During the period in history that the present generation is going through the struggle for supremacy between Capital and Labor is occupying a more and more prominent position at the front of the stage. Here in America the material conditions necessary for the triumph of Labor in this struggle,—for the realization of Socialism—are by far more ripe than in any other country.

The old system of wealth production in small shops, with crude tools, by the application of the labor of one, two or a handful of workers, is practically extinct. Through the use of up-to-date improved machinery, through co-operation of thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of workers employed by one concern, and the consequent subdivision and specialization of labor enhancing its productivity; through capitalist concentration and amalgamation of individual concerns into corporations and trusts, eliminating waste of labor incidental to competition and anarchy in production, through all that the productivity of labor became plentiful to the point of being marvelous. After centuries of struggle society at last has within its grasp the means of assured, carefree existence and untrammeled progress.

With regard to the power of the political State and the political rights of the people the historical development of the civilized nations was along the lines of concentration of political powers in the hands of an oligarchy, small in numbers, and finally in the person of a single individual, the political autocrat, while on the other hand the masses of the people were concentrating in the camp of the politically disfranchised and disinherited. In France, for instance, after a struggle running through a long series of generations, concentrating the political powers in fewer and fewer hands, the point of autocracy was finally reached. The former “peers” were reduced to the position of mere dependents and hangers-on at the court of the autocrat; the mass of the people, politically absolutely disinherited, could only bend its neck, and the autocrat, Louis XIV, with boots and spurs on and whip in hand, could proclaim haughtily and defiantly, “l’État c’est moi!” (The government, it is I!) and could sway the destinies of the nation with the stroke of his pen.

From this point it was only a comparatively short step to the point when the millions of “subjects of the autocrat,” concentrated in the camp of the disinherited, realized that they had only one head to chop off, and did literally chop it off in the person of Louis XVI, in order to assert their rights by establishing the political democratic republic.

Similarly in the realm of economic development. The difference only is that in this enlightened age, with the modern press and other means of disseminating knowledge and information all over the globe in a few minutes, bigger strides along the path of progress are made within decades and years than were made formerly within centuries and generations.

In this country, under the eyes of a single generation,—the present generation—a veritable Social Revolution has taken place. When the gray-haired men of to-day were young the overwhelming majority of inhabitants in this country belonged to the property-holding class and were consequently self-sustaining. They had some farming, commercial, or industrial property. They did not have much but enough of it to be able to eke out a living without being compelled to hunt for and beg some employer for a job to save themselves from starvation. To-day what remains of the independent farmers and middle class are hanging by the skin of their teeth to their little property, the source of their “economic independence,” as they feel that property slipping through their hands. It begins to dawn on them that even those of them who still retain some business property are rapidly becoming mere dependents and hangers-on at the court of enthroned capital.

But already a big percentage of formerly independent American citizens and the sons and daughters of a still bigger percentage of them, are found to be stripped of all income-bearing property, driven into and concentrated in the camp of the proletariat,—the propertyless wage-earning class—towards which, like iron filings towards a powerful magnet, are gravitating the rapidly increasing millions of ruined, formerly independent citizens, the modern proletariat. According to recently published figures to the camp of the wage-earning class belong now no less than thirty-three and a half millions of men, women, and children, not younger than fifteen years of age. This gigantic army, with the little children, the wives of some of the workmen and other dependents, whom the capitalists so far have not succeeded in hitching up to the machinery in their factories, constitutes already the overwhelming majority of the entire population of the country.

The forces of social evolution have thus already created, as far at least as this country is concerned, that other indispensable factor for the success of the impending Social Revolution. They have created that class, the proletariat, whose mission it is and which is strong enough to free itself and the whole of mankind from exploitation and oppression by the capitalists, the master class of our time.

While these forces of social evolution were thus decomposing the present social order, divorcing the wealth-producers from the sources of wealth-production, driving the millions of these wealth producers into the camp of the proletariat, there was at the same time another process of concentration going on, the concentration of the wealth of the formerly independent American citizens in the hands of a small number of gigantic capitalist concerns. Out of their ranks the industrial autocrat is to rise,—the “one head” that the disinherited millions are to “chop off” in order to come to their own by the institution of the Industrial Democratic Republic.

