Military Power – Industrial Worker (1909)

_{Graphic from ‘Industrial Worker’, April 27, 1911, Spokane, Washington}

Article from ‘Industrial Worker’, April 22, 1909, Spokane, Washington

The military power is the direct enemy of the working class and the support of the cowardly employing class. The highest moral code of the employers makes murder holy and cruelty kind. The soldiers are the hired thugs — the government police. The increasing military power of the employers’ government in America as led by that A. F. of L. [American Federation of Labor] union man Mr. Taft should be a surprise to no one. The gun and the cannon are the last arguments of such men as make up the ruling class, in America, as elsewhere.

Military resistance is out of the question for the workers. Their industrial power is all they have. Organized industrially the workers can laugh at the employers’ army and sneer at their threats. Who feeds the army? Who clothes the army? Who transports the army? Who makes the powder and shot for the army? The workers! It is simply a question of agitation and organization.

The anti-military teaching will, in time, have its effect here as in the other countries of the world. With an army honey-combed and sapped with the feeling of revolt and mutiny, and with an almost all-compelling industrial power, when are the soldiers to be depended on?

Industrial power is superior to military power, and it is power which will decide the life and death class struggle — not prayers nor votes!

[Article untitled in the issue of ‘Industrial Worker’ in which it appears. -M.Gouldhawke]

War for Who? Your Boss

The Call to Arms — What it Means — If You Want Hell, Go to Hell — Fight For Your Master

Article from ‘Industrial Worker’, April 27, 1911, Spokane, Washington

The United States Government has issued a rush order for ten thousand volunteers to join the army immediately. These troops are to be used to fill up vacancies in the infantry companies now stationed on the Mexican boundary line. Their chief function, at the present time, is to intercept all supplies and provisions being forwarded across the line to aid the fighting insurrectos, and also to stop recruits from crossing over and joining their ranks.

It furnishes a shining example of the internationality of capital and, of the fact that the troops are maintained for one specific purpose, and that, the protection of the private property of the capitalist.

Here we have a nation separated from the boundary line of “our country” only by an imaginary line and a narrow river. Politically the two nations are independent of each other. An insurrection is started in one country, having for its aim the overthrow of a system of government which has fostered and protected, not only peonage, but actual slavery. It would appear that outside of the interest of a people in the progress of the revolution and the sympathy for an oppressed race, that the United States Government should in no wise be interested. But what do we find? A president rushing to the boundary one-fourth of the entire military corps of the United States.

The press and news agencies, for the most part controlled by the masters of capital, at first heralded this as an act for the training of our soldiers. I dare say that hardly without an exception there was not an editor in the country who did not know that this was “guff” thrown out for the purpose of beguiling an unthinking public. But even to the poorest thinker this must have appeared as the purest rot. A few days later we find the papers printing a different story, and even intimating the true reason of the massing of troops on our southern border.

The true key to the situation is the fact that a billion and a half of American dollars have been invested in Mexican resources. Magnates, as the Pearsons, closely allied with the Morgans, have flourished under the protection of Diaz. Vast tracts of land have been practically given away to those who were useful to the government.

The president’s own brother happens to be a heavy land owner. Hearst has been given an opportunity of dipping his hands into the bag of Mexican resources and taking a nice tract of land of only a few millions of acres. (Probably herein lies the key to the fact that following the articles of Kenneth Turner in the American Magazine on “Barbarous Mexico” that the Hearst papers and magazine, the Cosmopolitan, rushed their special writers over to the Diaz capital and sought to vindicate what they termed as a “benevolent paternal government.”). Otis, noted union hater of Los Angeles, also has come into possession of a vast tract, very likely the same as the Hearst syndicate, for newspaper protection. The present revolution threatens to dispossess some of the present owners, and as a result, the Wall Street magnates who control the puppets at Washington have said that their property must be protected. As a result the troops.

So we see that the army is maintained for but one purpose; and that, the protection of private property. It is always at the command of the possessors. But do we find these possessors of capital fighting the battles? Do we find them in the ranks of the men on the front? Are any of them answering the call for volunteers? No. No, it is the working class who fills the ranks of the armies and who fights the battles, sacrificing their lives that another may be protected in his possessions.

Should the United States troops cross the boundary line and suppress the revolution not one advantage would accrue to the American working man. On the other hand, many lives would be sacrificed and the workers be forced to bear the vast expenditures. Perhaps the author of “War — What For” has stated the problem as plainly as it can be stated. I quote: “Capitalists WANT war. Politicians DECLARE wars. Preachers PRAY FOR VICTORIES in wars. WORKINGMEN FIGHT the wars.”

So the case is: Capitalists want wars. Why? To protect their possessions and open markets for their goods. Politicians declare wars. Why? Because they are puppets in the hands of the capitalists, jumping whenever they pull the strings. Preachers pray for victories in wars. Why? Because, now as in the past, they have preached only such ideas as were in conformity with the capitalist way of reasoning. They have always been barriers to progress. WORKINGMEN fight the war. Why? Because they do not know any better. The capitalist, the politician, the preacher, the teacher, the press have all been busy filling them with false ideas of patriotism. He has been taught it when a child barely able to leave the cradle. His school books have been full of it. Preachers, politicians and editors have preached to him the glories of patriotism. And so the average man has accepted patriotism as a matter of fact without having reasoned out the way and wherefore. With him it is a blind idea

Perhaps this article can not be closed more appropriately than by quoting from the same author’s book: “If the masters want blood let them cut their own throats. Let those who want ‘Great victories’ go to the firing line and get them. If war is good enough to pray for, it is good enough to go to — UP CLOSE where steel flashes, bones snap and blood spurts. They say: ‘WAR IS HELL’. Well, then, let those who want hell, go to hell.”

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