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AMERICAN SYNDICALISM

black man, the white man; big enough to take in all nationalities—an organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries, to obliterate national boundaries, and one that will become the great industrial force of the working class of the world."

This is the ritualistic formula from which Syndicalism draws its highest moral allegiance and it is not to be met by scoffing or by stalwart platitudes. It has brought to the movement an eager host of disciples aching to give themselves utterly to some ennobling human service.

If this together-impulse were wisely nurtured; if it could be freed from reckless and destructive suggestion; if it could be given organic restraint, its service would be great.

I have watched for hours throngs of men and women under the spell of this appeal to strike together. Packed close were a dozen nationalities requiring five or six interpreters. Stentorially, the thing had to be said and resaid until the message was a common possession. It was always a message which for the hour obliterated every distinction of race. "There are no Poles, no Greeks, neither Jew nor Italian here, but only brothers" is the unwearying exhortation.

There is in this fusion an immediate ethical power over generous spirits, the results of which one meets everywhere in the United States. I have many times asked young men and women what first caught their interest. From the best of them, it is invariably this—"Nothing has yet done for labor at the bottom. Where it is helpless, ignorant, without speech, it has been neglected and abused. It is pushed into every