There is no escape for you from wage-slavery by yourself, but while you cannot alone break your fetters, if you will unite with all other workers who are in the same position that you are; that is, if—instead of being bound up in a little union of a score, or a hundred, or a thousand, that is almost as helpless to do anything for you as you are to do anything by yourself—if you will join the organization that represents your whole class, you can develop the power that will achieve your freedom and the equal freedom of all.
The workingman who does this is a missionary in the field of sound working class organization; he wears the badge of the Industrial Workers; he has a new idea of unionism. Instead of being satisfied with ancient, out-of-date, reactionary methods he will have the advanced and progressive ideas of industrial revolutionists. That is to say, he will understand that when the workers are united in one great economic organization and one great political organization; when they strike together and vote together they can put their class in power in every council, in every legislature and in the national congress; they can abolish the capitalist system, take over the industries to themselves and rule the land forevermore.
For this great change the workers must prepare themselves through organization and education. Were it to come today it would result in collapse. It would mean a catastrophe, and why? Because if, for example, the Illinois Steel Works were turned over to the workers today they would not be fitted, trained, drilled, equipped for the operation of this mammoth industrial enterprise.
The Industrial Workers proposes to first unite all workers within one organization, classified in the various departments representing their several trades and occupation, to bring them all into harmonious economic relations with each other. The next thing is to coördinate them within their several industries with an eye to operating these industries when they secure control of them. That is the central function of the new union, and by far the most important one.
The old union never makes any reference to industrial self-control, because so far as the old union is concerned wage-slavery is to prevail forever.
The Industrial Workers declares that it is organized to put an end to the wage system, to free the workers, to make them the masters of the mills and other plants in which they are employed. In order to fit them to operate these enterprises in their own interests when they are turned over to them it is necessary that they undergo a thorough process of industrial education.
So that, after you join the Industrial Workers, when you go to your work in the morning, you will not be tied to your task blindly; you will have a thought about your relation to your fellow-workingmen in all other departments. You will understand your part in the enterprise, and your connection with and relation to the whole. You will help to fit your fellows for the new function, so that when the hour strikes you will be perfectly trained and ready to take control of industry and operate the productive enterprises in the interests of the people. To me nothing could be simpler.
Don’t you think we are capable of effecting this change? I do. I not only think it; I know it. And I know it is inevitable.
Upon the one hand the capitalists are combining. It will be but a short time until practically all the lands, railroads, telegraphs, steel mills, sugar refineries, breweries and all other great establishments will belong to practically a single syndicate, controlled by a few capitalists. But while they are combining and centralizing their capital we are organizing the workers that they may act together, economically and politically, and possibly in other ways before the struggle is ended and the victory won.
In the Industrial Workers they will vote as they strike, and strike as they vote—all together.