Page:Class Unionism.pdf/30

30 class, and are held up as model labor leaders by capitalist newspapers.

Periodically these “model leaders” go to New York to attend a love feast between capitalists and wage workers, or rather between capitalists and accredited leaders of wage workers.

You are only the common herd. They don’t have anything to do with you, and they don’t need to have anything to do with you. They deal with your leaders and between them they fix things, and all you have to do is to work and put up the money and they will attend to the rest.

Last fall, a year ago, when I was in New York, there came near being a strike on the Interborough railway lines. The employesemployees [sic] had been outraged by the management of the Interborough under an agreement that had been shamefully violated by the company. They threatened to go out on strike. It happened to be a national election year, and under the pressure that was brought to bear upon him, Mr. Belmont, the president of the system, on the eve of the election, settled with the men and averted the impending strike.

In a speech I made in New York that night, I ventured the prediction that the settlement was temporary and made for political effect, and that soon after the election was over the corporation would begin methodically to violate the agreement and goad the men to strike. And so it came to pass. After the election was over the corporation renewed its offensive tactics until at last 6,000 of the men went out on strike. And now we behold an exhibition of the impotency, if not the crime, of outgrown unionism.

When these 6,000 men went out on strike August Belmont already had James Farley and his army of professional strike-breakers on