The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance

Long did the Socialist Labor Party and New Trade Unionists seek to deliver this important message to the broad masses of the American proletariat, the rank and file of our working class. But we could not reach, we could not get at them. Between us and them there stood a solid wall of ignorant, stupid and corrupt labor fakers. Like men groping in a dark room for an exit, we moved along the wall, bumping our heads, feeling ever onwards for a door; we made the circuit and no passage was found. The wall was solid. This discovery once made, there was no way other than to batter a breach through that wall. With the battering ram of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance we effected a passage; the wall now crumbles; at last we stand face to face with the rank and file of the American proletariat; and we are delivering our message, as you may judge from the howl that goes up from that fakers’ wall that we have broken through.

I shall not consider my time well spent with you if I see no fruit of my labors; if I leave not behind me in New Bedford Local Alliances of your trades organized in the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. That will be my best contribution toward your strike, as they will serve as centers of enlightenment to strengthen you in your conflict, to the extent that it may now be possible.

In conclusion, my best advice to you for immediate action, is to step out boldly upon the streets, as soon as you can; organize a monster parade of the strikers and of all the other working people in the town; and let the parade be headed by a banner bearing the announcement to your employers:

“We will fight you in this strike to the bitter end; your money bag may beat us now; but whether it does or not, that is not the end, it is only the beginning of the song; in November we will meet again at Philippi, and the strike shall not end until, with the falchion of the Socialist Labor Party ballot, we shall have laid you low for all time!”

This is the message that it has been my agreeable privilege to deliver to you in the name of the Socialist Labor Party, and of the New Trade Unionists or Alliance men of the land.