Syracuse, New York, has passed a resolution, by unanimous
vote, requiring union men who are members of the National Guard to
resign, under pain of expulsion, from the unions. The Amalgamated Sheet
Metal Workers' Association has incorporated in its constitution an
amendment excluding from membership in its organization "any person a
member of the regular army, or of the State militia or naval reserve."
The Illinois State Federation of Labor, at a recent convention, passed
without a dissenting vote a resolution declaring that membership in
military organizations is a violation of labor union obligations, and
requesting all union men to withdraw from the militia. The president of
the Federation, Mr. Albert Young, declared that the militia was a menace
not only to unions, but to all workers throughout the country.

These instances may be multiplied a thousand fold. The union workmen are
becoming conscious of their class, and of the struggle their class is
waging with the capitalist class. To be a member of the militia is to be
a traitor to the union, for the militia is a weapon wielded by the
employers to crush the workers in the struggle between the warring
groups.

Another interesting, and even more pregnant, phase of the class struggle
is the political aspect of it as displayed by the socialists. Five men,
standing together, may perform prodigies; 500 men, marching as marched
the historic Five Hundred of Marseilles, may sack a palace and destroy a
king; while 500,000 men, passionately preaching the propaganda of a class
struggle, waging a class struggle along political lines, and backed by
the moral and intellectual support of 10,000,000 more men of like
convictions throughout the world, may come pretty close to realizing a
class struggle in these United States of ours.

In 1900 these men cast 150,000 votes; two years later, in 1902, they cast
300,000 votes; and in 1904 they cast 450,000. They have behind them a
most imposing philosophic and scientific literature; they own illustrated
magazines and reviews, high in quality, dignity, and restraint; they
possess countless daily and weekly papers which circulate throughout the
land, and single papers which have subscribers by the hundreds of
thousands; and they literally swamp the working classes in a vast sea of
tracts and pamphlets. No political party in the United States, no church
organization nor mission effort, has as indefatigable workers as has the
sociali