service that was being performed before the strike was called by the members of the organization who are on strike."

In other words, this agreement makes it clear that while no member of one organization may take the place of a member of another which is on strike, a fireman shall fire an engine if the Firemen are not striking on their own account even if the Engineers are on strike and the engine is being run by a nonunion and strike-breaking engineer. In the same way an engineer shall not regard the fact that a strikebreaking fireman is firing his engine.

The contract between the Engineers and the Firemen, the plan for the federation of the four crafts, and the concerted action within the three territories are all for the single purpose of perfecting contractual relations between the management of the roads and the men. They do not indicate a development of class-conscious action as understood by the radical labor unions. But they are a recognition, born of experience, of the interdependence of related crafts. The brotherhoods have not adopted any of the usual labor union methods which are particularly condemned by the employing class. They have not stood for the union shop, or the boycott, of the American Federation. The value of the insurance features of the brotherhoods to all railroad men, and the fact that the methods of road manage

ments secure for all the employees universal conditions, make the union shop regulation unnecessary.

On the question of picketing, the president of the Brotherhood of Trainmen instructed the members of the union that the order to strike according to the rules of the Order, means that members "will be expected to cease work at a given time and to peacefully and quietly depart from the company's property, and remain away from such property until the strike is settled or until you receive instructions from your general committee to return to service . . . if the railroad companies are able to secure the service of a sufficient number of men to operate their property we must concede they have a right to do so." "

With the features which are particularly irritating to employers removed, with the concerted movement well developed in three territories covering the railroad systems of the country, with arbitration well established, the brotherhoods are fully prepared on their part to test out collective bargaining on a peace basis. The fact that railroad management is highly centralized is an important element in the scheme of the brotherhoods for the peaceful settlements of wage conditions through trade agreements made and administered on terms of business consolidation. There are no present indications that the brotherhoods

have other intentions or are to be counted on for sympathetic action in the general labor movement.*

*Since the above was written officers of the brotherhoods sustained members in their refusal to transport the militia into the strike zone of the coal miners of Colorado.

CHAPTER IV

INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

Its inception Preamble-Relation to Socialism, to SyndicalismCriticism of trade unions-No contract with capital-Direct action vs. political-War on the trade unions-Organization features realized and planned for-Centralization of power-Membership-Its present position.

INTEREST in a well-established organization centers around what it is doing and what it has accomplished. Interest in a new organization centers chiefly around what it is doing, in the light of what it proposes to do; and how it differs from other organizations in the same field, and its relation to them.

The Industrial Workers of the World proclaimed that its coming was due to the failure of existing labor unions-the failure in the methods adopted, as well as failure in conception of the ultimate purpose of the labor movement.

The new organization was called into existence by a manifesto issued in January, 1905, which concluded its survey of an outworn industrial system with a statement of the failure of trade unionism, and the task which a new organization must accomplish:

The employers' line of battle and methods of warfare correspond to the solidarity of the mechanical and industrial concentration, while laborers still form their fighting organizations on lines of long-gone trade divisions. The battles of the past emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago, weakened by the disintegrating effects of trade divisions; the machinists on the Santa Fé, unsupported by their fellow workers subject to the same masters; the long-struggling miners of Colorado hampered by lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized. This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the clouds of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of labor. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief from wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools which they operate and the product of which they alone should enjoy. 1

The last sentence marks off the ultimate purpose of the Industrial Workers of the World from the American Federation of Labor and the Railway Brotherhoods, which are not concerned with the dispossessing of capital, but with maintaining contracts advantageous to labor.

The preamble to the constitution further elucidates the revolutionary purposes which characterize and distinguish the Industrial Workers of the World among the labor organizations of America: