Unions are formed for the reason that the interests of the capitalist and the laborer are not identical and the workers can expect nothing which he has not the power to enforce. The union should at all times be the fighting machine of the working class.

The contract is a negation of the very thing for which the union was formed as it rests upon the false basis of mutual interests of the men who work and the men who work those who work.

There are many bad features about the contract. First it is a virtual agreement to scab upon any workers who have a grievance with the employer in the shop where the contract holds. It means that the engineers may run a train manned by scab firemen. It is simply a weapon in the hands of the employers which to club labor into submission.

But the worst feature of the contract is the fact that it places in the hands of a few officials the setting of the terms on which the men shall work and in that measure it destroys the initiative of the rank and file. Once the contract is signed the members lost interest in the union meeting and only attend when forced to do so by a system of fines. They figure that their wages and conditions will not be altered and therefore there is no need for striving to better their lot in life, at least not until the time for the signing of the next contract. They see that they will not be allowed to fight even if they want to, and as a consequence they lose interest in the union almost entirely, regarding the organization as a sort of machine into which they must drop so much dues per quarter to receive a guaranteed wage if the labors of the officers are effective.

The cost of living jumps each year and sometimes the result can he noted in just a month’s time. Signing an agreed seale means to tie the hands of the workers so that the rising prices act as a cut in wages against which there is no counter. And just as surely as a pugilist degenerates when out of training, so do the workers lose their strength when they sign a contract and cease to wage the class war for even so brief a period as six months. The contract, instead of freeing its users, means nothing more than added slavery.

The time is coming, is almost here now, when the very ones who are upholding the contract will curse the rank and file of the crafts for not making a bolder stand, and yet they themselves will be to blame for the apologetic spirit of the craft union movement.

Let every worker who understands his class interests preach uneeasingly against the contract. Do not talk against it on the outside and then vote in your union for its acceptance. Prepare to break any contract that has been signed if the keeping of that contract means scabbery upon your fellow workers or if it means the imposing of a worse condition on yourselves.

No contract is valid, for they one and all are obtained by the employers holding the whip of hunger over the workers. They are obtained by force. They are not agreements between equal parties, for the man with the hungry wife and child cannot be said to be on the same footing as the man whose wife is giving her poodle dog an outing at Newport.

“To Hell with all contracts” is the slogan of the I.W.W. For the craftsmen perhaps this seems too great a jump to take all at once and they will take the slight forward step that means the expiration of all contracts at the same time.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

There is nothing so serious to the labor movement as race prejudice. The civilized world is so interlinked economically that it is practically one. Any trouble in any part of the world of any magnitude whatever affects the workers the world over. The financiers, and not the kings and presidents are the world rulers today; on the contrary they control the kings and rulers. The financier recognises no boundary lines, no colors or creeds or races when it comes to profitable investments. But he makes use of all the ancient superstitions and prejudice in the form of patriotism, religion and race hatreds to protect his investments. He knows that an international working class solidarity is his fatal enemy, in fact the only real enemy he needs fear. He, therefore, has race superiority and patriotism with their particular brand of religion upheld in season and out of season, in the schools and in the church and press. So that the workers can be imbued with the silly notion that a brown working man who believes in a brown savior, who sits cross legged on a lotus flower, instead of a white savior who is represented as banging on a cross, is too inferior to associate with. The trade unions here in San Francisco have haughtily refused to take in oriental members. Although as a matter of fact the Chinaman is the most rebellious worker in the world and there are thousands of him here. One year the Chinese butchers in Chinatown wanted to parade on Labor Day with their white comrades, but they were refused admission in the ranks. Could anything be more stupid?

Instead of labor unifying the world over we are constantly called upon to sympathize with exclusion leagues, and the California state Socialist platform has a plank favoring the exclusion of Asiatics. This is written on paper headed “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains,” etc. Whenever the capitalists want the Asiatics they get them in regardless of any exclusion leagues or laws, and the whole business simply serves to keep up race prejudice. Besides, if, the capitalists find that oriental labor is more profitable than white labor, if he can’t get them to come to him, he will go to them with the means and instruments of production. It makes no difference to the financiers where their factories are located. But the most serious aspect of this race prejudice is that the worker cannot accomplish the overthrow of the capitalist system except he stands united the world over. The worker has no nation to protect. The nations belong to his master, and therefore to protect any nation is to protect his master.

