Page:The I. W. W.; Its History, Structure, and Methods.pdf/7

Rh first convention up to the present day.

The organizations that installed as a part of the new organization were: Western Federation of Miners, 27,000 members; Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, 1,450 members; Punch Press Operators, 168 members; United Metal Workers, 3,000 members; Longshoremen’s Union, 400 members; the American Labor Union, 16,500 members; United Brotherhood of Railway EmployesEmployees [sic], 2,087 members.

The convention lasted twelve days; adopted a constitution with the following preamble, and elected officers:

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

“Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.

“The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trade unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

“These sad conditions can be changed and the