Wendell Phillips Quotes
The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
Phillips, Wendell. Speeches, Lectures, and Letters: Second Series. Lee and Shepard, 1891, p. 152.
Vladimir Lenin
Big Bill Haywood. Historically, the upper economic and business class, including currently, tend to view all labor organizations and unions as socialistic and or communistic and attach them for being such. However, in many industries in America today labor has a great deal of power and the industries are not socialistic or communist. The IWW however was one of the labor organizations that was based on socialism and contained many communists over the years. Haywood himself was a leader of the Socialist Party and campaigned for Eugene Debbs. Like Debbs he was convicted of an unconstitutional law of speaking against the WWI draft. Unlike Debbs who went to prison and was released later, Haywood skipped bail and lived in Russia for the rest of his life.
He had squads of thugs that he would “rent” out to other gangsters for their enforcement activities and to unions to protect themselves from goons and intimidate non union workers. However, he would not let his men work as goons and strike busters or for companies—despite huge pay offers—to keep their workers in line, a common practice at the time.
At the time, it did seem impossible that labor and capital would ever have harmonious relations. But the notion that slavery would solve the problem is as preposterous as anything ever entered into the American political dialogue. But there were many in the South, and some in the North, who actually believed it. Even 150 years later, while labor and capital relations were much better than pre Civil War, they still could not be described as “harmonious” or “friendly”.
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.
