Page:One Big Union of All the Workers the Greatest Thing on Earth (ca 1919, Chicago).pdf/6

4 The means of production were centralized ever more in fewer and fewer hands. With the centralization of the means of production and distribution, the agencies protecting the interests in power also grew proportionately. Gradually all elements that obscured the lines of cleavage between the producers of wealth and the class that expropriated all economic resources of the world are eliminated.

The manufacturers of yore exist only in small communities. They depend, however, more or less on the good will of those who permit them to exist by supplying them with the raw products for production, or those who own the transportation facilities by which the products are transported into the markets.

In this process of transformation other things can be observed. Social relations are shifting with the change in the forms and in the ownership of the means of production. Social strata are fiercely struggling for their conservation, in vain. There is no escape from the irretrievable result of these rapid changes in industrial possessions and arrangements.

The howls of freaks, the frantic appeals and clamors of reformers will not in the least affect the course of events. The destructive battles of trades unions, divided up in factions and sections that find their traditional base in the middle ages, will not turn back the wheel that rolls on with irresistible force.

The outcry, so often heard before, redounds in vociferous strength again: A revolution! "A revolution is needed to change these conditions." It is a cry of despondency. Not only heard from Socialists. They at least propose some way of consummating their program of a revolution. But the middle-class is more frantic in its wailings of despair. In their band wagon they are lining up a large following of workers. Millions are made to believe that an impending struggle against predatory wealth will have as object the restoration of by-gone conditions, or the