criminal gangs who hired out to do murder for the coal operators in West Virginia and the owners of the copper fields in Michigan. A roster of one of the troops used in Colorado showed that 126 of the 168 militiamen were in the employ of the coal companies. It was the superior resistance which the miners of Colorado were able to show to the resistance of the miners in the other coal fields which aroused the country and advertised the methods which are used by the mining companies in their opposition to the organization of the workers. It was not until the miners changed their tactics from asking to fighting and successfully fighting the militia. of Colorado that the country understood. Although the Federal troops have forced a truce at the time of writing it is clear to every one that peace will not return to Colorado until the miners are free to organize and the control of the state has passed from the hands of coal operators.

The formation of citizens' alliances in times of strikes is a certain promise of lawlessness and outrage. In the name of citizenship these alliances deport strikers, and enter homes of strikers without a warrant. They have beaten, clubbed, shot strikers in the same spirit that other alliances of the same sort have burnt negroes.

A suggestion of the Los Angeles Times, the paper dedicated to the task of ridding the country of "unsirable" labor unions, was reported as follows to a

convention of the American Federation: "And soon, it has begun to happen already, the plain citizens of every country will form a combine. Its object will be the suppression of sedition and anarchy in the persons of the professional agitators. Theirs will be a big, powerful, effective but very unostentatious revolt. It will work quickly, surely, silently. The first thing the Plain Citizen Combine will accomplish is the quiet removal of these gentlemen. They won't be blown up; they will just quietly disappear from human ken. There will be a little inquiry at first but it will die down ever so quickly, for of all people in the world the professional agitator depends entirely upon his presence and his glib tongue to maintain any sort of interest or influence in his followers. His impassioned rhetoric is his only asset." These "Plain Citizen Combines " do not always work so silently as the Times contemplated. In Calumet they did not have to; the controlling sentiment of Calumet stood back of the patriotic citizens who assaulted, shot, and deported the president of the miners' union on strike when he refused to do their bidding.

4

CHAPTER XVI

SABOTAGE

Definitions-Not new idea-Not confined to strikes or labor union action-In stage of advocacy-Lefense of revolutionists-Destruction stupid.

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IN the introduction to a little book by Emile Pouget on Sabotage" Arturo Giovannitti, a leading spokesman of the Industrial Workers, defines sabotage as: (1) "Any conscious and willful act on the part of one or more workers intended to slacken and reduce the output of production in the industrial field, or to restrict trade and reduce the profits in the commercial field, in order to secure from their employers better conditions or to enforce those promised or maintain those already prevailing, when no other way of redress is open; (2) Any skillful operation on the machinery of production intended not to destroy it or permanently render it defective but only to temporarily disable it and to put it out of running condition in order to make impossible the work of scabs and thus to secure the complete and real stoppage of work during a strike." 1

The qualifying statements in regard to destruction are not essential parts of the definition of the word, but they are essential to an understanding of the

policy of the organization which advocates the use of sabotage as a method. Those qualifying statements are insisted upon in every case and by all the leaders. Doctor James Warbasse, who is empowered to speak for the Industrial Workers, in his definition recognizes that the qualifications have to do with the practice rather than the definition. In a pamphlet reprinted from the New York Call his definition includes a statement of the theoretical basis for its use:

Sabotage in its broad sense as understood and applied in the modern industrial movement is the coöperative application by workers of measures for the retardation of the profit-making business of employers, having as its objects the securing of concessions from the latter in the interests of the former as a class; the demonstration of the power and the indispensability of the workers and the bringing about ultimately of a better society. There exists in the public mind an erroneous notion that sabotage means the destruction of property by violence practised by striking workers with no further object than that of coercing employers into granting workers certain immediate demands. While the violent destruction of property is sometimes a feature of sabotage, it is exceptional but by no means characteristic. The term is applied also to any form of curtailment of output or destruction of property in the interest of business, provided it is practised by one class at the expense of a second class. The workers thus speak of the depredations of capital as sabotage. Literally the term means to move slowly with heavy feet. Destruction of property or reduction of output practised by an individual for his personal ends is not to be dignified by being called sabotage. It is possible that industrial

terminology will not long sanction the use of the word when applied to the petty interests of craft unions. Sabotage is a war measure. In so far as war is unethical sabotage is unethical. It presupposes the existence of a conflict between the capitalist class and the working class."

Sabotage itself is no new thing. What is new is the proposition to develop the spontaneous acts of individual workers in time of labor disputes into a policy of action, under the direction of labor organizations. A striking white-goods worker won the applause of her sister strikers when she announced that she had spent the day in a struck factory sewing the left legs of underdrawers to left legs and right legs to right. She had not been directed to do this by her union and she would have been surprised to hear that her action had a name and back of its name was a philosophy. She did spontaneously what many strikers before her had done and on their own impulse. Her act was in its nature a prank which "served the boss right.' As he had said he liked the work of unskilled girls she declared it was well to give him a little more of it. The very nature of strikes invites such action. If such unofficial acts had been recorded there would doubtless be ample opportunity for judgment as to their value as a labor measure.

The spirit of sabotage is not confined to the present, or to times of strike, nor to labor union action, as has been pointed out. When an individual worker is aggrieved over the lack of relation between the