Part Two– Political Action and the Future of Labour (The Axe to the Root)
Chapter VI – Industrial and Political Unity

At meetings throughout this country one frequently hears speakers labouring to arouse the workers to their duty, exclaiming:

"You unite industrially; why, then, do you divide politically? You unite against the bosses in strikes and lock-outs, and then you foolishly divide when you go to the ballot-box. Why not unite at the ballot-box as you unite in the workshop? Why not show the same unity on the political field as you do on the industrial battlefield?"

At the first blush this looks to be an exceedingly apt and forcible form of appeal to our fellow-workers, but when examined more attentively it will be seen that in view of the facts of our industrial warfare this appeal is based upon a flagrant misstatement of facts. The real truth is that the workers do not unite industrially, but on the contrary are most hopelessly divided on the industrial field, and that their division and confusion on the political field are the direct result of their division and confusion on the industrial field. It would be easy to prove that even our most loyal trade unionists habitually play the game of the capitalist class on the industrial field just as surely as the Republican and Democratic workers do it on the political field. Let us examine the situation on the industrial field and see if it justifies the claim that economically the workers are united, or if it justifies the contention I make that the division of the workers on the political field is but the reflex of the confused ideas derived from the practice of the workers in strikes and lock-outs.

Quite recently we had a great strike of the workers employed on the subway and elevated systems of street care service in New York. The men showed a splendid front against the power of the mammoth capitalist company, headed by August Belmont, against which they were arrayed. Conductors, motormen, ticket-choppers, platform men, repairers, permanent way men, ticket-sellers-all went out together, and for a time paralysed the entire traffic on their respective system. The company, on the other hand, had the usual recourse to Jim Farley and his scabs, and sought to man the trains with these professional traitors to their class. The number of scabs, was large, but small in proportion to the men on strike, yet the strike was broken. It was not the scabs, however, who turned the scale against the strikers in favour of the masters. That service to capital was performed by good union men with union cards in their pockets. These men were the engineers in the powerhouses which supplied the electric power to run the cars, and without whom all the scabs combined could not have run a single trip. A scab is a vile creature, but what shall we say of the men who helped the scab to commit his act of treason? The law says that an accessory before the fact is equally guilty of a crime with the actual criminal. What, then, are the trade unionists who supplied the power to the scabs to help them break a strike? They were unconsciously being compelled by their false system of organisation to betray their struggling brothers. Was this unity on the industrial field? And is it any wonder that the men accustomed to so scab upon their fellow-workers in a labour struggle should also scab it upon their class in a political struggle? Is it not rather common sense to expect that the recognition of the necessity for concerted common action of all workers against the capitalist enemy in the industrial battle ground must precede the realisation of the wisdom of common action as a class on the political battlefield? The men who are taught that it is all right to continue working for a capitalist against whom their shopmates of a different craft are on strike are not likely to see any harm in continuing to vote for a capitalist nominee at the polls even when he is opposed by the candidate of a Labour organ-isation. Political scabbery is born of industrial scabbery; it is its legitimate offspring.

Instances of this industrial disunion could be cited indefinitely.

The longshoremen of the Port of New York went out on strike. They at first succeeded in tying up the ships of the Shipping Trust, great as its wealth is, and in demonstrating the real power of labour when unhampered by contracts. The Shipping Trust was taken by surprise, but quickly recovered, and as usual, imported scabs from all over the country. Then was seen what the unity of the working class on the industrial field amounts to under present con-ditions. As scab longshoremen unloaded the ship, union teamsters, with union buttons in their hats, received the goods from their hands, loaded them into their wagons and drove merrily away. As scab longshoremen loaded a ship, union men coaled it and when the cargo was safely on board, union marine engineers set up steam, and union seamen and firemen took it out of the dock on its voyage to its destination.

Can men who are trained and taught to believe that such a course of conduct is right and proper be expected to realise the oneness of the interests of the working class as a whole against the capitalist class as a whole, and vote and act accordingly? In short, can their field of vision be so extensive that it can see the brotherhood of all men, and yet so restricted that it can see no harm in a brother labour organisation in their own industry being beaten to death by capital?