And the best way to practically get at this is for the workers to come together, regardless of the colors of their skins. A worker who proclaims himself class-conscious and then talks loftily about “greasers, dagoes, coons,” etc., is a fool. He is really nothing but race conscious. It is a remarkable fact that the capitalist class is much less race-conscious than the workers. They dine and, wine together the world over as a “cultured” class. But the fact back of that is undoubtedly that their economic interest is the same. The workers are hampered in narrow quarters, and are apt to be clannish. So we get the Italian quarters, the Russian quarters, the Japanese and Chinese quarters and so on. All of which hinders the revolutionary movement. We must get revolutionary leaders who can interchange Ideas and propaganda to break down the race barriers.

Lately in San Francisco we have had the pleasure of having a real revolutionary Hindoo speaking to us. Har Dayal had to escape from his own country on account of his revolutionary ideas. He is not a working man. The Hindoo working man has no opportunity to learn to read and write. He is ground down to the lowest pittance, but in spite of It Har Dayal told us that they had actually carried on a six-day strike as a protest against the arrest of one of their leaders. Har Dayal lives like a working man and often carries his blankets with him to his meetings so that he can roll up and sleep anywhere. He teaches Hindoo Philosophy in Stanford University, but refuses to take any pay for it, so as to be independent and free to teach whatever he likes outside.

“I teach Hindoo Philosophy to break down race prejudice,” he said, when asked about it. With several other Hindoo revolutionists there is a concerted effort to start a strong Oriental center of revolutionists, which should be very gratifying. ONE BIG UNION must Include within its walls all the workers of the world, or at least all the rebellious workers of the world regardless of their color, or we shall never succeed. For that reason we should be very glad to welcome within our ranks our Oriental fellow workers. And it is to be hoped that before many years have gone by that we see fit to send our organizers and agitators to the Orient while at the same time we become wise enough to give every encouragement to our Oriental fellow workers who are with us here to join with us.

Transcribed by Revolution's Newsstand

The boys at Merryville, La., where a strike has been on for over a month, “are sitting tight,” and the N.I.U. of P.&L.W. and the I.W.W. may feel proud of the solidarity displayed by these fighting timbermen and their wives and daughters. Especially was this shown when the bosses tried, as they always do, to inject race prejudice into the ranks of the strikers.

For, be it known, that the many colored men belonging to Local 218, are standing pat with their white fellow slaves; and also be it known that the writer has realized for years that all the colored workers needed was for the white workers ”to meet them half way,” and they will always respond, eager and anxious to fight to better their condition.

The drawbacks to amalgamation of the white and colored men on the industrial battlefield has been the contempt and hatred of the white workers for the colored race, born, of course, of the need so cunningly sown in his ignorant mind by the Capitalist class, and always kept blooming to bear fruit for that class in the shape of low wages.

The bosses never did object to yoking up a white and a colored worker together on the job- and the poor white wage slave in our (?) Southern country has just awakened to the bitter truth that he has been made a sucker by the bosses’ cry of “white supremacy” and “negro equality.” The formation of the N.I.U. of P.&L.W. (formerly B.T.W.) is to be thanked for this eye-opener. The writer is doing all in his power to bring these forces together, and really works more on that proposition than on any other feature of organization work.

Here, in the South, we can’t dwell on this question too often, for it is vital to the growth and ultimate victory of the Forest and Lumber Workers’ organisation.

All organizers working in the South must not overlook this proposition. Dwell upon it in your talks, public and private, and remember that many white workers agree with me. Many, on account of years of estrangement from the colored race, do not know how to be friendly with their colored fellow workers, although they earnestly wish to.

The white worker is something like the schoolboy who has had a scrap and is told by his teacher to make up with his chum, he wants to, but feels abashed and is afraid he will be made fun of.

The writer also asks his fellow workers’ of the South if they wish real good feeling to exist between the two races (and each is necessary to the other’s success), to please stop calling the colored man” N*** “—the tone some use is an insult, much less the word. Call him Negro if you must refer to his race, but “fellow worker” is the only form of salutation a rebel should use.

Transcribed by Revolution’s Newsstand