The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1915-05-14
DRAWING TOGETHER

of labor men being prosecuted and i'm
faithfully the cause of unionism and
fighting for the rights of labor. Even
while the cost of living mounts higher
and higher we hear of general wage
reductions and declarations of open
shop policy" here and everywhere.
The Employers Association grows
stronger and more insolent day by
day, while in the state and national
legislatures the reactionary elements
hold the reins of power. Closer and
closer the employers draw together
in both economic and political organi-
zation.
And what of labor? Whittier drift
the great mass of the workers? Or
have they now ceased merely to
drift? Have the workers at last be-
gun to see that they, too, must draw
closer and closer together, indus
trially and politically, so that they
can make their united will the ma
tons law? Have they begun to ques-
ton the right of the trading class to
rule and ruin the world of labor? To
these questions of supreme moment
we believe the answer is an emphatic
Yes!
Some there are within the ranks of
labor who would fain turn back the
wheels of progress, or put on the
brake, so that the advance of labor's
march onward and upward will be re-
tarded, if not stopped. But all in
vain! Labor is awakening to full
consciousness of it's rights and powers
and importance.
The whole capitalist regime, with
it's sordid motives, brutal methods of
exploitation, and hypocritical pretence'
of common decency, is on trial before
a jury composed Of millions of the
more intelligent and virile of the
worlds wealth producers.
Workers Are Awakening.
No longer servile or cringing; con
scious now of their inherent dignity
and potential power, a rapidly increas-
ing number of workers recognize in
themselves the righ,ful inheritors of
vast globe teeming with all the use
full and beautiful things that minister
to the physical needs and esthetic
| 4 of
that the productive forces of civilized
nations are fully adequate to supply
every convenience and luxury con-
ducive to the comfort and uplift Of
the working class. Looking about
them, the workers behold the great
mass of their brethren reduced to pow
erty in the midst of plenty; robbed of
the fruits of their arduous and dan
gerous toll, in order that a few favored
families, a small group of reactionary
and parasitical hangers-on, shall riot
in idleness and luxury, complacently
appropriating to themselves the best
of the products of labor's toll and
skill, while rendering nothing to So
ciety in return for their purpled ease.
Happily, this anomalous situation is
but transient phase of the evolution
Of capitalism. Labor is awakening on
every hand! Not all of the workers,
as yet, are aroused to full conscious
ness of their power and opportunities,
but enough of them have responded
to the call of freedom to become a
serious menace to trading class rule.
Long held in subsection by ignor-
ance and hopelessness; hypnotized by
the blare of trumpets and the pag-
eantry of wealth and insolent pride;
divided by stupid race antagonism
and spurious patriotism; fooled by
| fraudulent issues in the political
arena, and forced by the master class
to struggle desperately with one an
other upon the industrial battlefield
for jobs and bread, the workers of
| the world have long been blind and
| impotent, misled and oppressed, be-
trayed and subjugated, their egotism
so perverted that they often willingly
crush and kill one another even now,
at the instigation or bidding of their
natural enemies, the capitalist class.
The Old Order Chanseth.
But the old order changeth. Today
millions of determined men and
women, knowing we'll their historic
mission, stand erect before the AFRO
giant capitalists and puppet rulers OF
the world, challenging their admins
tration of industry, their power to
rule and ruin the world of labor, their
right to appropriate for their own
selfish use the results of centuries of
social toll and dearly bought advance
ment.
This awakening of the working
class to a new sense of power and
dignity means the inevitable doom of
the capitalist system; the final and
complete overthrow of our tawdry and
savage bourgeois civilization, with all
its ugliness and degradation; and the
Inauguration in its place of new
SOCIETY, a society of free men and
women, with loftier ideals and nobler
standards of life and living than are
even dreamed of by the mad profit