Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/17

Rh. They will give you eight-hour laws, compensation laws, liability laws, old-age pensions. They will give you eight hours; that is what we are striking for, too—eight hours. But they won't get off the workers' backs. The Insurgents simply say, "It's cruel, the way the capitalists are exploiting the workers. Why, look! whenever they go to shear them they take off a part of the hide. We will take all the wool, but we will leave the hide." (Laughter.)

Q. (By a woman comrade)—Isn't a strike, theoretically, a situation where the workingmen lay down their tools and the capitalist class sits and waits, and they both say, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" And if they go beyond that, and go outside the law, is it any longer a strike? Isn't it a revolution?

A.—A strike is an incipient revolution. Many large revolutions have grown out of a small strike.

Q.—Well, I heartily believe in the general strike if it is a first step toward the revolution, and I believe in what you intimate—that the workers are damn fools if they don't take what they want, when they can't get it any other way. (Applause.)

A.—That is a better speech than I can make. If I didn't think that the general strike was leading on to the great revolution which will emancipate the working class I wouldn't be here. I am with you because I believe that in this little meeting there is a nucleus here that will carry on the work and propagate the seed that will grow into the great revolution that will overthrow the capitalist class.

Q.—How do you account for the course of the Western Federation of Miners in applying for a charter in the A. F. of L.?

A.—I wish I knew just what happened to the Western Federation of Miners when they asked for a charter from the A. F. of L. However, it's only in the shape of an application. The A. F. of L. did nothing for us while we were in jail, but the local unions that comprise the A. F.