Page:William Ernst Trautmann - Industrial Unionism (1908).djvu/16

of any kind of organization, reduced wages, etc. Failure to comply with such terms would mean a continuation of the strike, or lockout, and by the working place being closed against the obstinate rebels they would have no opportunity to apply such fighting methods as are here portrayed."

The industrial unionist, however, holds that there can be no agreement with the employers of labor which the workers have to consider sacred and inviolable.

The worker, if he agrees to the terms of a contract insisted upon by an employer as condition of employment, does so under duress; he is neither legally nor morally bound to respect such an agreement as a sacred pact; moreover, such contracts are used, as shown in this treatise, as instruments to keep the workers divided; the benefit of a contract is always on the side of the employer.

Industrial unionists will therefore sign any pledge, and renounce even their organization if necessary, at times when they are not well prepared to give battle, or when market conditions render it advisable to lay low; but they will do just the reverse of what they had to agree to under duress, when occasion arises to gain advantages for the workers.

The big gun and steel works of Krupp's in Essen, for instance, made employment in the various factories conditional upon the signing