"General Emiliano Zapata, Mexico"s apostle of terrorism, and recently officially reported to have been killed by Carranza"s troops, was a former plantation stirrup-boy, who, at the zenith of his rebel power, gained temporary control of Mexico City. Twice since 1910, when he began his revolt in Morelos, he and his Indian followers took brief possession of the capital. For nine years he ravaged southern Mexico, co-operating for a time in 1914 with Villa. He was the most implacable enemy of peaceful reconstruction through several regimes. Poor, uneducated, primitive but magnetic, Zapata was the leader of Mexico"s half-savage Indians, in whose power he planned to place control of the country. Toward the last he was little more than a hunted renegade, and is reported to have been killed by strategy of troops operating under General Pablo Gonzales in Morelos."
The wood-cut of Zapata appears in connection with an article by Jack Neville, part of which is hereby quoted:
"Cuautla, Mexico, April 23.--The death of Emiliano Zapata removes Mexico"s most ruthless destructionist and implacable enemy of peaceful regeneration.
"Now, on the wreckage of his empire, where the rebel chief laughed at civilization and played his huge joke on 100,000 confiding workers, General Pablo Gonzalez is placing firm underpinning for freedom and progress.
"Here in the world"s richest garden spot, where exploited humanity has been kept poorest, and where Zapata "gave" his half-savage followers the land only to commandeer all crops--here the peon is for the first time in centuries enjoying the fruits of his toil and supporting instead of hating government."
The next day, April 25th, 1919. "The Call" published another article of Neville"s under the t.i.tle, "Mexican Peons Rejoice in First Taste of Freedom." Only a small part of the article will be quoted:
"I stepped into a pulque-reeking cantina. A group of former Zapatistas invited me to join them--to have a gla.s.s. It was the open sesame. They chattered like children. Presented me with cornhusk cigarettes; told me tales of Zapata; his perfidy, his ruthlessness.
""Not more than 800 rebels were yet in arms when Zapata was killed," they said. These, they explained, had ousted Zapata from leadership because he had refused to divide the loot with them.
They told me of Zapata"s former army of 30,000, blood-letting surianos and ayetes (unarmed men carrying ropes) who formed the rear guard to carry away the loot....
"Alongside the old church, where the patriot Morelos had more than a century ago made a successful stand against the Spaniards, a train was disgorging families returning to their homes, now that Zapata was gone.
"A little man stepped out--the bishop of Cuernavaca, coming back to his diocese under the conciliatory program of Don Pablo after eight years" exile.
"I rode into the country with Colonel Sanchez Neira and talked with the workmen in the field. They crowded round to pose for pictures.
"They laughed and sang while they worked.
"We rode to the headquarters of one of the 2,000,000 acre haciendas. The gigantic sugar mill, formerly worth more than $1,000,000, was a sh.e.l.l filled with debris. We rode to another mill. The same! Thirty-seven of them. All ruined, wrecked wantonly under Zapata"s rule.
"In the village of Youtopec I drank lemonade with Gen. Pilar Sanchez, while Zapata"s captured band serenaded us. We rode down the Inter-Oceanic railway and viewed the right of way, strewn with wrecked rolling stock. We saw utterly demolished villages, the work of Zapata and communism.
"I saw a bridge where train after train was dynamited, where Zapatistas had ruthlessly executed more than three thousand peaceful men, women and children pa.s.sengers."
From these articles published in "The Call," the great Socialist paper of New York City, it seems that the poverty-stricken, perpetually begging staff of Hillquit"s paper does not relish the Chicago brand of Socialism described so beautifully in the "International Socialist Review." The more "talented" and "progressive" "evolutionists" near the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan have many a year"s hard work to perform before they can sufficiently develop the brains of their backward chums and brethren on the lower east side of New York City. It takes editors like Kerr, Haywood, the Marcys and all the Bohns on the staff of the "Review" to reveal the true glories of Socialism.
