Saturday, January 18, 1919 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Craft Unionism and the New Movement the past.
TARTING with the proposition, that the historic By Michael Berry The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering mission of the working class is the overthrow Is it any wonder that in the face of such a suicidal of :he management of industry into fewer and fewer of the political state, and the substitution of and criminal program as is undeniably the program hands make the trade unions unable to cope with the Industrial Republic of Labor, the world workers of Compers and Company, is it any wonder that each the ever growing power of the employing class because must be made to understand that they must part with succceding census in this country from 1870, has rethe trade union fosters a state of things which allows New occasions teach new duties. Time makes class is absolutely and relatively declining?
vealed the fact that the conditions of the working one set of workers to be pitted against another in wage wars.
ancient good uncouth. We must ever up and onward Was not the late Mark Hanna, one of the most The trade unions aid the employing class to miswho would keep abreast of truth.
nc. cricus, as well as the vilest outragers of labor in lead the workers into the belief that the working class Nowhere is the sense of these lines more obvious America in his clay, right, when at a meeting of the have interests in common with their employers.
than when applied to the efforts of the working class Civic Federation in New York City he entered with This sad conditions must be changed, the interests on the industrial field.
Goipers on one arm, and Jolin Mitchell on the other of the working class upheld, and while the capitalists To any one whose intellect enables them to reason intelligently from cause to effect, one thought above and exploiter of labor, Seth Low, as My trusted and introduced these worthies to his brother outrager rule still prevails all possible relief for the workers must be secured. That can only be done by an organall others is clearly manifest. that the pure and simple Luer Lieutenants?
ization aiming steadily at the complete overthrow of craft union with its methods and spirit are in the As long as the working class clings to craft union the capitalist wage system and formed in such a way daily wariare on the industrial field, as ineffective as ism such leaders are a necessary consequence.
It that all its members in any one industry or in all inthe bow and arrow of the savage when pitted against brceds them as a Jersey swamp breeds mosquitoes. dustries necessary cease work whenever a strike or the modern machine gun.
It is inescapable, and the emancipation of the working lockout is on in any department thereof thus making Craft unionism, whether it be the of or class is impossil:le because they berumb the mind of an injury to one an injury to all.
the host of independent unions organized in opposition the worker and disgrace the working class in the This intelligent program of industrial unionism to the rule of Gompers Co. dccepts the wage system cyes of its enemies.
must supplant the suicidal one which Gompers and and its accompaniment, the Political State, as finaliXo man or set of men is ever respected until he his tribe use to keep themselves in clover and the ties.
or they first respect themselves. That respect once rank and file of the working class chained to the chaFrom the false premises of pure and simple, or riot wheels of Capitalism.
Craft terrorism all sorts of false teachings are given wring from the foe the battle is half won.
But the world do move, and Gompers and his The of is the leg timate offspring of Capito the rank and file of the working class by these capi troglodyte institution must go, they cannot secure a talism. It came into being in 1881. It was created talist Job Trusts with the result that in the English vote of confidence from labor except by fraud, and to put the Knights of Labor out of business, which speaking world, at least, the economic organization false pretence. In the place of this miserable program it did. Canny Andly Carnegie was its midwife and of labor reminds one of the story of the building of which has put crepe on the door knobs of the working at that early day in the development of American the tower of Label, when one asked for one tool he class, the Industrial union must rise. One great Capitalism was class conscious enough to scent danwas handed another with the result that the end was union of the working class. Industrial unionism reger in the of which was organized in 1869 by confusion worse confounded.
presents the intelligent and civilized expression of the Uriah Stephens, a Philadelphia tailor, who conCraft unionism started with capitalism and it sings American working class and it gives its program to structed its program from the Communist Manithe same song today. when capitalism has grown to the world in these words: festo which he got from Geo. Eccarius, a London giant stature, that it sang in the valleys of Lancashire The working class and the employing class have tailor, and secretary of the International Association when the giant of today was a puling infant fair nothing in cominon. There can be no peace so long of Workingmen.
days wage for a fair days work was its shibboleth as hunger and want are found amongst millions of American craft unionism was born the tool of then and is now, it regards that as the alpha and working people and the few who make up the empCapitalism. It has been at all times since, the tool omega of the endeavors of the working class. joying class have all the good things of life.
of Capitalism. It is what the Wall Street Journal, The cornerstone in the edifice of craft unionism is Between these tivo classes a struggle must go on leading organ of American Capitalism, proclaimed Fight capital with capital Keep Politics out of the until the toilers come together on the political field it to be some twenty years ago, The strongest bulUnion. Capital and Labor are Brothers Capital under the banner of a distinct revolutionary political wark against Socialism in America.
