The present desperate condition of the workers has been made the opportunity for a renewed onslaught on organized labor. The highest courts of the country have within the last year rendered decision after decision depriving the workers of rights which they had won by generations of struggle.
The attempt to destroy the Western Federation of Miners, although defeated by the solidarity of organized labor and the Socialist movement, revealed the existence of a far-reaching and unscrupulous conspiracy by the ruling class against the organizations of labor.
In their efforts to take the lives of the leaders of the miners the conspirators violated State laws and the federal constitution in a manner seldom equalled even in a country so completely dominated by the profit-seeking class as is the United States.
Capitalist Reform Futile
The Congress of the United States has shown its contempt for the interests of labor as plainly and unmistakably as have the other branches of government. The laws for which the labor organizations have continually petitioned have failed to pass. Laws ostensibly enacted for the benefit of labor have been distorted against labor.
The working class of the United States cannot expect any remedy for its wrongs from the present ruling class or from the dominant parties. So long as a small number of individuals are permitted to control the sources of the nation's wealth for their private profit in competition with each other and for the exploitation of their fellow men, industrial depressions are bound to occur at certain intervals. No currency reforms or other legislative measures proposed by capitalist reformers can avail against these fatal results of utter anarchy in production.
Individual competition leads inevitably to combinations and trusts. No amount of government regulation, or of publicity, or of restrictive legislation will arrest the natural course of modern industrial development.
While our courts, legislatures and executive offices remain in the hands of the ruling classes and their agents, the government will be used in the interest of these classes as against the toilers.
Old Parties Represent Class Rule
Political parties are but the expression of economic class interests. The Republican, the Democratic, and the so-called 'Independence' parties and all parties other than the Socialist Party, are financed, directed and controlled by the representatives of different groups of the ruling class.