Strike

“ It was a strike aimed at the Master Masons' association. It was not for any great benefit that Saturday pay-day should confer. It was a strike to show the power of the striker. It was an exhibition of strength from those whose strength has not been resisted or questioned for four years; a power which knew no resistance, but which must be periodically exhibited to make its presence felt. It is that same power which is still so strong that it makes your mechanics blind to all your heaven-born principles and deaf to all your promises. ”

“ You go on strike, and it plays upon your fears, it uses your hunger and want as weapons against you; it saps your strength, it eats out your soul, it smothers your thinking under mountain-loads of lies. You fall, and the chariot of Big Business rolls over you. ”

“ If it is a building trades strike, it means dynamited structures. And always, everywhere, all the time, fights between strike-breakers and scabs against strikers and strike-sympathizers, between People and Police. ”

“ Our problem is to know just how to combine the two, spontaneity and organization; to learn to strike the blow when the workers' spirits are at their highest and when they have enough organization to effectively mobilize them into the strike. ”

“ I beg each war worker to remember that every slackening of their efforts, every reduction of output, every day wasted, every stoppage of work, inevitably encourages the enemy, prolongs the war, keeps men chained [ix] to the misery of the trenches, piles up the casualties, continues the loss of life. A strike, or the threat of a strike, may win for the workers their 121⁄2 per cent. ”

“ The strikers now realize what war means. And they also realize no doubt what Sherman said about war, because, my friends, a strike is a war, the two contending forces fighting like separate armies, each for its share of the spoils in this world today. ”

“ Whatever may be the urging motive of a strike, whether good or bad, it can only bring ill in the working. I would say, were I not a master, "Put up with a grievance, rather than enter upon a strike;" but being a master, you might misconstrue the advice. I am not going into the merits of the measures—to say this past strike was right, or that was wrong ”

“ The whole strike organization must be shot through with a spirit of determination and seriousness. Bosses, strikers, scabs, and all others connected with the strike directly or indirectly must be given to understand unequivocally that they have to deal with a body of real fighters. Then the vital, necessary discipline will prevail among the strikers. The workers will respect their leaders and follow their directions in the battle. ”

“ Good strike dramatization is closely related to militant fighting on the offensive. Classical examples of dramatic strikes were those of the steel workers in Homestead in 1892, of the Colorado coal miners and Lawrence Textile workers in 1912, and the present struggle in Passaic. ”

“ The essence of good leadership in strike situations is to conduct a successful fight to establish and maintain the unity of the strikers in the face of innumerable splitting and disintegrating tendencies. The fighting policy of the employers aganst the workers is well-expressed by the time-honored axiom of all strategists, "Divide and Conquer." And their ways to divide and weaken the workers are many, devious, and difficult to defeat. ”

“ A comprehensive strike strategy must include not only effective means for carrying on strikes, but also for settling them. Fundamental it is for the left wing to learn when and how to settle, no less than when and how to strike. ”

“ And that is why I have always interpreted a general strike not as a means of violent action, but as one of the most gigantic means of legal pressure that the educated and organised proletariat can bring to bear for great and definite ends. ”

“ One army of men, having been prepared, was ordered to strike—and struck. Other smaller armies of men, with no preparation, were ordered to strike to express sympathy—and struck. Other armies still were ordered to strike because it was the fashion—and struck. ”

“ The General Strike can disturb society most severely because it attacks its vitality, its main support: production and consumption.
3. The General Strike is the clearest, most direct and unveiled expression of revolt of the proletariat, and is the result of the development of its everyday means of battle, "The Strike."
4. Owing to the division of labour, it is sufficient that only a few wheels stop in the complicated mechanism of modern production, to bring whole series of machines, factories, even whole industries to a standstill. ”

“ Strike strategy varies widely from country to country and period to period. Its specific character depends upon the degree of economic development and of the sharpness of the class struggle in a given situation. ”

“ An essential of good strike strategy under present day conditions in the United States is to lend a dramatic character to strike and organization campaigns, especially those among unorganized workers. These see in a dramatic strike a living strike, and they are not far wrong. ”

“ Of the distress in many forms which the strike caused to men who had no alternative but to join in it, innumerable instances could be cited, and the author was able to confirm by personal experience what he had always believed to be the case, that in strikes, workmen are usually beaten, and that, if even apparently successful, they are, they must be, losers. ”

“ To strike for our rights and our liberty. Hurrah! we shall succeed!”
The dissenters cried with one accord, “Our objections we withdraw.
Hurrah, hurrah for the fireworks’ strike!” and they cried again, “Hurrah!” ”

“ Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people. ”

“ The general strike, which has been especially developed by the syndicalist Labour movement, and is now tending to spread to various countries, is a highly powerful weapon, so powerful that its results are not less serious than those of war. ”

“ That the daily bread and home comforts of tens of thousands of men depend on the secret and irresponsible decision of a little knot of agitators, sending out their verbal and often ambiguous written orders by a walking-delegate or two, is one of the monstrosities of Strikes often witnessed in the United States. The laborers sometimes do not know even the causes of the strike. ”

