The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1909-04-15

bined scab labor crowd to hurl agains
the standard of every organized trad
in the land
My friends. we cannot escape. Ever
man of labor here has got to accept tn
supreme obligation of universal organiza
ton, from the man who digs the ditch t
the most highly skilled mechanic in tn
land. There is no man too mean, ther
is no occupation too ser,ilr to iustif!
your lack of organization efforts, no
because they will add strength to tn
union in great numbers, but because th
mere fact of organization among them i
the protection and guarantee and SUR
hope of the strongest union in the land
Now, men. that is no mean Job. Tha
is a job so bic and tremendous that il
is only equaled by the task hafore thos,
pioneers who dared 20 hold for a FIRE,
nation and dared to lay its foundation,
on those rocky New England shores
But they had hope. Are we less worthy
than our fathers of faith in the future
of mankind? Shall we. in the presence
of an accomplished fact of a great Re
public whether or not it be wholly free
it is at least with conditions of govern.
ment that gives possibilities of freedom
to every man and woman in the land
are we to be heard to question the pow
er of men in society to organize all in
dustry and make all labor honorable
not in name, but in fact
My friends. there is a real dignity OF
labor in the heart of the world. The
men and women who actually do feed
and clothe and house this country and the
world are really worthy of all honor
with all cant and humbug thrown aside
You have got to dare as much in the
great pioneer work of organized labor
in the great moral and human values
of this industrial struggle as the men OF
old, the fathers of our land dared and
braved in the interests of political and
religious freedom. You are facing, as
the inheritors of n great tradition, the
third great struggle in the history OF
civilization. At first the lines of men
divided upon the question of the free.
dom of the human mind. For five hun
dred years, aye, for a thousand years
that struggle went ON. and it was won
1t was won for every man. woman and
child. The meanest man in this Repub
lie and Western civilization can believe
in one God, or seven Gods. or no God. il
he wants to, and there is no power OF
church or state can say him nay. 1t
was no mean gain that came from that
great struggle.
And then the dividing lines of man
kind formed over the question of poll
teal liberty, over the right of every man
to have some share in the government
OF which he was a part. And that
struggle expresses five hundred years in
which the people of England, among all
the nations of the earth, led the van
guard of human progress. and dared to
lay down the most permanent and abid
ing principles on which human liberty
shall forever rest. Men cannot wait
the great forces of civilization move on
ward and forward while generation sue
ceeds generation in the life of the world
You men who are inheritors of that
great past are facing today struggle
compared with which the two great
struggles that preceded seem to
us as though they We're but the material
of summers day. 1t is not so, but it
seems so. You are facing the third
great problem of civilization-the prob
lem of industrial liberty, the problem SO
splendidly put by the president of this
great Federation when he said that the
conflict waging now was upon the ques-
ton of whether a mans laboring power
and his purchasing power belonged to
him or whether they belonged to some
body else. The problem of today is to
secure for every man and woman of
labor in the land the right to the pos
session of their labor power absolutely
and the right to the possession of their
purchasing power absolutely, and to have
declared by the legislature and upheld
by the courts the fact that employers
of America have absolutely no property
right whatever in either the working
power or the purchasing power of the
workers. We will yindicate that right
not because some of us are eager to I'M
derta ka Tho st,noulp but hooa,,ao ,,.f