Page:Historical Catechism of American Unionism.pdf/89

 In the marine transport industry, we find the old "leader", Andrew Furuseth, urging his seamen to sling cargo, and his firemen to make steam for winches in order to break the strike of longshoremen, including A. F. of L. longshoremen, at Portland and San Pedro.

In the oil fields of Southern California, we find regularly elected officials of the A. F. of L. oil workers union deliberately urging that members who belong to another union than theirs—men who adhere to the Industrial Workers of the World—be jailed for from one to fourteen years. We find them urging their following to act as stool pigeons, and to point out to the brutal authorities, representing capitalism, all members of the I. W. W., to the end that those who will not pay tribute to the job trust of the A. F. of L. shall be buried in dungeons of San Quentin.

In the summer of 1923, the Capitalist Class of America is treating you as well as it ever treats its slaves. It is filling the boards of the employment offices with jobs, at what seems to the man long unemployed, to be reasonable, "living" wages. If this announcement comes to you while business is still good, you should not conceal from yourselves the fact that this condition is temporary, that just as panics have succeeded "boom" periods in the past, so depression, and lack of work will haunt you in the future, the near future. Many of you will look upon these lines after that depression, that unemployment, has you in its grip. Many of you will read these pages after you have travelled in despair and danger over many a railroad, through many a city and town, in search of a job that does not exist.

When that time is upon you, or now, when you can see the signs of it, the necessary preparations for it, on the part of the boss—in this very speeding-up process of which temporarily provides you with the right to toil and make a fortune for him—is the time when you should seriously consider the situation you are in, and seriously determine what shall be done by yourself (for no one else will do it) to relieve yourself from danger.

Fellow Workingman, do you, can you expect any aid from craft unions? Is not their treason and their swindling exposed in a thousand deeds? If you get hold of this little book before the great panic, which we, the Industrial Workers of the World tell you is certain to come, then use a half day's wages to take out a card in our organization, and if this writing does not fall into 90