Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/20

20 organization, the producers, who by mental and manual labor hold a balance of sanity and give a promise of a better day for humanity.

You will hear of different kinds of Socialists, but there is one belief by which you can always locate the real Socialist, the type of man who has played a part in welding the working class into a restless, fighting, discontented, intelligently meddlesome revolutionary force. This man, the true Socialist, realizes the class-struggle. He sees a war going on between two classes, the capitalist class and the working class. Strikes, boycotts, demands for higher wages and better factory conditions on the part of the toilers; lockouts, blacklists, Pinkertons, bull pens and the preaching of "thrift and industry" on the part of the employers—these are partial evidences of the class struggle.

The one clear and established fact, however, which the capitalists do not like to have agitated is the fact that the capitalist class is, as a class, conscious of its best interests. The capitailsts know what they want and get what they want. The workers, as a class, do not know what they want, are not conscious of their own best interests.

The working class will have to educate and organize itself for its own salvation. Any salvation passed cut on a platter by the capitalists is charity and can be taken away as it was given.

All of this I am giving you has a historical and scientific basis. The Socialist, the class-conscious workingman, has generally read and