Industrial Workers of the World

Firstly: A large circulation – you can get that.
Secondly: Articles, job or otherwise – you can write those.
Thirdly: Finance - you can give that.
Fourthly: Membership in the I.W.W. – that means you.
Fifthly: Renewed revolutionary activity – that means you.

To sum up what the Editor wants, he wants you. The revolutionary I.W.W. inspires the best in the hearts of humanity; it issues a clarion all to the worker to organise in the revolutionary movement.

Not part time activity – but every day in every way the movement demands your support. In the past the workers have had heir energies and heir thoughts side tracked off into safe channels – safe for the exploiters, unfortunately. As a class, we waste our time trying to emancipate ourselves at the races, roaring ourselves hoarse at the football, worshiping at the shrine of the stoush or the speed kings, or gyrating round a polished floor to he weird screeching of the saxophone, like unto the cannibal and his tom toms – in fact doing any old thing to take our minds just for a while off the weary grind of life as a wage slave.

Capitalism is fairly safe while we can be so easily hoodwinked – while our chains of slavery are so padded with temporary outlets of alleged enjoyment.

The IWW wants the workers to concentrate their minds on the job not off it.

We live in a world of buying and selling – a commercial world. We, the workers, are the only socially necessary class in that world.

We have a commodity – our labour power, which we sell, or the hour, day, week, year or life – and generally life.

Without our labour power being applied to the machinery of production and the raw material, there would be no food, clothing and shelter – the slaves’ holy trinity.

So we find ourselves with a monopoly, which, so far, we haven’t had the sense to use effectively

We can use it, and we will use it; it’s only a matter of organisation.

Born in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World, is that organisational medium that offers to workers the form of organisation that makes them invincible – that will enable them to break their chains and enjoy the full product of their labour power.Into its ranks the IWW enrolls all wage workers, irrespective of sex, colour and creed: its dominions are wide; its boundaries the world

The IWW has long since realised the futility of splitting the workers up into craft unions, organising the workers by the tools of trade, and keeping the workers apart in craft lines, and offers to the workers ta framework of Industrial Unionism; that is organising the workers on the lines of industry, irrespective of the tools used.

And still we go further, we profit by the defeats of the past, when we see that the exploiting class have from time to time taken advantage of the race hatred they have so carefully inculcated into the midst of the worker, to pit one nationality against another – not only in the field of slaughter but also on the industrial battlefield; therefore the IWW point out that just as the workers the world over are exploited as a class, so must they organise as a class, irrespective of national boundaries.
Where does the IWW organise? Right on the job, at the point of production, where surplus value is created.

We are slaves – wage slaves – because there is a master class who, own and control the means of producing the food, clothing and shelter of the world, the fields, factories, mines and workshops – and that is where the IWW organises.

So, fellow workers, how about it?

We want your membership. Unity is strength. We want class conscious workers who will help to carry the revolutionary banner alongside of their fellow workers.

This system offers you only slavery, unemployment, starvation, wars, malnutrition, prostitution and a gradual sapping of vitality and health. We offer you not the shackles and gives f slavery, but the means of emancipation of the human race.

Karl Marx said “Workers of the World unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains, and a world to gain.”

Get busy right now, Send in your orders, your finance, and your articles right now to -

E. A. Dickinson (Direct Action editor, May 1928)