Working group

“ A number of groups adopted the new system, breaking off from the old groups of builders, dealers in clothing, metal-workers, artisans, and farm laborers, each group increasing in number, each different, each making itself essential to [872] the rest, and satisfying individual wants as well as the needs of a community. Nothing impeded any man’s expansion; a citizen working as a laborer might unite himself with as many groups as he thought proper.... ”

“ 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 learn to depend upon yourselves. ”

“ Organized labor, ever running ahead of legislation in its standards of hours and sanitary conditions, provides a school of education and experiment for the whole community, by procuring for trade unionists working conditions which afterwards serve as the model for enlightened employers, and as a standard that the community in the end must exact for the whole body of workers. ”

“ The labor union movement, unlike the political socialist revolutionary movement, undertakes in its operation to supply labor with a certain working content, which the administrative scheme of industry has excluded from the experience of its workers. ”

“ One or two active members of the rank and file of a local union, expressing their opinions at meetings or as delegates debating on the floor of district or national conventions, can do an immense amount of good, unappreciated it is true, but still worth while. And who can be more influential in arousing interest in workers' education, cooperative stores, labor papers, than active men working at their trades? ”

“ Thus, here, too, the central organ of the control of industry is composed of representatives of workers, and is supported by mass organisations of the working class and of the poorest elements of the peasantry. ”

“ The chief of the experiments alluded to is that of co-operation, the association of workingmen as producers, a democratic organization of labor calculated, if successfully instituted, to bring the present system to an end, and replace it by one in which the division into employer and employee, capitalist and artisan, will cease to exist, each workman embracing both of these in his single person, the combined property of the group representing the capital of the concern and the profits being equitably divided. ”

“ Most laborers are unable to secure either the training or the capital necessary to set themselves up as independent business men.
183. RISE OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.—The risks and limitations which the factory system imposes upon the laboring classes have encouraged workmen to organize for the purpose of promoting their mutual interests. The individual gains, it has been found, when his interests are supported by a group of workmen acting as a unit, and bringing their united pressure to bear upon the employer. The labor organization has been the result of this discovery. ”

“ However, these workers are now organizing on their own account and, since they are now the most numerous and most militant class in production, with the most urgent need to be served, they must in the end become the dominant force within the working class and their form of organization become the prevailing form. ”

“ The basic organizations of associated labour, which are the fundamental form of associated labour in which workers exercise their inalienable right by working with social resources to manage their own labour and conditions of labour and to decide on the results of their labour, shall be the basis of all forms of pooling of labour and resources and of self-management integration. ”

“ Labor.—Through this committee the Alliance will seek to aid labor reforms, to encourage the arbitration of labor difficulties, to establish labor bureaus, form working-girls' clubs, encourage cooperative housekeeping for self-supporting girls, oppose the sweating evil and child-labor, and demonstrate to workingmen the desire of the churches to serve them in every legitimate way. ”

“ In the enterprises, the activities of which provide the basis for the creation and increase of social wealth, the working people cooperate directly in management with the assistance of their elected bodies. ”

“ In labour-management relations there are bound to arise frictions, disagreements, clashes all the time. The workers are bound to exert pressure by collective action, since their strength is in a group and not in individual action. ”

“ To distribute the income belonging to the working organization and to provide for the development of the material basis for their work; to distribute income among the working people; to meet the working organization's obligations to the social community; 6. To decide on the admission of working people into the working organization, the cessation of their work, and other labor relations; to determine working hours in the working organization in accordance with general working conditions; to regulate other matters of common concern ”

“ Without organization of Labor — where Capital, Management, and the Community are organized — what equality of relationship can there possibly be between the four parties to industry? And where, under such a condition, are the individual units of Labor likely to find themselves in the teeth of a world competition, more relentless where Labor is concerned than in the case of Capital or Management? ”

“ As unorganized labor, which embraces the vast majority of working people, has no special representation in this Conference, I deem it appropriate to say that all labor should receive due consideration, and that it is the obligation and ought to be the pleasure of employers at all times and in every respect to treat justly and liberally all employees, whether unorganized or organized. ”

“ Why, then, should not all stress be laid upon the organization of the workers on the industrial field?
The illustration used by our fellow worker in which he likens the economic organization to a one legged concern because it does not mention political action, is not a comparison that in any way fits the case. ”

“ In nearly every town of consequence the working classes have their co-operative provision store. And I have heard a plain mechanic, in a meeting of 6000 people, speak more common sense in ten minutes than all the other speakers put together ”

“ If we consider the development of the labor movement we will see that the working class has been creating its organizations gropingly, along the lines of least resistance. Its organizations began to appear as organizations of benefit societies, sick and death benefit associations, etc., and those organizations would not overstep the borders of their trade; would often limit themselves to one factory or shop. ”