Contrast this woeful picture of divided and disorganised "unionism" in America with the following account from the New York Sun of the manner in which the Socialist unionists of Scandinavia stand together in a fight against the common enemy, irrespective of "craft interests" or "craft contracts":

"A short sojourn in Scandinavia, particularly in Copenhagen and the southern part of Sweden, gives one an object-lesson in Socialism. In some way or other the Socialists have managed to capture all the trade unions in these parts, and between them have caused a reign of terror for every-body who is unfortunate enough to own a business of any sort. Heaven help him if he fires one of his help or tries to assert himself in any way. He is immediately declared in 'blockade.'"

" This Socialist term means practically the same as boycott. If the offending business man happens to be a retail merchant all workmen are warned off his premises. The drivers for the wholesale houses refuse to deliver goods at his store, the truckmen refuse to cart anything to or from his place, and so on; in fact, he is a doomed man unless he comes to terms with the union. It is worth mentioning that boycotting bulletins and also the names and addresses of those who are bold enough to help the man out are published in leaded type in all the Socialistic newspapers. A law to prevent the publication of such boycotting announcements was proposed in the Swedish Riksdag this year, but was defeated."

"If the boycotted person be a wholesale dealer the proceedings are much the same, or, rather, they are reversed. The retailers are threatened with the loss of the workmen's trade unless they cease dealing with such a firm; the truckmen refuse to haul for it. It has even happened that the scavengers have refused to remove the refuse from the premises. More often however, the cans are 'accidentally' dropped on the stairs. These scavengers belong to the cities' own forces, as a rule, and receive pensions after a certain length of service, but they have all sworn allegiance to the Socialistic cause."

"In reading the foregoing it is well to remember that practically all the working men of such cities – that is, practically all Sweden and Denmark – are union men (i.e., Socialists), and are, therefore, able to carry out their threats."

Here we have a practical illustration of the power of Socialism when it rests upon an economic organisation, and the effectiveness and far-reaching activity of unionism when it is inspired by the Socialist ideal. Now, as an equally valuable object-lesson in craft unionism, an object-lesson in how not to do it, let us picture a typical state of affairs in the machine industry. The moulders, contract with the boss expires and they go out on strike. In a machine shop the moulder occupies a position intermediate between the patternmaker and the machinist, or, as they are called in Ireland, the engineers. When the moulders go out, the boss who has had all his plans paid for months beforehand brings in a staff of scabs and installs them in the places of the striking workers. Then the tragicomedy begins. The union patternmaker makes his patterns and hands them over to the scab moulder; the scab moulder casts his moulds and when they are done the union machinist takes them from him and placidly finishes the job. Then, having finished their day's work, they go to their union meetings and vote donations to help the strikers to defeat the boss, after they had worked all day to help the boss to defeat the strikers. Thus they exemplify the solidarity of labour. When the moulders are beaten, the machinists and the patternmakers and the blacksmiths, and the electricians, and the engineers, and all the rest, take their turn of going up against the boss in separate bodies to be licked. As each is taking its medicine its fellows of other crafts in the same shop sympathise with it in the name of the solidarity of labour and continue to work in the service of the capitalist against whom the strike is directed, in the name of the sacred contract of the craft union.

When the coalminers of Pennsylvania had their famous strike in 1902, the railroad brotherhoods hauled in scabs to take their places, and when the scabs had mined coal the same railroad men hauled out this scab-mined coal.

Need I go on to prove the point that industrial division and discord is the order of the day amongst the workers, and that this disunion and confusion on the economic field cannot fail to perpetuate itself upon the political field? These orators who reproach the workers with being divided on the political field, although united on the industrial, are simply misstating facts. The workers are divided on both, and as political parties are the reflex of economic conditions, it follows that industrial unity once established will create the political unity of the working class. 1 feel that we cannot too strongly insist upon this point. Political division is born of industrial division. Political scabbery is born of industrial craft scabbery. Political weakness keeps even step with industrial weakness. It is an axiom enforced by all the experience of the ages that they who rule industrially will rule politically, and therefore they who are divided industrially will remain impotent politically. Failure of Mr. Gompers to unite politically the forces of the American Federation of Labour was the inevitable outcome of his own policy of division on the industrial battle ground. He reversed the natural process by trying to unite men on class lines whilst he opposed every effort as in the case of the brewers, to unite them on industrial lines. The natural lines of thought and action lead from the direct to the indirect, from the simple to the complex, from the immediate to the ultimate. Mr. Gompers ignored this natural line of development and preached the separation into craft organisations, with separate craft interests, of the workers, and then expected them to heed the call to unity on the less direct and immediate battleground of politics. He failed, as even the Socialists would fail if they remained equally blind to the natural law of our evolution into class consciousness. That natural law leads us as individuals to unite in our craft, as crafts to unite in our industry, as industries in our class, and the finished expression of that evolution is, we believe, the appearance of our class upon the political battle ground with all the economic power behind it to enforce its mandates. Until that day dawns our political parties of the working class are but propagandist agencies. John the Baptists of the New Redemption; but when that day dawns our political party will be armed with all of the might of our class; will be revolutionary in fact as well as in thought.

