Socialist Reconstruction of Society

An address delivered in Union Temple, Minneapolis, Minn., July 10, 1905 Originally titled The Preamble of the IWW

Workingmen and Workingwomen of Minneapolis:

Our chairman did not overstate the case when he said that the Industrialists’ convention, which closed its sessions day before yesterday in Chicago after two weeks of arduous labors, marks an epoch in the annals of the labor movement of America. I may add, although his words imply as much, that the Chicago convention marks also a turning point in the history of the land.

What was done there? You will be able to obtain an approximate idea, a hint, from the public declaration” the Preamble to the Constitution―adopted by the convention.

The document is short; I shall make that shortness still shorter by picking out just three of its clauses, the clauses which I consider most important, and by the light of which the significance, not only of all the others, not only of the document itself, but of the movement which uttered it may be appreciated, gauged and understood.

The three clauses are these:

There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

The second clause declares:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.

Lastly, but not least, the third clause is as follows:

Between these two classes a struggle must go a until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.

These three clauses I propose to take up with you in the order in which I have read them.