As recently as February, 1920, it could safely be said that the principles of Socialism had never been put into full operation in any country. The nearest approach to a truly Socialist state is Bolshevist Russia, that strife-ridden land of crime and bloodshed. The penalty paid for the foolish attempt has already been a dreadful one. How much greater it will be, as time goes on, n.o.body knows. The Socialists of America have hailed Russian Bolshevism as true Socialism; but, no doubt, as the evil consequences of Lenine"s Red rule become more widely known and more universally feared, or if, even on the low ground of materialistic economics, the attempt fails, the slippery Marxians will try to prove that Bolshevism was not Socialism after all, since the Russian government was a dictatorship, with the principles of Socialism never fully applied.
We should add that even if the Russian dictatorship succeeds in realizing the mere economic success which seems to be the height of its ambition, this will not prove to be an argument in favor of Socialism, but a terrible indictment of it. For the road the dictatorship is now taking, which indeed offers it the only possible hope of even a pa.s.sable economic success, is the barren, heartless, unspiritual, materialistic tyranny of machine-like "industrialism" which the I. W. W. represents.
In the two chapters immediately following, VIII and IX, the reader will learn something of the loss of all moral standards and the cruel, lawless violence to which the atheistic, anarchistic materialism of I. W. W."ism leads; and will also find that Bolshevism is already committed to this system as the only economic solution of its b.l.o.o.d.y experiment.
Is it worth while? In Chapters X and XI the reader will face some of the appalling details of the blood, violence and despair which have been tyrannically imposed upon Russia"s groaning millions for the sake of an experiment which leads to nothing but the pagan barbarism of I. W.
W."ism. Is it worth while? Even if at last they are able to produce and distribute enough to clothe and feed themselves, can human beings be happy in such a state? Is this the dream of the dreamer come true?
Again, the hope of a bare economic solution of the question of bread and b.u.t.ter is possible in Russia only through such an absolute and tyrannous dictatorship as has been established, under which the reluctant and disorganized proletariat can be forced back to work, whether they wish or no, at the point of the bayonets of the Red Guard. Would the American working-man think this worth while in America?
It has been said that the Lenine desperadoes are determined to win an economic success even at the cost of forcing Russian labor to toil under literal military conscription. If they do this, they may succeed--economically merely. But does American labor think such an experiment _here_ would be worth what it costs?
Furthermore, in the Russian land of Socialistic experiment the people, left to themselves by the other nations, cannot find peace among themselves. Why should there be peace as long as any manhood is left in Russia to lift up its hand out of its despair against its Bolshevist oppressors? Is civil war worth while--for such a barren result?
Finally, if the proletarian tyrants wear all Russia down until a spirit of resistance is left in no breast, still will there be no peace; for, as will be found quoted elsewhere in this book, Lenine declares that Socialism cannot endure in a world half Socialistic and half Capitalistic, so that his wretched Russian slaves seem likely to be dragged into a war against the rest of the world to help out the crazy experiment of domination by the proletariat. Is it worth while?
CHAPTER VIII
THE I. W. W.
The I. W. W., or the so-called "Industrial Workers of the World," whose policy may be summed up in the words, "I Want to Wreck," and who in derision are termed the "I Won"t Works," the "Imported Weary w.i.l.l.i.e.s"
and the "Wobblies," enjoy the unenviable reputation of being cla.s.sed among the most insurrectionary, impious and infamous workers of the world to-day. This industrial union, also known as the One Big Union, is the bitter rival of the American Federation of Labor. Joseph J. Ettor, in his I. W. W. pamphlet, "Industrial Unionism," page 5, speaking of the fear that people have of the I. W. W. says:
"Yes, gentle reader, our ideas, our principles and object are certainly dangerous and menacing, applied by a united working cla.s.s would shake society and certainly those who are now on top sumptuously feeding upon the good things they have not produced would feel the shock."
The I. W. W. was organized at a secret conference in Chicago, January 2, 1905, attended by 26 of the most radical Socialists in the country, including Eugene V. Debs, William D. Haywood, William E. Trautman, Thomas J. Haggerty, Daniel MacDonald, Charles H. Moyer, Charles O.
Sherman, Frank Bohn and A. M. Simons. Daniel De Leon was prominent at the first convention, June 27, 1905, and for three years afterward, the organization being founded on his theory that the Socialistic revolution would not come by voting but by a violent seizure of the industries of the country by Socialistic workmen industrially organized.
