Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches, with a Department of Appreciations

by Eugene V. Debs

The very fact that the great majority of capitalists favor trade unionism proves that it is doing little or nothing for its members. Were it really doing something for them it would be antagonizing the capitalist class, and that class would fight it. But the capitalists are not fighting the old brand of unionism; they have, in fact, formed an alliance with it and the union is the silent partner in the firm.

You have all doubtless heard of the Civic Federation. This federation is supposed to be fair and impartial. It is organized for the one purpose of dove-tailing the interests of labor and capital, and every member of this body insists that these interests can be harmonized; that there is no necessary conflict between them. That is what Mr. Gompers says; that is what Mr. Mitchell says; that is what Archbishop Ireland and Bishop Potter say, and that is what they all say—that there is no necessary conflict between capitalists and wage-workers. If there be no necessary conflict between them, it follows that all the fighting that is going on must be unnecessary. I suppose then that ought to be very easily ended.

A gentleman named August Belmont presides over this harmonizing body. Not long ago, in an address, he claimed that there was no better trade-unionist in the country than he, and he proved it during the Interborough strike in the city of New York, when several thousand union employes of that corporation, of which he is president, went out on strike because they were driven to that extremity by his pernicious policy. He proved that he was a loyal trade-unionist when he employed James Farley, the notorious professional strike-breaker, and his army of Hessians to take the places of his former employes. Just a little while after Mr. Belmont had thus defeated his employes and disrupted their unions, he met at the hospitable banqueting board of the Civic Federation with the national officers of the American Federation of Labor and its allied unions, and there made good his claim that he was a true trades-unionist of the old school.

Do you think that a labor leader who is absolutely true to the working class could sit at such a banquet with such a capitalist as Belmont? Do you think he would be the guest of such an organization as the Civic Federation, whose only purpose is by subtle schemes to, reduce the trade-union movement to harmless impotency?

It is for this and this alone that the Civic Federation has been organized. This is its real mission. The American Federation of Labor has fallen within the fatal influence of this emasculating alliance, and has thus proven that it is not organized to advance the true interests of the working class.

The American Federation of Labor is now holding its annual convention in the city of Pittsburg. What are its delegates doing there? Simply passing the same old resolutions. Once more they are going to petition Congress to enact an eight-hour law. They have done that over and over again, and their petition has been as repeatedly pigeon-holed. They have also resolved to petition Congress to restrict the powers of capitalist courts in dealing with labor. They have done that time and again, and what have they gained by it? Absolutely nothing. No attention has been paid to these servile supplications. They have been disregarded, thrown aside, treated with contempt; but the delegates solemnly meet in convention once more to pass the same hoary resolutions, to introduce the same stale petitions, with the same inevitable results. Now, is not this a perfectly stupid procedure? Are these men incapable of profiting by experience? Do they not by this time understand the nature and essential functions of capitalist-class government?

Can they not see that we have a capitalist-class Congress, and capitalist-class legislatures, elected in every instance by an ignorant working class, kept ignorant, designedly, in the name of unionism, and with the aid of the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class? And that it is the very height of folly and depth of humiliation for a committee of the working class to beg the representatives of the capitalist class to legislate in the interests of the working class?

They were elected to serve the masters. And they are serving them. And we have no right to find fault with them—at least those of us who are responsible for their being where they are.

Now, we who have organized the Industrial Workers have had enough of this kind of experience. We have quit the old unions. We have organized the Industrial Workers for the purpose of uniting the working class; the whole working class. Not only the skilled workers, not only those who are favored, but the working class, skilled and unskilled, male and female, in every department of activity, are united upon the principle of Industrial Unionism.

The old unions were built up on tools that have been discarded and upon trades that have ceased to exist.