The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found
among millions of working people
and the few, who make up the employing class,
have all the good things of life.
-The Preamble
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Tuesday July 4, 1905
Chicago, Illinois - Convention of Industrial Unionist in Session on Independence Day
The Convention of Industrial Unionists is in session today, Independence Day, planning to create an organization based upon class struggle for the purpose of achieving the eventual emaciation of the working class.
During yesterday's session at Brand's Hall, the Convention approved a preamble as presented by the Constitution Committee and amended by the Convention. The debate over the report of the Constitution Committee took up most of the morning session. The following is the final Preamble which was adopted by the Convention to great applause:
PREAMBLE.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.
The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trades union unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trades unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. The trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Therefore, we, the working class, unite under the following constitution.
Convention of Industrial Unionists
Day Six-July 3, 1905
MORNING SESSION
The Convention was called to order by Chairman Haywood at 9:30 a. m. The minutes of the previous day's session were read by Secretary Trautmann. Comrade Trautmann also read communications of greeting into the record.
The Credentials Committee reported recommending the seating of two more delegates. The report was approved by the Convention, and the delegates were seated.
Father Thomas J Hagerty, Secretary
Committee on Constitution
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THE PREAMBLE
Chairman Haywood called for the report of the Committee on Constitution and Del. T. J. Hagerty, secretary of that committee, read the following:
DEL. HAGERTY (reading Preamble): “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party. (Applause).
The rapid gathering of wealth and the centralization of the management of industry into fewer and fewer hands make the trades unions of to-day unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trades unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. The trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that its members in any one industry or in all industries if necessary, shall cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one the concern of all. Therefore, we the workers unite under the following constitution.” (Applause.)
Debate on Paragraph Two.
Much debate followed as the Convention took up the report paragraph by paragraph. Most of the debate centered on the second paragraph, but in the end paragraph two was adopted. During the debate, many long speeches were made, of which we offer a few excerpts:
The paragraph was opposed as unclear by Del. Simons and defended in a long-winded speech by Del. De Leon as a member of the Committee on Constitution. Del. Murtaugh then offered this concise defense of paragraph two:
DEL. MURTAUGH: I desire to speak in favor of the clause as read, not exactly for the reasons pointed out by the previous speaker [De Leon], but simply because it is in the field of possibilism and practicability. (Applause). I cannot agree with the sentiments just expressed, but with the clause just written. In looking over the past and considering the great number of men, the men of many ideas politically and otherwise, that have contemplated coming into this organization, I think that this clause is just exactly the thing, and it is born of exactly the same need that the old line trade unions mean when they say “no politics in the union.”
It is born exactly of that same need. It is useless for us here to attempt to disguise the fact that we have every shade of political opinion. We have the Socialists—I happen to be one of them—who believe that action in the political line is absolutely necessary. We have the Socialist, on the other hand, who is so near the anarchist that he is beginning to think as the anarchist does, that action along the political line is absolutely harmful instead of being useless. We have on the other hand, members of different religious faiths, recognizing the fact of the absolute necessity of the solidarity of the working class, but who still cannot get away from their early teachings, their early superstition, if you please, and cannot get into any political party.
Now, if we are going to be practical, if we are going to work for possibilism, as it has been expressed, we had better start out along the lines expressed in that section of the Preamble, because only along such lines is it possible to amalgamate the forces that we wish to amalgamate. (Applause.)
Del. Klemensic also rose to defend the paragraph as written:
DEL. KLEMENSIC: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Delegates: We must not overlook the fact that we are here as workingmen, and as such we do not recognize the Socialist, the anarchist or any other kind of ist. We are here as workingmen and as rebels. (Applause).
The reason why we are here is that we want to devise ways and means whereby we all can agree, and as the previous speaker stated already, the economic condition of the workingman is the foundation, is the fundamental condition of his being and his welfare and his development. Now, then, this being the case, it lays the foundation that economically we all are united and we all have the desire to unite, for the simple fact that in the past history of every one of us our division came from the work of the capitalist and exploiting class. Now, then, we come here to agree, and we all agree on the economics as the fundamental question.
We readily recognize the fact that there are men who believe in political action, and they are entitled to; there are others that believe straight-out in education and omitting to take this political action. Both of those parties are right and correct according to their standpoint. But the most important fact is this, that all of us want exactly the same thing, and there is no reason why these different factions should be on the outs in any way. As I stated to start with, our economic foundation is the one on which we are all agreed, and these two ways, political action and non-political action, are only a question of method, a question of judgment, of practicability or whatever it is.
But, as Comrade De Leon stated it very well, there are many chances in every political party to give weight and force and strength to the fakir. Now, what we want to do is to eliminate the fakir, and, as I understand the statement of Comrade De Leon, the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor Party are looking after it to eliminate the fakir as much as possible. Therefore, I appeal to all of you not to forget the point on which we are united, the fundamental economic action. I think the Manifesto in its clause is short and brief, but is broad enough to embody all these different factions, and I am heartily in favor of this clause as it stands.
