Labor agitator

“ The proletariat has arisen; and wherever the struggle of the laborers has taken definite form, the bourgeois codes have been convicted of falsehood. Written judgment has shown itself powerless to save the wage-workers from the oscillations of the market, to guarantee women and children against the oppressive hours of the factories, or to find an expedient to solve the problem of forced idleness. The partial limitation of the hours of labor has, itself alone, been the subject and the occasion of a gigantic struggle. ”

“ But any one who follows the sacrifices which organized workers make for some small and equivocal gain or who watches them in their periods of greatest activity, knows that the labor movement gets its stimulus, its high pitch of interest, not from its struggle for higher wage rates, but from the worker's participation in the administration of affairs connected with life in the shop. The real tragedy in a lost strike is not the failure to gain the wage demand; It is the return of the defeated strikers to work, as men unequipped with the administrative power—as men without will. ”

“ The dark months of the year had proved a very hotbed for the microbe of industrial unrest, and it had propagated a hundredfold.
As spring dawned, from every corner of the world came the same story. Strike, strike; everywhere, and in every calling, the word had gone forward—Strike! It mattered not the reason. It mattered not the worker's condition. If wages were ample, then strike for less work. If the work was insufficient, then strike for a minimum wage. In any case strike, and see the demands included recognition of labor unions, and particularly recognition of the demagogues who led them. ”

“ No work, no food, and after a while, no credit, and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created.
Don't you agree with me, my brothers, that this condition is an intolerable and indefensible one, and that whatever may be said of the past, this system no longer answers the demands of this time? Why should any workingman need to beg for work? Why forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his labor produces? ”

“ No longer may they claim the right to run their own business, to beat down the laborer's standard of living for the sake of increased profits, to dictate terms of employment to individual workers, to wax righteously indignant when organized labor takes a hand in their business. ”

“ We use for an excuse anything that will give us a hold on the labor class. These silly unions, they are nothing in themselves. But we—we can use them in the Cause. And so everywhere—North, South, East, West—we light our little fires. And when we are ready—Boom! One big blaze will come so quick from all points at once that it will sweep the country before the sleeping fools wake up. And then—then, comrade, you shall see what will happen to your capitalist vultures and your employer swine, who have so long grown fat on the strength of the working class. ”

“ When all is said and done, the workers who produce large families have themselves to blame for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed grasping for jobs, for the strike breakers, for the policemen who beat up and arrest strikers and for the soldiers who shoot strikers down. All these come from the families of workingmen. Their fathers and mothers are workers for wages. Out of the loins of labor they come into the world and compel surplus labor to betray labor that is employed. ”

“ THE class war between employers and workers over the product of Labor goes on without letup. "Settlements" in wage movements, whether these are accompanied by strikes or not, are at best only truces in the ceaseless struggle, only turning points where the struggle takes on new forms. ”

“ Under such circumstances, each year the fate of the worker in any class, either skilled or unskilled, grows more desperate. He becomes more completely the slave of the trusts or capitalists who own the tools and who monopolize the industries. The larger the dependent family of the worker, the more abject the slavery, and the less his power to resist a constant reduction of wages.
"In the efforts made by organized labor unions, to resist this tendency to reduce wages, we have both the cause and the beginning of the war between capital and labor. ”

“ With eyes that have been opened, Labor abroad is conscious of its revolutionary mission, and it is striving constantly, despite a thousand timidities and mistakes, towards the only way to solve the labor problem, towards the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of a proletarian regime. ”

“ I have said: "If you do not concede this demand if, on the other hand, you increase the hours of labor, and employ more and more machinery, you thereby increase the number of enforced idle; you thereby swell the army of the compulsory idle and unemployed; you create new elements of discontent; you increase the army of idleness and misery." I said to them: "This is a dangerous condition of things to have in a country. It is liable to lead to violence. It will drive the workers into revolution. ”

“ Wages went up and up, and continued to go up, until the workers demanded the full product of their toil. Now it is clear that, when labor receives its full product capital must perish. And so the pygmy capitalists of that post-Plague day found their existence threatened by this untoward condition of affairs. To save themselves, they set a maximum wage, restrained the workers from moving about from place to place, smashed incipient organization, refused to tolerate idlers, and by most barbarous legal penalties punished those who disobeyed. ”

“ The whole force of the organized power of the government is thrown against the workers, whom the so-called better class denominates a mob. Now, when the workers of America refuse to starve according to law and order, and when they begin to think and act, why, the street drill begins. The enslavers of labor see the coming storm. They are determined, cost what it may, to drill these people and make them their slaves by holding in their possession the means of life as their property, and thus enslave the producers. Workingmen—we mean women, too,—arise! ”

“ AS a background of the present, widely separated struggles with groups of workers have driven the individual capitalist, or corporation, into the present great combination to crush all organized labor. Without assistance by other wealthy interests in influencing authority and muzzling the press, the isolated employer stood chances of losing out in a strike. ”

“ Consequently the movement just drifts along aimlessly and planlessly, fighting for petty immediate demands, most of which are founded upon false bourgeois premises, and which lead the workers into a swamp of defeat. ”

“ He must be fought [239] and destroyed. There is no form of mediation or conciliation possible between the worker and his employer. Conditions must, therefore, be made intolerable for the capitalist. Work must be done badly. ”

