Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/41

 can depend upon the spontaneity of the workers and how far we can and must stimulate and organize them before they can go effectively into action against the employers.

Less and less can the strike strategist depend upon the spontaneity of the masses to bring them into revolt against their exploiters, more and more he has to figure on substantial preliminary organization, conceived planfully and carried through almost like a military strategy. Within the past 15 years American employers have become very able and skillful in checking spontaneous mass revolts amongst their workers. To this end they have developed a whole arsenal of weapons which may be summed up under the general heads of concessions, of duplicity, and terrorism.

Today, when the powerful employers see a threatening discontent among their workers, which manifests itself by a spreading spontaneous strike or an active organizing campaign, they commonly seek to check the agitation by granting concessions to their workers in wage increases, welfare systems, etc. This they are able to do because of the enormous super-profits of imperialism which they are reaping of late years. Only a few years ago the employers were financially unable to bribe such movements into stillness, consequently they often developed into big struggles.

The way the Steel Trust combatted the big campaign of 1918–19 was typical of the new tendency. This gigantic corporation, seeing that the organizing work was succeeding, granted four large increases in wages and the basic 8-hour day to its workers in the course of the campaign in order to block it. The "independents" followed suit. This naturally made the work of organizing incomparably more difficult. The spontaneity of the workers was weakened.

When the strike came it followed closely the lines