Industrial freedom. [volume] (Edison, Wash.) 1898-1???, 1899-04-15
CDTRGiMA MIA TTlONo
An Oyen Letter to the Railroad Telegraph
ers of North America.


By very generous offer of the use
of the columns of this paper, am en-
abled to address the Railroad Tele-
graphers of North America and say a
few words concerning their present
condition and their prospect for the
future.
That this is an age of industrial
conflict, unprecedented in the history
of the world, is a tact of common
knowledge. Formerly, competition
was practically confined to localities,
each comparatively isolated and self
sufficient, where labor was in effect on
an equality with capital and well able
to hold its own. Today, rapid COM
nlunication and transportation have
DESTROYED locality, or rather made of
the world but a locality. You no
longer compete with your neighbors
and acquaintance with the humani-
ties and amenities of those relation
ships to restrain each other and to
mould sentiment and public opinion"
Today you compete with the world
and the world completes with you, to
your very door-yard and rooftree;
and because it is a stranger to you
afar off and knows you not as an in
dividual and cannot hear your cry of
distress, it will crush YOU as an indi-
vidual to the earth with as little
thought or conjunction as you crush
the worm YOU do not see beneath
your feet.
The petty and more than half friend
ly skirlnishes of localities where rea-
son and conscience could be appealed
to in behalf of the oppressed individ-
ual, have changed to a world strife,
to an industrial world-battl wherein
an individual appeal to humane reas-
on and conscience can no more be
heard nor needed than could the cry
OF a fallen trooper in the sunken road
of Waterloo. Battalions, organiza-
tons alone, can now be known or
recognized. The day OF the individual
has passed. The industry or trade
that is not organized or the worker
who does not belong to his guild
stand the sure victim of the organized
powers that encompass them. Org
anized industry is organized power,
power which neither recognizes nor
acknowledges any other power except
that like unto itself. Under the pres
ent system of society and government
public authority is itself powerless
before it. 1t is absolutely irrcspon-
sible except to 4 power especially or
gained to oppose it. Note this vital
truth; the opposition must be organ
lied and organized as highly and
possess as great solidarity as the or
ganization which it must needs oppose.
Look about you today. See the great
industrial organizations of the times,
the corporations, the trusts, the mon
OpolieS, the great combinations of
capital. Are you the competition, the
patron or employee of any of them?
Then are you the objective of their or
ganizing. 1t is you they are after.
They establish your prices, fix your
wages levy tribute upon you and tax
YOU at leisure without your consent
You are a part Of their stocks and
bonds. They make their dividends
out Of your labor. They respect no
rights of Others. They are responsible
to no authority. In times past, to be
subject to such conditions has been
thought Just cause for revolution,
for armed resistance. Do you not
consider it cause even for counter-or-
ganization? In times past, free men
rather than to submit to such condi-
tons have counted possessions and
home and family as nothing and given
life itself into opposing their Cypress
ors. OF what moment do YOU count
your like condition? What will YOU
give to its undoing? Not even time
nor thought nor labor nor money to
organize against it? If an irrespon-
sible power is organized against you,
capable of putting its hands into your
pockets, taking the products of your
labor and fixing the price of your toll,
giving or Withholding you employment,
what are YOU going to do about it?
Throw yourselfupon its mercy? Crawl
III the dust at the feet of them who
think naught OF you but to use YOU?
AS an individual, isolated and alone
what can you hope for the future?
How can you make your wrongs and
injuries known-Or have them recog-
nized or righted? Do YOU hold your
place or position at the pleasure of an
organized power, a corporation, a
trust, that recognizes no authority,
no right, no reason, no humanity,
then, as an individual how utterly
pOwerless and impotent you must
feel vorrrcatc fC bn Ia &c .,,.oea.,,,..o