es. When better wages have been secured, prices have often
gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to
the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages
applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices
becoming general, the total result has been against the working class as
a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received
the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a
social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a
comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control
of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In
other words, the demand arises for independent, working-class action,
aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.

VIII

A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand,
who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with
the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates
of united political action by the working class, consciously directed
toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of
the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength
of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor
movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a
tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor
unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor
unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement
during the next few years.

The struggle between the capitalist and working classes must become a
political issue, the supreme political issue. This must result, not only
because the collective ownership of property can best be brought about
by political methods, but also because the capitalists themselves have
taken the industrial struggle into the political arena to suit
themselves; and when the workers realize the issue and accept it, the
capitalists will not be able to resist them. One is reminded of the
saying of Marx that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. In taking
the industrial issue into the political sphere, to suit their own
immediate advantages, the capitalists were destined to reveal to the
workers, sooner or later, their power and opportunity.

Realizing that all the forces of government are on their side, the