“ IN THE STRIKE STRUGGLE.
UNDER present conditions in the United States strikes are the very heart of the class struggle. They are brutal and open fights between exploiters and exploited. It is in strikes that the conflicting interests of the two classes are most manifest. The employer in his limitless greed and desire to exploit the workers even more intensely than the present unexampled rate, seeks to break their spirit and to force them to work upon his terms. ”

“ When the workers of a given country in a deep crisis, as in Great Britain, declare a general strike in all the key and basic industries it constitutes a direct challenge to the ruling class and its state. ”

“ A great strike threatens to involve the Society in desperate war. Un- consciously biased by distaste for the hard and unthankful work which a strike entails, he finds himself in small sympathy with the men's demands, and eventually arranges a compromise on terms distasteful to a large section of his members. ”

“ If we look at the essential points of the theory and the hope of a certain number of those who see in the general strike an instrument of revolution, we shall see that the above is a true representation of their attitude. In their minds the general strike is a method of revolutionary training applied to a proletariat too much of whose power would remain inert without the brutal excitement of events. ”

“ The offensive does not mean a reckless attack, but a calculated increase in our fighting tempo and a sharp assault upon the enemy's weakest point. It may take many forms, such as a strike of additional workers, an intensification of picketing, a greater stimulation of support from the labor movement at large, aggressive publicity maneuvers, calling out of maintenance men in coal strikes, etc., based upon whatever means are in hand and what opportunities are present. ”

“ "Why do you strike?" asked Margaret. "Striking is leaving off work till you get your own rate of wages, is it not? You must not wonder at my ignorance; where I come from I never heard of a strike." ”

“ A general does not call his army together and explain to them what he intends to do next. I am leader of this strike, and I am going to lead it my own way or not at all. You say the factory is filling up, but I tell you that not a stroke of work has been done since the strike began. ”

“ A strike means (for it includes as its main method) violence, lawlessness, destruction of the property of others than the strikers, riot and if necessary bloodshed. Even when the strikers themselves have no hand in these crimes they are morally liable for the foreknown consequences of their act. ”

“ Q.—Well, I heartily believe in the general strike if it is a first step toward the revolution, and I believe in what you intimate—that the workers are damn fools if they don't take what they want, when they can't get it any other way. ”

“ Often it happens that during the strike the related industries and branches join in, spreading the strike over ever-increasing territories and amongst ever-growing masses of labourers. The example of the strike is, in fact, suggestive and contagious to the masses. ”

“ Would not call it a strike, anyhow.
Q. What do you call a strike?
A. I don't know what to call it. When men turn out for wages, for their rights, that is what they term a strike—stick out for their rights. ”

“ All cities and towns were like armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast army of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and when the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops always appeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. ”

“ Our strike strategy must aim at the elimination of these misleaders and the creation of a body of militant, fighting leaders. These must be able to sway the masses, to develop their fighting spirit. They must be honest, courageous, resourceful. Especially they must be honest and courageous. Nothing inspires the workers so much as loyal and brave leaders. ”

“ The "universal strike" arrives when so many workers go out in any country as to disable the main sources of production. At any point along the route, the "irritation strike," quick and mysterious in action, is a sort of gymnastic exercise to train and educate our coming masters. ”

“ Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.” ”

“ Resolved, That we urge upon all wage-workers the necessity of procuring arms before the inauguration of the proposed eight-hour strike, in order to be in a position of meeting our foe with their own argument, force. ”

“ The general strike will last a short while, and its repression will be impossible; as to intimidation, it is still less to be feared. The necessity of defending the factories, workshops, manufactories, stores, etc., will scatter and disperse the army.... ”

“ If a stolid and unreasoning resistance be persevered in, a strike is inevitable. We feel certain that nothing can or will prevent a stop. How long such struggle might continue it is impossible to say. ”

“ We workers who have organized our petty strikes, and found nine out of ten of the strikers wavering and timidly wondering if they were quite justified in so upsetting the work-a-day world; we who have sometimes, in a strike, known a comrade to break a window or seen a policeman's bludgeon answered by a well-aimed bottle, and then have had to listen to the apologies of the labor leaders and the timid among the strikers, who declare that such actions are confined to hooligans and outsiders ”

“ For the building of a strong strike morale we must base our strike strategy on the theory of fighting upon the offensive. We must attack always, or at the worst be preparing to attack. This theory applies as well to the class war in industry as to military war on the battlefield. The workers, like soldiers, (and they are the same human beings and subject to the same psychological laws) fight best on the offensive. They are then fired with a sense of power and victory; defensive fighting demoralizes them and fills them with defeatism. ”

“ In strikes, notably of the unorganized, the under-cover men blossom forth primarily as disrupters and betrayers. Especially is this the case in the later, more difficult stages of these struggles. They then spread defeatism among the workers. ”

“ President Sovereign of the Knight’s of Labor threatened to inaugurate a general strike. A sympathetic strike, to be a factor in the settlement of a direct strike, must be so related to it as to directly influence the person against whom the direct strike is waged, either by preventing him from manufacturing his goods or else from disposing of them. ”

“ Unsatisfactory labor conditions gave the Industrial Workers of the World an opportunity to capture the loyalty and devotion of the discontented operatives. Reports of the unwarranted action of police and militia during a strike that ensued, the imprisonment of the strike leaders, and the difficulty of securing for them an impartial hearing were incidents too serious to be lightly dismissed from the mind. ”