A New Element in Strikes

THE strike at Lawrence, which appeared from a surface view to he like many others, is worthy of more careful attention because it marks the entrance into the East of a new element and a new method in labor disputes. The Industrial Workers of the World promoted it and their aim is not merely to increase wages and to secure better conditions but to own the industries themselves. They hope to gain control of the industries by striking for increases in wages time after time until they get all the profit there is in the business and have thus wrested it from the control of capital. There are no conditions of work or wages which satisfy them so long as employers exist. Their plan is to work when necessity forces them to, merely as a temporary truce.

The thing which the American Federation of Labor works for--that is, agreements with employers--is directly contrary to the method of the Industrial Workers of the World. As a body the " I. W. W." is irreconcilable. It refuses to enter into any agreements. It will sign nothing which does not leave its members free to quit work whenever they like or under any conditions.

The Industrial Workers of the World is not a labor union like the unions of the American Federation of Labor. It is a union of socialists and its whole aim is socialism--that is, the control of the instruments of production by the labor classes. Its propaganda is as contrary to that of the Federation of Labor as it is to the interests of the employers; and this explains the hostility to the Lawrence strike that has been shown by President Gompers, and by such union leaders as John Golden of the National Textile Workers. The demand of the strikers in Lawrence was for certain specific increases in wages, but the motive behind it was to begin a campaign for the ownership of the machinery of production by the Industrial Workers of the World. Whatever were the conditions in Lawrence, therefore, they were not entirely the cause of the strike. "The battle-field," as William D. Haywood, a moving spirit of the Industrial Workers, called it, might have been selected at almost any other place with equal justification, so far as its propaganda is concerned.

The specific cause of the strike was an act of the Massachusetts legislature which lowered the legal hours of work for women and children from 56 to 54 hours a week. When this law went into effect, the operatives were notified that as the hours had been reduced two hours a week their wages would be correspondingly reduced. The operatives, who included a large number of non-English speaking people, had assumed that the act of the legislature had raised their rate of pay, and on receiving notice to the contrary struck. There has been a good deal of loose talk about the low rate of wages in Lawrence, and- the Tariff Board's report indicates that the average wage is not high. On the other hand, the foreign operatives in Lawrence have been in the habit of sending about $700,000 yearly to European relations and the savings banks, of that city have deposits of nearly $21,000,000.

But these aspects of the Lawrence strike are not the most important. The main point is that a new, irreconcilable, and militant organization has come among the workers in the East. Its success at Lawrence may be a prophecy of similar strikes elsewhere.

Source:The World's Work 24(May 1912): 13-14