This same attack on "intellectuals" is incessant in the I. W. W. It appears in more popular form in the Italian Syndicalist, Enrico Leone; so too, the German Syndicalist, "Der Pionier," taunts the socialist members of the Reichstag with being anything and everything except wage earners. "How, it asks, can they lead those of whose lives they know nothing?"
It is wholly true that this class conscious appeal has in it most indispensable utilities. The workers must be made conscious of every whit of common interest which is genuinely their own. This consciousness of "unified labor interests" has in it great educational value. Its value is all the more precious because the limits of its actual realization are so narrow. It should be encouraged and tolerated because the little it can do has such merit. The more labor feels its brotherhood, the more power it possesses to enlarge its strategic opportunities. Socialism does well to make the most of it. It has great kindling and arousing power. It is true too that the main struggle has to be their own. In this, they are now prepared to take advice so long dealt out to them. It is a classic illustration of "bourgeois morals" to encourage self-reliance; to teach the poor and the humble to "help themselves;" to trust to their own inner resources rather than yield in flabby acquiescence to their more fortunate brothers.
Upon reflection, the wage earners conclude that this well-meant counsel is excellent in spite of its suspicious origin. They propose now to "help themselves." In order to make the advice serviceable, they are to take it not as individuals, but all together. They
