Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1907-192?, 1912-03-21
Attitude Of Socialists To
Trade Unions

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acted as manager of our Ladies.
Waist Makers Union, Local 25,
makes rather moderate reply. Like
all moderate statements its strength
consists in its very moderation. Mr..
Mailly says in effect:
81 ask, who gave Mr.. White the
right to declare as Socialist against
trades unionism, as he did in the
speech I have quoted?
'It is evident that Mr.. White, like
some others who have shot their eb-
ullitions into capitalist editorial sane
tums during the past few days, has
no direct, practical knowledge of
the trade unions movement. He has
probably never belonged to union,
or had occasion to, or ever even at
tended a trade union meeting in his
life, except perhaps in the most per-
functory manner. He probably knows
nothing of the actual workings of a
union, or of the working conditions in
the shops, factories and mills that
impel the workers, out of self-pres-
ervation to Organize into unions. To
him, the class struggle, even if he
accepts it in theory, which ISdoubt,
is purely theoretical affair and
something that has never entered
into his life as it has into the lives
of the great industrial proletariat.
$50 he knows nothing, and can ap-
preciate nothing, of the hardships,
the deprivation, the anxiety and mis-
cry that embitters, dwarfs and sac
rifices the workers in their ceaseless
scramble for the means of life for
them and theirs. All this, venture
to asert, is a sealed book to Mr..
White, or he would probably talk diff
ferently.
"He would have learned, with the
class to which he would then belong,
that the unions are not sporadic
thing called into existence out of ca
price or to satisfy the personal am
billions of a comparatively few men
He would have learned that unions
the organizations Of labor-are the
outgroWth of economic necessities
/ deeply rooted in the soil Of social
system that produces the class strug
| gle He would have learned that the
unions were born not because o.
leaders, good, bad or Indifferent, but
| because the workers needed them
both as a means of defence against
capitalist greed and rapacity and as
means to secure to the workers
larger portion of their product anc
to advance and uplift the conditions
of the workers everywhere. And witt
all their faults and errors, the unions
have done both these things and vii
continue to do them until the end O
thei chapter. Their capacity for &C
complishment will be based upon thu
intelligence of their members ant
the craftsmanship of their chosen
leaders. Let those who would indie
them for their blunders while pur
suing their mission be careful t.
come into court with clean hands.
"What Mr.. White does not see i
that instead of Socialism being dis
credited by the Mcnamara affair,
is indicated. Because we have a.
4 ways recognized the unions as
weapon in the class struggle and es
sential to the workers welfare, W.
have sought to educate their mem
bers to the necessity and wisdom Q
augmenting their efforts to the &c
onomic field by united political &C
ton at the ballot box. We hav'
sought to show them that with al
the powers of government arrayet
against them their larger aims would
be initiated and nullified. The Ions
series of events that led up to Thu
last dramatic manifestation has jus
titled us in our position"