e decision, to stop trying to fight capital
with money, which they lacked, and to begin fighting with the ballot,
which was their strongest weapon.

Night and day, tireless and unrelenting, they labor at their self-imposed
task of undermining society. Mr. M. G. Cunniff, who lately made an
intimate study of trade-unionism, says: "All through the unions socialism
filters. Almost every other man is a socialist, preaching that unionism
is but a makeshift." "Malthus be damned," they told him, "for the good
time was coming when every man should be able to rear his family in
comfort." In one union, with two thousand members, Mr. Cunniff found
every man a socialist, and from his experiences Mr. Cunniff was forced to
confess, "I lived in a world that showed our industrial life a-tremble
from beneath with a never-ceasing ferment."

The socialists have already captured the Western Federation of Miners,
the Western Hotel and Restaurant Employees' Union, and the Patternmakers'
National Association. The Western Federation of Miners, at a recent
convention, declared: "The strike has failed to secure to the working
classes their liberty; we therefore call upon the workers to strike as
one man for their liberties at the ballot box. . . . We put ourselves on
record as committed to the programme of independent political action. . . .
We indorse the platform of the socialist party, and accept it as the
declaration of principles of our organization. We call upon our members
as individuals to commence immediately the organization of the socialist
movement in their respective towns and states, and to cooperate in every
way for the furtherance of the principles of socialism and of the
socialist party. In states where the socialist party has not perfected
its organization, we advise that every assistance be given by our members
to that end. . . . We therefore call for organizers, capable and
well-versed in the whole programme of the labor movement, to be sent into
each state to preach the necessity of organization on the political as
well as on the economic field."

The capitalist class has a glimmering consciousness of the class struggle
which is shaping itself in the midst of society; but the capitalists, as
a class, seem to lack the ability for organizing, for coming together,
such as is possessed by the working class. No American capitalist ever
aids an English capitalist in the common fight, while workmen have formed
internationa