The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-11-14

ade, by which hundreds thousands of workers
thrown from the olass,of skilled into that Of unsked
labor; the final appropriation of the last public lands
by capital that the working class finally "shut up
in the wage system" began awaken from the dream
of Capitalist democracy" which the possibility of
escape (however vague) to free land" had Tended
to keep alive, the immense immigration of the decade
with it's attendant increase in unemployment and to
it. the acute suffering of the workers during the
great crisis Of 18S+1S86.
With all the cards stacked against labor capital
pected to have submissive lot Of wage slaves that
would suffer themselves to be as purely passive
and accomplishing adjuncts to that marvellous new
machinery that seemed to promise such unlimited
profits. Instead it found itself confronted with mill
spirit that only fought bitterly against the
constant wage cuts that capital tried to put over but
actually dared to demand share in the benefits Of
the infinitely productive machinery
stantly being installed in the form of an eghthour
day in place Of of anywhere from ten to twenty
hours.
The struggle of the classes was openly recognized
by both Sides Not only the press but also the official
spokesman of government and army talked class war
with cannon and powder, not votes"-and
mended violence in to the demands of the
working class. This not merely abstract talk-in
strike after striker on Goulds railroad lines in the
coahelds of Ohio and Pennsylvania, in the lumber
mills of the Saginaw valley the stockyards of Chi
cago workers shot down by mine guards Pink
ertons and militia In the workers organized
to meet force with force and armed deachments
formed in connection with unions and other workers
organizations.
Two leading forces in the workers movement CAPT
taism especially feared and determined to destroy
Firstly the Knights Labor, into which the workers
fockng by the hundreds of thousands and which
essentially organization of the unskiled worker
who previously had been absolutely at the mercy of
their employers, and tended to the solidarity of all la
bor sweeping aside barriers of race and color and
craft Secondly, the International Working Peoples
Association centerng in Chicago which represented
revolutionary organization among the workers and
increasingly successful spreading revolutionary
propaganda. The destruction of the Knights of Labor
to be accomplished by widespread blacksting of
K OF L. members, by shutting down factories in which
the organization influential and then Offering to
take back sngly those who would renounce their mem
bership, by violently breaking up K of strikes
in not small measure by winning certain of
leaders to become capitals own heutenants The
roundingup and hanging of the anarchist leaders
the method capital employed to exterminate the other
force that it considered a menace to its supremacy
The international Working Peoples Association.
The International Working Peoples Association of
which the Chicago anarchists leading members
had been organized three years earlier at Pittsburgh
convention attended by social revoutionaries as they
called themselves, and anarchist groups from a
Der of cities 1t not very clear in its principles
combining a good deal of anarchism with some social
ism and syndicalism But it was definitely militant in
outlook in contradstinction to the declining s. L. p
and rallied itself the earnest and revolutionary
elements in the labor movement. These elements had
become disguised with the S. L. p which this period
definitely repudiated the idea of class and put
faith in education and above all the ballot box The
waning confidence of militant workers in the S. L. p
had received a bad blow when the national executive
committee ordered all its members to withdraw from
the Lehr-und Wher Vereine Education and Defense
sociees and the ground that aliaton to these soce-
ties the public the impression that the socialists
determined to accomplish by force what they
could not obtain by the ballot"
The Chicago groups of the International which Spies
and Parsons founded leaned strongly toward MARKHAM
socialism Speaking Of the program adopted by the
Mt of