At best it is but a job trust, and as such it is no part is entitled to its share There is an aristocracy of party governed by the working class interests and of the labor movement. It fights any attempt to orLabor.
on the industrial field under the banner of one great On this false foundation Gomper castle rests.
nidustrial union to take and hold all means of pro ganize the entire working class. It seeks to organize duction and distribution and to run them for the beneas many as it can find jobs for. It could not if it From these false principles have come all the false fit of all.
wouid, and it would not if it could do away with the teachings which have caused the workers te wend cause of the workers misery the private ownership their way from the cradle to the grave, through a The Background of the German Revolution and operation of the means of production, distribution valley of tears. Contnued from Page 6)
and exchange. It deals with effect, not with causes.
No analysis of these principles is necessary here.
It is eternally plucking some small pimple from the Suffice it to say that the proof of the pudding is to perialism she will lose both her objects; but if she concentrates on internal development now, she will secure her face of Capitalism, but never looks for the cause of be found in the eating, and when the workers, 52 second victory later.
the pimple or seeks to cure it. Its tactics have dug of whom according to the Industrial Commis The war will last long and Imperialism will finally be unmasked completely, on both sides. The example of the the brains out of the American workers and made sion Report of 1916 camed 10. 00 per week or less, Russian Revolution will continue to inspire the peoples of them reactionary. It has forced them to walk through are asked to fight capital with capital it looks as the world, and its influence will be enormous. On the one side will be the bourgeois system and war for conquest a slaughter house into a grave yard.
though the one who proposes such a scheme was a wazee! by two imnerialistic groups, on the other peace and After fourty years it has gathered some 000. 000 combination of fraud and fool. Mostly fraud. It is the Socialist Republic.
equally fraudlent to say Keep Politics out of the The reorganization of Russia. Itsed on the dictatorship members and has succeeded in organizing them Union because it is clear enough to the intelligence industry. the exchange of products of the cities with the of the proletariat, the nationalization of banks and of big against themselves and the working class of th: world.
For these reasons it must go. It is a positive stumof a child that either the politics of the Boss or the provided we have a few months to devote to the job. Such bling block to working class progress and its career politics of our class must be in the union all the time. en organisation will makr Sncialism unconcuerable in Russia, must close hy the organizing of the American proleTo say that Capital and Labor are Brothers, is and will provide a permanent basis for the formation of a powerful red army of reasants and workers.
tariat for the overthrow of the wage system in one to assume that he who Jistens is a fool. The brother The Lenin conception conquered: and the All Rus great union formed on industrial rather than on craft hood is of the Cain and Abel kind. There is a red sian Soviet Congress in March, 1918, ratified the lines.
streak around the globe traced in the blood of one Brest Litovsk peace.
Brest Litovsk marked the first break in the imperialOtherwise Socialism, which is another way of sayiag of these Brothers spilled by the other.
istis war, and was a great contributing factor to the the Republic of Labor. is an empty dream, a phantom To say that The capitalist is entitled to his share coming of reace. If Soviet Russia had continued the to be chased by fools.
is pure bunk whatever might have been said when war it would have meant the triumph of the counterthe capitalist acted the part of a worker either as a revolution and Capitalism: and the German proleThe Revolutionary Age Book Department foreman or director of industry, that cannot be said prenare to cut the thront of their revolution, would taria, surrounded on all sides by capitalist nations RUSSIA AND THE LEAGUE today. Today all big industries are organized on the have hesitated. But, with a Socialist Russia prepared OF NATIONS lines of joint stock companies or trusts, and the capi to assist. a tremerlous ideologic impulse was given to The Soviets note to President Wilson and talist perforins no kind of useful werk. He is like the coming of the German revolution. Moreover, a flea on the back oi a dlug. le simply asorlos, song while the Polsheviki ceased the military war minst Russia reply to the Neutral Countries.
Germany, they coutinued the class war of revolutionPrice 5c cach. Wholesale price 34c each.
like, his share of the surplus value wrung from the ar prona tan la, smuggling agents and literature into CHAPTERS FROM MY DIARY brain and brawn of brutalized and ensnared labor.
Grmany write a proletarian revolution. The BolThere is no aristocracy of labor, craft unionism By Leon Trotzky shevil:. inacsador to Berlin. Joffe, was the centre of Pric: loc cach. Wholesale price 71 2c each.
not withstanding But in attempting the applicatioa the revolutionary propaganda, using his inlomatic of that theory the workers are kept divided into couriers to bring into Germany money and literature In Course of Preparation small crafts with their separate sacred scabby conor the use of the racintionari Socialists. The class THE GERMAN REVOLUTION was waged by Soviet Russia, in Germany and all tracts which render defeat the necessary accompan Furnne. the struggle for the international proletariau By Louis Fraina iment of their efforts to improve their conditions. revolution.