Page:Historical Catechism of American Unionism.pdf/93

 Craft divisions hinder the growth of class consciousness of workers, foster the idea of harmony of interests between employing exploiter and employed slave. They permit the association of the misleaders of the workers with the capitalists in the Civic Federation, where plans are made for the perpetuation of capitalism, and the permanent enslavement of the workers through the wage system.

Previous efforts for the betterment of the working class have proven abortive because limited in scope and disconnected in action.

Universal economic evils afflicting the working class can be eradicated only by an universal working class movement. Such a movement of the working class is impossible while separate craft and wage agreements are made favoring the employer against other crafts in the same industry, and while energies are wasted in fruitless jurisdiction struggles which serve only to further the personal aggrandizement of union officials.

THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD is an organization to fulfill these conditions. It is the modern, scientific movement of the working class toward emancipation by INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM. All the workers in any division of an industry are organized into an INDUSTRIAL UNION, so branched as the needs of the industry may require; these INDUSTRIAL UNIONS are in turn organized into INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENTS of connecting, or kindred industries, while all are brought together in the GENERAL ORGANIZATION of the INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD—ONE BIG UNION OF ALL THE WORKING CLASS of ALL THE WORLD, making possible world-wide working-class SOLIDARITY.

It is founded on the class struggle and its general administration is conducted in harmony with the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. It is established as the industrial organization of the working class, without affiliation with, or support of, any political or non-political sect.

All power rests in the collective membership.

Industrial branch, industrial union, departmental and general administration, union labels, buttons, badges and emblems, 94