Jump to content

Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/93

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE I. W. W.
81

year. They read 'that Labor produces all wealth,' and they take that rogue's gospel straight into the gold mine, stowing away in their clothing the choicest bits of ore, and there is an organized market to buy it. We can't examine them as they come out, as they do in South Africa, or they would leave us in a bunch the first night."

I suggested that the Kaffir thieves in South Africa inclined to pilfering, without any socialistic instruction and that it was charged as confidently where no one had ever heard these phrases.

He held to his point, that the propensity was directly stimulated and justified by this teaching, as indeed the plain logic of it implies. "If they believe what their leaders tell them," he continued, "they are fools not to steal it. I would take it in their place, if I thought it belonged to me."

This form of "direct action" in no way characterizes the more instructed Socialism of our time, but it depicts faithfully the opinion of this syndicalist body as it begins to play its part in this country. Even the former editor of the Brauer-Zeitung, W. E. Trautmann, now so conspicuous in the fray, writes down calmly:

To all the making and development of these social institutions the workers, and they alone,[1] contribute their intellect and their manual labor. They have created the instruments to produce wealth with, and improved them as time rolled by.

These institutions are organized in their operative functions to yield profits for a few who never did, nor do, contribute to
  1. The italics are mine.