Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/206

 CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION

have seen that Syndicalists have lost faith in the halting legalities of political and reform action. They move straight upon the enemy. They say bluntly that the capitalist and present business managers are incompetent for their work. In an article by an English Syndicalist, which I have twice seen quoted in our I. W. W. literature, occurs this passage:

"Leave us, you 'captains of industry,' if you cannot manage the industries so as to give us a living wage and security of employment. Go! if you are so short-sighted and so incapable of coming to a common understanding among yourselves, that you rush like a flock of sheep into every new branch of production which promises you the greatest momentary profits, regardless of the usefulness or noxiousness of the goods you produce in that branch! Go, if you are incapable of building your fortunes otherwise than by preparing interminable wars, and squandering a good third of what is produced by every nation in armaments for robbing other robbers. Go! if all that you have learned from the marvelous discoveries of modern science is that you see no other way of obtaining one's well-being but out of that squalid misery to which one-third of the population of the great cities of this extremely wealthy country are condemned. Go! and 'a plague o' both your houses' if that is the only way 194