“These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.”
Fully in keeping with these basic principles are the sentiments and ideas given utterance to at May Day celebrations, as are also the functions and the work of the organizations, both political and industrial, which unequivocally rally under the Banner of the International May Day.
Lessons Taught to Labor.
On May Day, of all days, the men, women and children of the working class, whatever line of work they may be engaged in in a given industry, are appealed to by industrial union representatives to form one compact union of the workers of the industry, and all such industrial unions to form one nation-wide union of the working class.
They are taught that to accomplish this unification of the labor forces the labor union must be an open union; that it is criminal and suicidal for labor to prevent a single wage-earner, whatever his creed, color, nationality or race may be, from becoming or remaining a member of the union of his or her industry; that, consequently, exclusion laws against wage-earners of any race or nationality whatever, high initiation fees, assessments and dues, catchy trade examinations of applicants for membership, practically prohibitory apprenticeship rules, “closing of union books,” driving of members from the union by imposition of unjust and excessive fines, that these and similar measures are only contrivances to prevent the forces of Labor throughout the country and throughout the world from coming together to advance their common interests.
The workers are taught on May Day that a true, up-to-date labor union must recognize that it is not true that wealth is the joint product of capital and labor, in other words, of the capitalist class and the working class whose claims can and should be harmonized through “collective bargaining” and methods of conciliation, mediation and arbitration.
It must recognize that, on the contrary, LABOR ALONE PRODUCES ALL WEALTH and TO LABOR BELONGS ALL IT PRODUCES.
It must recognize that the employing class as a class of social parasites, has no real claim to any part of the wealth produced that the workers should be bound to respect.
It must recognize that instead of the absurd aim of securing “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” the labor union movement must aim to secure for the wealth producers the opportunity to enjoy with their families every particle of the wealth they helped to produce and all the benefits of a civilized society.
It must recognize that such a union, planted upon the ground of the class struggle instead of class peace, must, in order to succeed, be militant in character, democratic in conduct, and be guided in all its acts and utterances by the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity of the international working class. It follows therefrom that: