Page:One Big Union of All the Workers the Greatest Thing on Earth (ca 1919, Chicago).pdf/10

8 accomplished by a revolution of the industrial system. The workers, in their collectivity, must take over and operate all the essential industrial institutions, the means of production and distribution, for the well-being of all the human elements comprising the international nation of wealth-producers.

No destruction, no waste, no return into barbarism! A higher plan of civilization is to be achieved. When the workers understand how the industrial system of today has developed, how one industrial pursuit dovetails into another, and all comprise an inseparable whole, they will not wantonly destroy what generations of industrial and social forces have brought forth. The workers will utilize the knowledge of ages to build and to plant on a solid rockbed the foundation of a new industrial and social system.

The foundation must be firm and solid. The revolutionary climax, after an incessant course of evolutionary processes by which forms and methods undergo changes, will eliminate forever the cause for the industrial division of society into two hostile camps. Harmonious relations of mankind in all their material affairs will evolve out of the change in the control and ownership in industrial resources of the world.

That accomplished, the men and women, all members of society in equal enjoyment of all the good things and comforts of life, will be the arbiters of their own destinies in a free society.

We present, with this introduction, to all our comrades in battle and strife, a portrait of industrial combinations.