It is only natural, therefore, that when the capitalist masters send out on Labor Day their hired bodyguard—the police and militia—they send them not to molest or injure the workingmen, but to march, as honorary escort, at the head of their Labor Day parades.
And why shouldn’t they? Don’t they know that the American Labor Day is only a day for the annual injection of a new dose of narcotic “dope,” of the antidote against the Social Revolution?!
What, indeed, is the key-note to the speeches delivered at Labor Day gatherings in America by the capitalist politicians, clergymen and professional “labor-lieutenants” of the capitalist class—the Gomperses, the Mitchells, the Duncans, the O’Connells, the Lennons, etc.? It is the biggest Lie of the Age, the lie that wealth is the joint product of Brother Capital and Brother Labor, that is, of the capitalist class and of the working class; that the interests of both are identical or reciprocal, that the two can and should live in harmony, peace and brotherhood with each other, and that the aim of the Labor Movement is to maintain indefinitely that harmonious equilibrium, and thus perpetuate the capitalist wage system by securing for the workers “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” by means of an “equitable division” of that “joint product of Brother Capital and Brother Labor.”
For this purpose the American Federation of Labor—the celebrant of Labor Day—gathers the masses of the workers, who in their blindness, ignorance and anxiety to secure immediate relief, respond to its luring call and flock to its banner. The gathered masses are then cut up into innumerable “independent and autonomous” craft divisions. They are taught to respect the claim of “Brother Capital” and to be guided in their actions not by the consideration of solidarity and identity of interests of all workers of the world, not even of those of the working class of America, not even of those of the American workers belonging to the same craft, but merely by the consideration of the interests of their personal jobs.
Accordingly, to monopolize their jobs they proclaim the principle of “America for Americans,” and try to build a Great Chinese Wall around America by means of reactionary anti-immigration laws and, in the meanwhile, build innumerable small Chinese walls around their unions by means of high, often prohibitive, initiation fees, dues and assessments; apprenticeship rules, catchy, tripping examinations of applicants for membership; system of “closing books” to all new applicants; forcing “troublesome” members out of the union and jobs by unjust and excessive fines, etc.
