Page:Marcy (1919) The I. W. W. Convention.pdf/3

12          THE LIBERATOR serve chiefly as a clearing house for the unions, collecting and disseminating data, taking full charge of publications and educational matter. It proposes to issue many new booklets this year.

One of the high spots in the Convention was the discussion on the future position of the organization on the matter of. "Legal Defense." It was argued that a revolutionary labor union can' expect no quarter from the Courts; that the Courts are an institution that has grown up for the precise purpose of protecting the private owners of industry in their exploitation of the working class; that only when it held strong economic power could the 1. W. W. hope to secure its demands for individual members of the organization

About twenty-five per cent of the delegates were in favor of putting the force of the whole organization back of any fight made to secure even a semblance of legal justice for any and all members who had suffered through their work for the union. They felt that members should be given legal aid to the fullest extent when they desired it. About half the delegates were unwilling to decide this question, which will be submitted to a referendum vote.

The two women delegates, representing the Hotel, Restaurant and Domestic Workers' Union No. IIOO, gave a glowing report on the success of the I. W. W. in these branches. The women hotel and domestic workers are pouring into the organization as fast as they can be assimilated. In striking contrast to this side of the picture is the report of failure to elicit any interest whatsoever among the male workers in the same field, which affords an interesting problem to students of twentieth century sex psychology.

The Convention recommended that a call be issued to members of the I. W. W., asking them to send to headquarters all Liberty Bonds they may have or may get from friends for the purpose of providing bonds for the boys inside. Eight thousand dollars in bonds or in cash are still needed to secure bail for Haywood.

All in all, the Eleventh Convention of the I. W. W. must stand as an inspiration to every revolutionist. I t was of and from the shop, by and for the man and the class on the job. Upon all points it stood firmly upon the class struggle.

And it proved one thing, that the I. W. W. is not a fixed and static thing, but an organization in the swift process of growing and becoming One Big Union great enough to include the whole industrial working class.

That the delegates were eager to join forces and clasp hands with the comrades all over the world who are blazing the way for historic changes, is shown by their decision to send a representative to attend the International Communists' Conference, and by the following Declaration adopted unanimously upon the last day of the Convention:

"We, the Delegates of the Industrial Workers of the World, in convention assembled, hereby reaffirm our adherence to the cause of the International Proletariat and reassert our profound conviction that the program of Industrial Unionism not only furnishes a method of successful resistance against the aggressions of a rabid master class, but provides a basis for the reconstruction of society when Capitalism shall have collapsed. We regard the great European war as convincing evidence of the ripening of the capitalist system and its approaching disintegration; and we hail the rising workers' republic in Russia and other countries as evidence that only the Proletariat, through its economic force and by reason of its strategic position in Industry, can save the world from chaos and guarantee the fundamental rights of life.

"We publish again the Preamble to our Constitution and call upon the ,working class of the world to unite with us upon the basis of the principles there declared, in order that we may, by our combined economic power, displace the wage system with its horde of parasitic exploiters and substitute for it the communist system known as 'Industrial Democracy,' thereby liberating humanity from its age-long degradation and freeing it to go forward, not only to universal prosperity and happiness, but also to a high and noble culture.

"Workers of the world, unite! You have only your chains to lose! You have the world and life to gain!"

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