“ It is never to be reckoned as equal in importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social institution, that does the work of the world and carries society forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. ”

“ We therefore call for organizers, capable and well-versed in the whole programme of the labor movement, to be sent into each state to preach the necessity of organization on the political as well as on the economic field. ”

“ Also, because of the variety of commercial enterprises which are the legitimate prey of the cooperative society, the demand for skilled workers is much more varied than in the organized labor movement. ”

“ The organisation of Workers’ Control is a manifestation of the same healthy activity in the sphere of industrial production, as are party organisations in the sphere of politics, trade unions in employment, Cooperatives in the domain of consumption, and literary clubs in the sphere of culture. ”

“ Instead of requiring from its population all kinds of work and reducing its ordinary occupations to a hard-and-fast routine meeting in a slow and unskilled manner all possible contingencies, the local group began to move, to call in workmen from abroad for tasks of a special nature, and to send its own workmen to look out for profitable employment in other places. ”

“ The labor organization is thus differentiated on the one hand from the strike—a temporary association—and on the other hand, from friendly societies and socialist organizations, which, though frequently recruited exclusively from the ranks of labor, are chiefly devoted to other ends than the improvement of the conditions of employment. Among labor organizations two distinct classes are discernible—those organized on the trade or occupational principle and those which transcend occupational bounds and attempt to amalgamate in a single, homogeneous organization, all classes of labor. ”

“ It is to their personal interest to keep the workers of the country divided into a thousand different organizations, so that a thousand different sets of officials will be required; so that a thousand sets of officials may draw salary from the scant wages of the working class. You may be told that the reason I am in favor of a new union is that I am a discredited labor leader and that I am trying to create a new job for myself. ”

“ The One Big Union, therefore, seeks to organize the wage worker, not according to craft, but according to industry; according to class and class needs. We, therefore, call upon all workers to organize irrespective of nationality, sex, or craft into a workers' organization, so that we may be enabled to more successfully carry on the everyday fight over wages, hours of work, etc., and prepare ourselves for the day when production for profit shall be replaced by production for use. ”

“ On the other hand, the labor organization, recognizing the strength and fair dealing of the employers’ association, is from time to time so modifying its plans and methods as to make it possible to work in harmony with the employer, and together secure results for both that have heretofore been impossible. ”

“ The effect of the vocations and the division of labor is to produce, in the first instance, not social groups, but vocational types, the actor, the plumber, and the lumber-jack. The organizations, like the trade and labor unions, which men of the same trade or profession form are based on common interests. ”

“ Nearly every class of employers has its own special organization; the associated press, associated charities, local, state, and national educational associations, and associations of learned societies, show the influence of organization in other departments; nearly every class of employees also has its trade union or mutual benefit association; everywhere, except in the household, mutual interests are drawing together for protection, for consultation, for economy of forces and resources, for a score of reasons, those engaged in the same activities. ”

“ Just as there is an individual skill and ability acquired by the individual, so there must be a group skill built up. The group skill is acquired by the coordination of the energies of all the workers so that the work flows naturally and evenly from worker to worker with the minimum hindrance. ”

“ It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.
My appeal for organized labor is twofold; to the outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborer fairly, to recognize the fact that he must organize, that there must be such organization, that the laboring man must organize for his own protection, and that it is the duty of the rest of us to help him and not hinder him in organizing. ”

“ Fellow delegates, I make bold to say that the organised workers we represent have given in the last four years an impressive demonstration to the whole world of their unity of purpose, their capacity to make sacrifices for the cause in which they believe, and of their determination to maintain the industrial organisation they have built up. ”

“ At the present time we see a strong tendency to the growth of occupational groups of the purely purposive type, which, lacking the guidance and conservative power of old traditions, and depending for their strength largely upon the identification of the material interests of each member with those of the group, show a narrowness of outlook, a lack of stability and internal cohesion, and a tendency to ignore the place and function of the group in the whole community. ”

“ That is to say, the workers of any one plant or industry must be members of one and the same organization—no craft division lines. The capitalist institutions are today organized on exactly the same lines. The industries as they are grouped today, dovetailing into each other, furnish to the workers the basis for the construction of their organization for the struggles of today for better living conditions, and for the supervision and the management of industries in an industrial commonwealth of workers and producers. ”

“ The true significance of these associations, their value which cannot be overestimated lies in this that, wholly apart from the especial object at which they aim, they are a school for self-culture for their members; that they confer upon them skill in the independent management of their own affairs and in harmonious action with others for common ends; that by education, promotion of a comprehension of business and fraternal public spirit they prepare the worker for a gradual transition from the prevailing Wage-System to the co-operative method of production of the future. ”