capitalist newspaper, every
capitalist attorney and retainer will insist that we have no classes in
this country and that there is no class struggle. President Roosevelt
himself has declared that class-consciousness is a foul and evil thing.
Now, what is class-consciousness? It is simply a recognition of the fact
on the part of the workingman that his interest is identical with the
interest of every other workingman. Class-consciousness points out the
necessity for working-class action, economic and political.

What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that
is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they
suffer? Just one thing; it can be stated in a single word. It is
_Ignorance_. The working class have not yet learned how to unite and act
together. There are relatively but few capitalists in this country;
there are perhaps twenty millions of wage workers, but the capitalists
and their retainers have contrived during all these years to keep the
working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it
will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn--and they are
learning daily and by very bitter experience--to unite and to act
together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for
emancipation.

The workingmen you represent, my brothers, are in an overwhelming
majority in every township, county and state of this nation. You declare
you are in favor of united action, but still you don't unite. You unite
under certain conditions within your union, you get together upon the
economic field to a limited extent, but you have yet to learn that
before you can really accomplish anything you have got to unite in fact
as well as in name. The time is coming when workingmen will be forced
into one general organization. The time is coming when they will be
compelled to organize on the basis of industrial unionism.

At this very hour there is a strike on the Canadian Pacific. Eight
thousand workingmen who are more or less organized and who have been
wronged in many ways, have finally gone out on strike. There are other
thousands remaining at their posts and non-union men flowing in there
will be hauled to their destination by union men, and union men will
continue to work until their eight thousand brothers have lost their
jobs and many of them have become tramps. That is called organization,
but it is not so in fact. It is at best organization of a very weak