The clause in the Manifesto to which Klemensic was referring was this one:
A movement to fulfill these conditions must consist of one great industrial union embracing all industries, providing for craft autonomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally, and working-class unity generally. It must be founded on the class struggle, and its general administration must be conducted in harmony with the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. It should be established as the economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.
Del. Hagerty and Del. Lilian Forberg defended paragraph two:
DEL. T. J. HAGERTY: Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Committee on Constitution, I am opposed to referring this clause back to this Committee, not only for the reasons so very plainly and convincingly outlined by Delegates Gilbert, De Leon, Klemensic, and others, but also for the reason that this Preamble is not drawn up by the Press and Literature Committee, but by the Constitution Committee. It is not designed as an exhaustive treatise on these questions. Its function, as we understand it, is simply a statement of bare facts and not the proof of those facts, which is impossible in a Preamble. We are agreed on the bread and butter question, all of us. We are agreed that we need food, shelter and raiment. The economic, as Comrade Klemensic just said, is the foundation in the last analysis, and it is not the part of the Constitution Committee to engage in a long-winded rhetorical flight in the Preamble to the Constitution. There are plenty of opportunities, with this Preamble as a basis, for all manner of orators and all kinds of politicians to burn up the oxygen out of the atmosphere with long phrases and fine technical hair-splitting. The fundamental fact is here stated and ought to stand as it is stated, and ought not to be elaborated in this Preamble. This is a part of the educational propaganda of the proposed economic organization. To load down this Preamble with all the suggestions that are turned in here, especially the suggestions from one of the delegates, would mean the turning of this Constitution into a folio of a hundred pages or more by the time you got through. The Constitution should be a brief, pithy, concise document, written in the language of workingmen, not written in the language of Proudhon, not written in the language of Bakunin or Marx or Engels, but written in the plain, everyday language of the man in overalls. We want to appeal to the man in overalls. (Applause). We want to organize the plain common workingman, the workingman who could not, to save his immortal soul, tell you the difference between variable capital and constant capital, who could not distinguish the most technical proposition in an academic statement. We want to talk to that man in his own language. Therefore, I am opposed to referring this thing back again. I also want personally to resent the insinuation of Delegate Smith that this is toadying to anybody, no matter who he is or what he is, or to any existing institution, no matter what it may be. We are working here for the working class. We do not care about any factions. We are agreed only on the substance, upon the fact that we want to take and hold all the things that belong to the working class, and we want the goods, and we want to put the boots to the other fellow. (Applause.)
DEL. LILIAN FORBERG: I want to oppose the amendment that was offered by Comrade Smith, because it seems to me it is a waste of time. It seems to me that this paragraph in the Preamble is just as clear and plain on what we are going to do as language can be made to express it. It says distinctly that this struggle, meaning the struggle between capital and labor, must go on until the forces are united on the political field. That means the forces of capital on the one side united in a solid political party, and the forces of the working people on the other side. It distinctly says that this struggle must go on. It states in the next paragraph that we come here to organize an economic organization of the working class, based on the class struggle, without any affiliation with any political party whatsoever. What has been the trouble with the working class movement in all the time that has gone before? Because there has been no economic organization based on the class struggle. The old American Federation of Labor is based on the idea of harmony, that the interests of capital and labor are identical, and the old political parties have been the expression of that idea, and have been just as muddled as the expression of the American Federation of Labor. If you organize here an economic organization based on the class struggle, the workingmen that came into that organization will understand that it is battling on the workingman’s side, and they will come to understand that no political party can be put up by the capitalists to represent the working class, and the time will come when no political party which is the expression of the interests of the capitalists can get the vote of a workingman belonging to an economic organization of the working class based on the class struggle. (Applause.)
At the end of this debate, paragraph two was adopted without changes.
The Preamble was accepted as a whole with a few amendments to other paragraphs:
THE CHAIRMAN: It has been regularly moved and seconded that the Preamble be adopted in its entirety.
A DELEGATE: As amended?
THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, the whole Preamble. Those in favor of adopting this Preamble as amended will signify it by saying aye. Contrary, no. The Preamble is adopted as amended. (Great applause.)
PREAMBLE.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.
The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trades union unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trades unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. The trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Therefore, we, the working class, unite under the following constitution.
Announcements were made as to meetings of the standing committees, and resolutions were considered.
The Convention then adjourned until 1 p. m.
AFTERNOON SESSION
The Convention was called to order at 1 p. m. by Chairman Haywood who then called Del. Coats forward to serve as temporary Chairman.
LITERATURE AND PRESS.
Much debate followed the reading of the following report of the Literature and Press Committee. In the end the Convention voted to refer the report to the incoming Executive Board.
Del. Dinger read the following report on behalf of the [Literature and Press] committee, he not being a member:
IS THE [UNITED WORKERS] A POLITICAL ORGANIZATION?
The inherent weakness of the arguments against the United Workers [this name is being used in this document until such time as the Convention adopts a permanent name for the new organization] and industrial unionism is proven by the fact that the only thing that is used with any effect by its enemies is a lie. That is, that the United Workers is not in fact a labor organization, but a political movement.