To Irish men and women, especially, I should not need to labour this point. The historic example of their Land League bequeaths to us a precious legacy of wisdom, both practical and revolutionary, outlining our proper course of action. During Land League days in Ireland, when a tenant was evicted from a farm, not only his fellow-tenants, but practically the whole country united to help him in his fight. When the evicted farm was rented by another tenant, a land-grabber or "scab," every person in the countryside shunned him as a leper, and, still better, fought him as a traitor. Nor did they make the mistake of fighting the traitor and yet working for his employer, the landlord. No, they included both in the one common hostility.

At the command of the Land League every servant and labourer quit the service of the landlord. In Ireland, it is well to remember, in order to appreciate this act of the labourers, that the landlords were usually better paymasters and more generous employers than the tenant farmers. The labourers, therefore, might reasonably have argued that the fight of the tenant farmers was none of their business. But they indulged in no such blindly selfish hair-splitting. When the landlord had declared war upon the tenant by evicting him, the labourers responded by war upon the landlord. Servant boy and servant girl at once quit his service, the carman refused to drive him, the cook to cook for him, his linen remained unwashed, his harvest unreaped, his cows unmilked, his house and fields deserted. The grocer and the butcher, the physician and the schoolmaster, were alike hostile to him; if the children of the land-grabber (scab) entered school all other children rose and left; if the land-grabber or his land-lord attended Mass everyone else at Mass walked out in a body. They found it hard to get anyone to serve them or feed them in health, to attend them in sickness, or to bury them in death. It was this relentless and implacable war upon the land-owning class and traitor's among the tenant class which gave the word "boycott" to the English language through its enforcement against an Irish landowner, Captain Boycott. It was often horrible, it was always ugly in appearance to the superficial observer, but it was marvellously effective. It put courage and hope and manhood into a class long reckoned as the most enslaved in Europe. It broke the back of the personal despotism of the Irish landlord, and so crippled his social and economic power that Irish landed estates, from being a favourite form of investment for the financial interests, sank to such a position that even the most reckless moneylender would for a time scarce accept a mortgage upon them. That it failed of attaining real economic freedom for the Irish people was due not to any defect in its method of fighting but rather to the fact that economic questions are not susceptible of being settled within the restricted radius of any one small nation, but are acted upon by influences world-wide in their character.

But how great a lesson for the worker is to be found in this record of a class struggle in Ireland! The British worker was never yet so low in the social and political scale as the Irish tenant. Yet the Irish tenant rose and by sheer force of his unity on the economic field shattered the power of his master, whilst the British worker remaining divided upon the economic field sinks day by day lower toward serfdom. The Irish tenant had to contend against the overwhelming power of a foreign empire backing up the economic power of a native tyranny, yet he conquered, whilst the British worker able to become the political sovereign of the country remains the sport of the political factions of his masters and the slave of their social power.

The Irish tenant uniting on the economic field felt his strength, and, carrying the fight into politics, simply swept into oblivion every individual or party that refused to serve his class interests, but the toilers remain divided on the economic field, and hence are divided and impotent upon the political – zealous servants of every interest but their own.

Need I point the moral more? Every one who has the interests of the working class at heart should strive to realise industrial unity as the solid foundation upon which alone the political unity of the workers can be built up and directed toward a revolutionary end. To this end all those who work for industrial unionism are truly co-operating even when they least care for political activities.

On to Chapter VII

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