Page:"Red"·Fed·Memoirs-Hickey-1925.pdf/69



United Federation of Labour.

The organisation shall be composed of actual wage-workers brought together in an organisation embodying industrial departments, each department to cover some industry such as mining, transportation, building trades, etc.

The working-class and the employing-class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are to be 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 the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.

We find that the centreing of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs 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.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working-class upheld only by an organisation 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 lock-out is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” our watchword is: “Abolition of the wage system.”

It is the historic mission of the working-class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organised, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalism, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organising industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

Knowing, therefore, that such an organisation is absolutely necessary for our emancipation, we unite under the following constitution:—