382 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE TRIAL 383 their worst foe is the class conscious working man, the man who fights his cause with a clear understanding of its aims and its significance. In the countries of Europe the employing class resorted to the organization of yellow unions, of socalled labor organizations that were completely under the influence and at the service of their masters. In this country the American Federation is saving them that trouble.
Its national representatives have become the willing tools of the ruling class and the staunchest supporters of its interests. The well being of the capitalist class demands the extermination of the and of any organization that preaches and practices the doctrine of the uncompromising class struggle; self preservation demands that the of combat this new and dangerous competitor to the finish. Mutual interests have cemented the spiritual community that already existed between them.
labor movement, that the Socialist movement has failed in its purpose of revolutionizing the mental outlook of the working class.
This is not essentially the fault of the Socialist Party. No country in the world has so conservative and reactionary a labor movement or labor leaders that are so servile to the interests of the capitalist class, as ours. The intellectual middle class was the first to respond to our appeal, and has naturally given the movement its leaders. This made it still more difficult for our party to gain a hearing in the ranks of organized labor; class consciousness and class struggle are conceptions that have remained foreign to all but a small portion of the American proletariat.
Now that the war has shown so unmistakably the complete domination of Stand pattism in the Labor Movement, the American Socialist movement must squarely face the situation. It must choose one of two ways either once more to grapple with the task of organizing a class conscious labor movement, or it will have to find ways and means of permeating the ranks of labor, organized and unorganized labor, with revolutionary socialism.
After an anxious week Judge Landis has made public his sentence. Fifteen of the defendants, including the General Secretary of the Wm. Haywood, were condemned to 20 years in jail, and a fine of 20, 000 each. Altogether the penalties inflicted aggregate to 800 years in the penitentiary and three and one half million dollars. The famed clemency and the reputed understanding of Judge Landis has proven too weak to withstand the insistent demands of the ruling class and of public opinion that stood intrenched behind it.
For that is the most tragic feature of this judicial travesty. that it undoubtedly does express the opinion of a large part of the working class population of this country. The sentence was received everywhere so as a matter of course, with such astonishing indifference, with such almost universal satisfaction that it were folly to close ones eyes to the fact that the working class of America with its three million organized men and women are still devoid of any conception of the significance of the aims and aspirations of the class conscious