Page:Sabotage (Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley).djvu/4



The Interest in sabotage in the United States has developed lately on account of the case of Frederic Sumner Boyd in the state of New-Jersey, as an aftermath of the. Before his arrest and conviction for advocating sabotage, little or nothing was known of this particular form of labor tactic in the United States. Now there has developed a two-fold necessity to advocate it: not only to explain what it means to the worker in his fight for better conditions, but also to justify our fellow-worker Boyd in everything that he said. So I am desirous primarily to explain sabotage, to explain it in this two-fold significance, first as to its utility and second as to its legality.

I am not going to attempt to justify sabotage on any moral ground. If the workers consider that sabotage is necessary, that in itself makes sabotage moral. Its necessity is its excuse for existence. And for us to discuss the morality of sabotage would be as absurd as to discuss the morality of the strike or the morality of the itself. In order to understand sabotage or to accept it at all it is necessary to accept the concept of class struggle. If you believe that between the on the one side and their  on the other there is peace, there is harmony such as exists between brothers, and that consequently whatever strikes and lockouts