The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave, of ignorance and vice, of poverty and shame, of cruelty and crime—the birth of freedom, the dawn of brotherhood, the beginning of MAN! That is the demand.
This is Socialism!
Reply to John Mitchell
The fifteenth annual convention of the United Mine Workers of America met at Indianapolis, Ind., January 18 and continued in session to and including January 27, 1904.
The regular convention was followed by a special session (from March 5 to March 7 inclusive), made necessary by the failure of the regular convention to effect a satisfactory renewal of the interstate agreement with the operators, which expired March 31, 1904.
For a time a strike seemed imminent, there being intense opposition to the wage-reduction which the operators declared to be their ultimatum.
The convention rejected the ultimatum of the operators, but the matter was finally referred to the local unions, and the latter, yielding to the importunities of the national officers, voted to accept the terms of the operators, and the threatened strike was averted.
A few days later Eugene V. Debs wrote the following letter in reference to the matter which appeared in the Social Democratic Herald of Milwaukee, Wis., in its issue of April 9, 1904:
MR. DEBS.
Terre Haute, Ind., March 31, 1904.