“ First shoemakers, then carpenters and railroad men, and stone-masons, and iron-molders, and hod-carriers—all wanting higher wages. Where does the happiness and content come in? I heard you say, yourself, the other day, that the disorganized system of labor was such in this country, that it was degenerating into socialism and anarchy and was ruining every branch of business. ”

“ That the economic subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence ”

“ Under the Socialist movement there is coming a time, and the time may be even now at hand, when improved conditions or adjusted wages will no longer be thought to be an answer to the cry of labor; yes, when these will be but an insult to the common intelligence. ”

“ The whole fabric of Organized Labor is bleeding. The labor movement is in a most critical state. So critical, in fact, that it will never be able to recover unless it quickly and radically changes its policies. The American working class is now imminently confronted with the tragic menace of having its trade union movement obliterated. ”

“ We know that when the union declares a strike the discipline of organized labor is sufficiently strong to make the laborers freely take upon themselves all the dangers and horrors of unemployment and to remain hungry for months in order to secure a victorious conclusion for the common cause. ”

“ Labor is learning its power; and, what is more important still, society has itself learned the value of organized labor as a bulwark against the aggressions of militant capitalism. The man who thinks that labor can be permanently repressed and exploited is mad, and his madness is a menace to the future peace of the country. ”

“ In every community the strike or the boycott has been an ominous visitant, leaving in its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult to efface. In the great cities and the factory towns, the constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of perennial discontent which are sources of never-ending reprisals. ”

“ These men, the discouraged worker and the discouraged criminal, voluntarily withdraw themselves from the struggle for work. Industry does not need them. There are no factories shut down through lack of labor, no projected railroads unbuilt for want of pick-and-shovel men. Women are still glad to toil for a dollar a week, and men and boys to clamor and fight for work at the factory gates. ”

“ And as the years went on there would be similar strikes in all trades and in all countries, until at some time not many years off there would be such labor rebellions as would paralyze the industrial world. And out of this catastrophe the workers would emerge into power to build up a strange new world of their own. ”

“ It is this feeling of disdain to any class of men or kind of men in the community which is dangerous to the labor movement, which makes it a class-measure. It attacks its democratic character, and substitutes party enthusiasm for the irresistible force of human progress. The labor movement must include all men in its hopes. ”

“ The hours of labor are too long, and should be shortened. I recommend a universal movement to cease work at five o'clock Saturday afternoon, as a beginning. There should be a greater participation in the profits of labor by the industrious and intelligent laborer. In the present arrangements of labor and capital, the condition of the employee is simply that of wage slavery—capital dictating, labor submitting; capital superior, labor inferior. ”

“ The average wages of 1880 indicated that this mass of semi-pauperized labor is rapidly increasing, and that its condition has become 25 per cent worse in ten years. The shadow of the old-world proletariat is thus seen to be stealing upon our shores. It is for specialists in political economy to study this problem in the light of the large social forces that are working such an alarming change in our American society. ”

“ The strike of labor is in another form the holding of the purse-strings of the nation, to protest against injustice and wrong being meted out to the laborers. It is the determination of the workers that in the last analysis, if there be no other means by which their rights may be accorded and their wrongs righted, they may say with Lincoln, “Thank God, we live in a country where the people may strike!” ”

“ A glance at the labor movement shows that the preponderating force has been given to what may be called negative action. Unions use their power to frustrate the designs of the capitalist, to make trouble for corporations and the public, such as is involved, for instance, in a railroad strike. ”

“ Our capitalists, some of the slave-owning blood, and all inheriting its attitude, feel less equality: they see labor still as their slaves. Ultimately this will help awaken our people; but now——"
"That's the hell of it; we ain't got the public with us. What with petty union squabbles, and all—it's a job to make a dent in a saint's patience."
"Any chance of a sympathetic strike?"
"What can you do with Bowden and these yellow pups?"
The enthusiasm of the workers, dragged down physically by the hard rigors, slipped lower and lower. ”

“ They gather presumably to "discuss and help to solve the labor problems" but in fact to partake of the flesh pots they have stripped from labor, to pull the wool over the eyes of the wage workers so that the chains of wage labor may be linked ever more secure on the limbs of our class, that our hopes and ideals may be dragged in the mire and capitalists given assurance of a long day more of safe and contented slavery on the part of the wealth producers. ”

“ The authority of the State should intervene to put restraint upon such fire-brands, to save the working classes from their seditious arts, and protect lawful owners from spoliation.
When working men have recourse to a strike, it is frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the work too hard, or because they consider their wages insufficient. ”

“ However, we would be closing our eyes to the realities of the situation were we to believe that labor in our country is satisfied with its lot. There is growing unrest and discontent, specially among the farm laborers, not due entirely to the activities of professional agitators and irresponsible so-called labor leaders. ”

“ Despite the controlled local press, police powers and courts, outside opinion, un-suppressed, took side with Labor.
LESSONS TAUGHT CAPITAL
VIOLENCE, in labor disputes, is a sign of weakness. The weakest side uses it when defeat threatens. It may here be noted that I. W. W. strikes withdraw, not only one or two crafts, but all crafts, all workers in the shop or industry. That is Industrial Unionism and it places the employer on the weakest side industrially. That is why violence in I. W. W. strikes begins with the employer. ”