lfare. So the I.W.W. says
first, that the wage system is wrong and that it means to abolish that
wage system. It says that it intends to do this, not by political action,
not by balloting, but by organization on the industrial or economical
field, precisely as employers, precisely as capital is organized on the
basis of the industry, not on the basis of the tool. The I.W.W. says
industrial evolution has progressed to that point there the tool no longer
enforces craftsmanship. In the place of a half dozen or dozen who were
employed, each a skilled artisan, employed to do the work, you have a
machine process to do that work and it resulted in the organization of the
industry on an industrial basis. You have the oil industry, controlled by
the Standard Oil; you have the lumber industry, controlled by the
Lumbermen's Association of the South and West, and you have the steel and
copper industry, all organized on an industrial basis resulting in a
fusing, or corporation, or trust of a lot of former owners. Now the I.W.W.
say if they are to compete with our employers, we must compete with our
employers as an organization, and as they are organized so we must protect
our organization, as they protect themselves. And so they propose to
organize into industrial unions; the steel workers and the coal miners,
and the transportation workers each into its own industrial unit.

This plan of organization is extremely distasteful to the employers
because it is efficient; because it means a new order, a new system in the
labor world in this country. The meaning of this can be gathered, in some
measure, from the recent experiences in the steel strike of this country,
where they acted as an industrial unit; from the recent experiences in the
coal mining industry, where they acted as an industrial unit. Instead of
having two or three dozen other crafts, each working separately, they
acted as an industrial unit. When the strike occurred it paralyzed
industry and forced concessions to the demands of the workers. That is the
first thing the I.W.W. stands for and in some measure and in part explains
the attitude capital has taken all over the country towards it.

In the next place it says that labor should organize on the basis of some
fundamental principle; and labor should organize for something more than a
mere bartering and dickering for fifty cents a day or for some shorter
time, something of that sort. It says that the system is fundamenta