Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
"A general strike has more hope of success than a dozen little strikes,
because it's a strike for liberty--and that's the only thing that
interests all the working class. The trade strikes are for a few extra
pennies. And when one of them does succeed, it's because of some bigger
enthusiasm than was written in their demands. You went right to the
heart of the matter last night when you said you had been striking so as
not to be slaves. I'll bet you've seen it when you talked to the other
unions. Which of your demands interested them most? Dollars to doughnuts
it was 'recognition of the union.' They all have demands of their own
about wages and hours. But when you say 'union' to them, you're saying
liberty. You're appealing to something bigger than considerations of
pay--to their very love of life.
"The basis of a General Strike must be an ideal which is shared by every
working-man. The simon-pure unionists, the A. F. of L., the Woman's
Trade Union League, are fighting for little shop improvements, different
in every trade. Sometimes--often--one set of demands is in conflict with
another. The one thing that holds the movement of the workers closer
together is this brilliant idea of union. And the leaders are busily
preaching disunion.
"Read any history of labor and you'll see. First it was every man for
himself. Then shop unions and each shop for itself. Then all the workmen
of one town. Now, its national trade-unions. To-morrow it will be
industrial unions. The change has already begun. We already have the
Allied Building Trades. Mabel's keen on allying the various branches of
garment workers. The miners have gone further. They have a real
industrial union. That's the next step. We'll have the typesetters,
pressmen, folders, newsboys, all in one big newspaper union. Engineers,
switchmen, firemen, conductors, roundhouse and repair-shop men all in a
big brotherhood of railroad men. Twenty gigantic industrial unions in
place of the hundreds of impotent little trade organizations. No one can
look the facts in the face and deny either the need of the change or the
actual progress towards it.
"Braun shudders at the thought because the men who are now urging this
change--the Industrial Workers of the World--are displeasing to him.
They are not good party socialists. Mabel don't like them because they
tell unpleasant truths about the crooks in her organization. I don't
like them personally, either, because they are just as narrow-minded as
Isadore, and I guess some of them are as crooked as any of the
trade-union leaders. But the idea is bigger than personalities. You mark
my words, Yetta, industrial unionism is going to be a bigger issue every
year with the working-men. It's going to win. And the outcome of
industrial unionism is the General Strike and Insurrection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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