed its own people, the army that was preparing to go abroad and, in considerable part, the Allied armies. ”

“ France seems to be ahead in this work. The essentials are to commandeer all material resources of certain kinds (steel, copper, rubber, nickel, etc.) ; then have ready all drawings, machines, etc., necessary in advance for all munitions and supplies; and know the plant that can produce these on a standard basis.
The Army and Navy are so set and stereotyped and stand-pat that I am almost hopeless as to moving them to do the wise, large, wholesale job. They are governed by red-tape,—worse than any Union. ”

“ But immense as was the growth of the artillery factor, the ultimate problem was the old problem of co-operation and combination of all factors. "Deep study of work other than one's own," "understanding of the other man's job"—for the highest success in any branch of the Army, these were and are indispensable. Only so can the vast machine work satisfactorily; only so can the human intelligence embodied in it come to its own.
To the two subsidiary services most in the public eye—tanks and aeroplanes—I will return presently. ”