The rapid progress towards this stage of industrial autocracy was already marked, and not a few years ago at that, by the historical Vanderbilt exclamation, “The public be damned!”—the modern version of Louis XIV’s “The government, it is I!”

Still more light on the progress made in that direction under the very eyes of the present generation is thrown by the figures which recently made the rounds of the daily press. They deal with the growth of the volume of business and power wielded by one single capitalist concern, the J. Pierpont Morgan banking firm in Wall Street, New York. The figures show that the business capital of that concern alone, the stocks and bonds of all the innumerable enterprises, commercial, industrial, etc., controlled by it represented the amount of $527,282,564. But that was 21 years ago, in 1892. Gigantic as this mass of capital was it was insignificant compared with the proportions it reached in subsequent years. In 1897 it was $1,396,506,231; in 1902, $3,852,940,908, and in 1912 it was estimated to be $26,854,254,628. In other words, nearly TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND MILLION dollars of business capital are controlled by the one man at the head of this single concern, whose mere stroke of pen would suffice, if he saw fit, to turn the key in the lock of the door of thousands of factories and other business concerns where millions of workers must earn their daily bread. The lives of millions of workers and of many more millions of members of their families actually depending upon the will and the whim of a single individual! How much more is needed to complete the evolution towards industrial autocracy, the gate to Industrial Democracy? The power of political autocrats, of Czar Nicholas of Russia, of Louis XIV of France, etc., is like that of children, compared with the economic power wielded by this colossus of Twentieth Century capitalism. It will not require, it cannot require, centuries or generations for the thirty-three and a half millions of wage-slaves to realize that they can have the power and must,—to save their own lives—throw off from their necks the Iron Heel of modern Industrial Autocracy!

In point of development of all these material conditions, as prerequisites for a successful Social Revolution, America leads the procession of all modern nations. In one important respect, however, America lags far behind the procession. It is with regard to the economic organization of labor, with regard to the labor union movement. As yet this strategically vital and determining field is in the possession of the reactionary forces of the American Federation of Labor, the organization that is doing all in its power to check the growth of Socialism in this country, to perpetuate the capitalist system of wage labor.

The supremacy of this organization in the economic field of the labor movement exercises upon the American working class, eagerly though that class is seeking its own emancipation, an influence which, in the political field likewise, prevents it from organizing and fighting on proper lines. The baneful influence of the American Federation of Labor thus threatens to render nought the otherwise ripe material conditions, and to render abortive the impending Social Revolution.

Whether the coming crisis in the life of this nation will result in the rearing of the Dome of Socialism and Industrial Democracy, or whether it will lead only to a most stupendous slaughter of the working class, to the erection of a “Caesar’s Column,” and to complete and hopeless subjugation of the masses depends largely on reorganization of the union movement from the craft union basis of the American Federation of Labor to a correct and sound industrial union basis.

Unfortunately among the Socialists of America the vital importance of the educational work needed as a prerequisite for the reorganization of the labor union movement of the land is very little recognized. Only too frequently one meets Socialists who innocently assure themselves and others that they “believe in industrial unionism” and are “opposed to the A. F. of L.” merely because they try to hit back when Gompers attacks their party. The knowledge possessed by such Socialists as to the essential features of the A. F. of L. unionism, which makes of that organization a veritable trap that holds the working masses fast and helpless against the capitalist exploiters, is very indistinct. The literature, the press, the lectures, etc., that mold the views of such Socialists avoid, for sundry reasons, the dissecting and exposing of the dangerous features of craft unionism. As a rule, in the minds of such Socialists there is only a vague idea that “there is something wrong with the American Federation of Labor,” and they are mostly inclined to find that “wrong” in the opposition of the A. F. of L. leaders to the political work of the Socialists. Most of them are only too ready to forget and forgive the “mistakes” of that organization if it would only “leave the Socialists alone.”

It is to stimulate the study of the essential and distinct features of A. F. of L. craft unionism, and as a contribution towards that study that this pamphlet is offered to the working class.