On account of many of the organized and unorganized working people being ignorant of the real principles and purposes of this new labor unionism, it is necessary that these charges that are being made by the salaried officials of craft unionism, by the so-called labor papers that depend upon craft unionism for support, and by the capitalist press, be refuted.
In the American Federationist, official magazine of the American Federation of Labor, for March, 1905, Samuel Gompers, its editor, referring to the Industrial Union Manifesto, says
“The Socialists have called another Convention to smash the American trade union movement.”
The Iowa State Federation of Labor, acting upon this misrepresentation, adopted the following:
“A few disgruntled office seekers and would-be politicians have seen fit to criticise the present methods and government of our trade organizations; and these same people have issued a call for a Convention to be held in the City of Chicago June 27, 1905, to form an organization TO BE A POLITICAL INDUSTRIAL LABOR ORGANIZATION, the avowed purpose of which is the complete annihilation of the present trade union movement BY POLITICAL METHODS.”
The Advance Advocate, a so-called labor paper depending upon Gompersism for support, says
“And now a new industrial union is to be launched in Chicago. It is going to revolutionize the whole labor movement, according to the Manifesto of its promoters. IT IS GOING INTO POLITICS. We predict that it will fail.”
The Milwaukee journal, a capitalist daily newspaper, repeating the chorus of all capitalist newspapers, has this to say:
“The Socialists are still earnestly advocating the formation of a new national organization in the hope of downing the American Federation of Labor, as the federation is opposed to making the labor union a political organization.”
These falsehoods have been freely circulated in craft union literature, and more freely by the capitalist press, in spite of the fact that not a word can be found in any of the official acts or utterances of the United Workers, or of the Conferences or Conventions that brought it into existence, or in the Manifesto or other industrial union literature, to justify them.
On the other hand, every official declaration of the United Workers and the Industrial Union movement on this question has been clear and unmistakable AGAINST making it a political organization or a political movement. The Manifesto declares:
“It (the industrial union) should be established as the economic organization of the working class, WITHOUT AFFILIATION WITH ANY POLITICAL PARTY.”
The United Workers is not a political party. It is a labor union. It is made necessary because other so-called labor organizations have proved themselves incompetent and unable to represent the working class. It also declares its final purpose to be the abolition of wage slavery and complete freedom of the working class in the possession of the means of production and distribution.
While the United Workers is not a political party, and does not affiliate with any political party, the capitalists must not delude themselves with the idea that they alone are wise enough to know the value of political power, and that they, through the political ignorance of the working people, will be free and unhampered in placing capitalist servants in charge of the law-making and law-executing powers, and in using for the benefit of the employing class the policemen’s clubs and the guns of the soldiery.
The United Workers and the industrial union movement reserves the right for its members to use, outside this labor organization, in a political way, any weapon that will prove useful in the struggle for economic betterment.
As organized workers we oppose every form of working class ignorance, and urge all working people to study politics, and advise all unions to set apart a time to study political questions, to the end that when the working people use the ballot, their votes may be cast unitedly in their own interests.
The reading of the report was greeted with applause.
COMMITTEE ON RATIFICATION MEETING.
Various resolutions were considered and acted upon, among them being a resolution to appoint a committee to plan for the public ratification meeting:
THE TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN, COATES: The chair will appoint as the special committee to arrange the meeting as provided for in this resolution just adopted, Delegates O. M. Held, Daniel McDonald, W. J. Bradley, John Cranston, Guy N. Miller.
Del. Jorgensen suggested that the proposed meeting be so arranged as to reach the organized workingmen of Chicago especially, those not belonging to organizations not being so important to reach at the present time.
The Convention then adjourned until nine o'clock the next morning.
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SOURCE
Proceedings of the First Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World
-Industrial Workers of the World, Big Bill Haywood
Merit Publishers, 1905
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Brands Hall, Chicago, 1883
http://nucius.org/...
Father Thomas J Hagerty
http://www.iww.org/...
American Federationist
https://books.google.com/...
IWW What We Stand For, poster,
Industrial Workers of the World
http://www.iww.org/...
Preamble, Industrial Workers of the World
http://rebelgraphics.org/...
See also:
CONVENTION-Industrial Workers of the World
SIXTH DAY, Monday, July 3
MORNING SESSION
https://www.marxists.org/...
CONVENTION-Industrial Workers of the World
SIXTH DAY, Monday, July 3
AFTERNOON SESSION
https://www.marxists.org/...
About the IWW
http://www.iww.org/...
"Father" Thomas J Haggerty
(Note: "Hagerty" is the spelling used by
Hagerty in 1905 and in the stenographic report.)
http://www.iww.org/...
Modern Day Preamble:
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The Commonwealth of Toil-Pete Seeger
When our cause is all triumphant
And we claim our Mother Earth,
And the nightmare of the present fades away,
We shall live with love and laughter,
We who now are little worth,
But we'll not forget the price we had to pay.
-Ralph Chaplin
(with last line changed by JayRaye)
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Bonus Song for Independence Day
This Land Is Our Land
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
-Woody Guthrie
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