The I. W. W. is, of course, an atheistic and anti-religious organization. In the March 1, 1919, issue of "The One Big Union Monthly," page 40, we read under the caption, "Help Wanted, Male or Female:"
"Priest or Minister to show the One Big Union family why our Solidarity Dogma is not superior to the ethical teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed, also to demonstrate the inside of the religious business, and where it is interwoven with Wall street."
"The Call," New York, May 3, 1919, in an editorial on "The Bomb Plot," which had just aroused the whole nation, said:
"The bomb and torch have not the slightest relation to any branch of the organized labor movement in this country, and the editors know it. Those who print such unfounded and slanderous insinuations place themselves in the same class as the would-be-assassin."
This editorial was published the day after the following special dispatch was sent to "The New York Times:"
"Sioux City, Iowa, May 2.--'We will blow the whole town to hell if you put Mayor Short out of office.' This was the threat on a postcard addressed to E. J. Stanson, who is trying to secure the recall of Mayor Short. The card was received today. It was signed 'I. W. W. Alliance for Short.' The police are rounding up all suspicious characters, and those known to have a leaning toward the Bolshevists of the I. W. W. Citizens are seeking to oust Short because he welcomed delegates to a recent 'wobblies' convention here."
In the latter part of the spring of 1919 the author of "The Red Conspiracy" obtained at the I. W. W. headquarters in Chicago a leaflet entitled, "To Colored Workingmen and Women!" Part of it is hereby quoted:
"To the black race, who, but recently, with the assistance of the white men of the northern states, broke their chains of bondage and ended chattel slavery, a prospect of further freedom, of Real Freedom, should be most appealing.
"For it is a fact that the negro worker is no better off under the freedom he has gained than the slavery from which he has escaped. As chattel slaves we were the property of our masters, and as a piece of valuable property our masters were considerate of us and careful of our health and welfare. Today, as wage-workers, the boss may work us to death at the hardest and most hazardous labor, at the longest hours, at the lowest pay; we may quietly starve when out of work and the boss loses nothing by it and has no interest in us. To him the worker is but a machine for producing profits, and when you, as a slave who sells himself to the master on the installment plan, become old, or broken in health or strength or should you be killed while at work, the master merely gets another wage slave on the same terms.
"We who have worked in the south know that conditions in lumber and turpentine camps, in the fields of cane, cotton and tobacco, in the mills and mines of Dixie, are such that the workers suffer a more miserable existence than ever prevailed among the chattel slaves before the great Civil War....
"The only problem, then, which the colored worker should consider, as a worker, is the problem of organizing with other workingmen in the labor organization that best expresses the interest of the whole working class against the slavery and oppression of the whole capitalist class. Such an organization is the I. W. W., the Industrial Workers of the World."
"The One Big Union Monthly," March 1, 1919, page 6, publishes an article entitled, "The Chinese and the I. W. W.":
"The Chinese workers in this country have discovered the I. W. W....
"Long enough have workers been divided along colored lines. The old, old misunderstanding created by our masters is fading away as we mutually discover that we are all condemned to slavery if divided, and that freedom is ours if we unite. The accessions of Chinese workers to our ranks fills us with great joy. May they also succeed in soon carrying the gospel of Working Class Solidarity and Industrial Organization to their native country. That hope takes the sadness out of the news of their possible deportation."