XIX
SOME DUTIES OF OUR OWN
It is true that the I. W. W. can have stable relations neither with the socialist party nor with existing trade unionism. In tumultuous days like those at Lawrence, when labor and capital are at each other's throats, Socialist and Syndicalist will join hands. Money will pour in from the general public, including every class, "idle rich," "intellectuals," and even from active business men far removed from local heats and bias. This miscellaneous response may carry no imaginable approval of I. W. W. tenets or practices. It may be solely from the conviction that local employers and public authorities are using their strength in bad temper or brutally and unjustly against the labor side in the fight. I have pointed to the growth of this vague but powerful sympathy as a new factor no longer to be ignored. If it reach a certain pitch, nothing can keep it out of politics and from the uses to which politicians will put it. Socialist party members will help the I. W. W. at the points of contest precisely as this general public did at Lawrence, but in every month that passes, the logic of all that is clearly distinctive of the I. W. W. will show a deepening gulf between them and all Socialism based upon and committed to political action. W. D. Haywood is now on the National Executive Board of the socialist party. There is as little intellectual consist-
239