"The One Big Union Monthly," March 1, 1919, page 4, referring to the hungry and desperate ma.s.ses tells us:
"In some countries these revolting, desperate ma.s.ses may come out victorious, and establish a rule of their own, like the Russian Bolsheviki, only to find that they will have to keep on running society on private ownership basis, until industrial organization of the workers is so far advanced that it can take over the responsibility. There is no way in which the ma.s.ses can escape industrial unionism. What they do not want to do now at our prompting, they will have to do later of their own initiative, driven by economic necessity. Our new society is bound to come. It will be firmly established in ten years if we are energetic. It will take longer if we are indifferent. We cannot stand still socially, because there is no footing before we reach the bottom.
We cannot go back, any more than the b.u.t.terfly can again become a larva. We must go forward to Industrial Democracy."
On page 23 of the same issue of "The One Big Union Monthly" we are informed that Industrial Unionism is International:
"Industrial unionism arises out of and is modeled after modern capitalism. Unlike trade unionism, it is not born of the capitalism of fifty years ago. Industrial unionism recognizes that capitalism is not only interindustrial, so to speak, but also international.
That just as it binds industries together by means of machine processes and financial investments, so also does capitalism tend to bind nations together. Industrial unionism follows the same trend. It, too, is not only interindustrial but also international.
Industrial unionism seeks to organize the industrial workers of the world just as capitalism seeks to exploit them. Industrial unionism is spreading wherever international capitalism exists. Like international capitalism, industrial unionism knows no boundaries, color, race, creed or s.e.x. As international capitalism knows only profit, industrial unionism knows only the industrial exploitation by which profit is possible. Industrial unionism organizes to make industrial exploitation an impossibility. And capitalism is its most valued a.s.sistant."
Ettor, in "Industrial Unionism," page 21, tells us, that the I. W. W.
does not organize by trades, but by industries: "All the workers in any plant, factory, mine, mill or any given industry in a given locality organize in one Local Industrial Union. All the Local Industrial Unions of a given general industry are banded together in the National Industrial Union. The National Industrial Unions are banded again stronger in the Industrial Department and then all Departments, six in all, are brought under one head, the General Administration of the I. W.
W. One Big Union of all workers, welded together in such a manner that, imbued with the war cry: "an injury to one is an injury to all," all its members can act together in fighting the common enemy."
Explaining organization by industries rather than by trades, "The One Big Union Monthly," March 1, 1919, page 25, takes for instance the stockyards:
"We do not know how many crafts there are in the stockyards, but there are many. According to the old style, these crafts would be organized each by itself, the carpenters belonging to the national union of carpenters, the engineers to the national union of engineers, the butchers to the national union of butchers, etc. It also belongs to old style unionism to leave the unskilled workers unorganized. Our method would be to organize all the workers in a plant, as a branch of the Stockyard Workers" Industrial Union. This would imply the cancelling of trade distinctions and craft lines.
As against the employer we would face him not as butchers, laborers, carpenters or engineers, but as stockyard workers, no matter whether we are office clerks or laborers, or carpenters, or engineers. This is what we mean with industrial unionism. The various branches would combine into district organizations if necessary, and all of them together would form the Stockyard Workers" Industrial Union as part of the Industrial Workers of the World. By being thus organized we hope to be able to carry on the fight locally, or by districts, or on a national scale with better chance of success, than if we were split up in a great number of unions in each plant, with little or no contact with one another.
The advantages of the one big union idea are so apparent that no honest worker will, in earnest, contradict us."
The famous Preamble to the platform of the I. W. W. throws a startling light upon this revolutionary industrial union, which has, within recent years, been getting a very strong hold on immigrants from Europe:
"The working cla.s.s and the employing cla.s.s have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people, and the few who make up the employing cla.s.s have all the good things of life.
"Between these two cla.s.ses a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a cla.s.s, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.
"We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing cla.s.s.
"These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working cla.s.s upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one, an injury to all.
"Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day"s wages for a fair day"s work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."