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INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM

protection through it. Such recognition is not delusive and allows an exact measuring of the fighting abilities of a union of workers, and assures absolute reliance in times of conflicts on every one who is a member of the organization. The closed shop, that is the control of every worker in a given workshop, is not established with the permission of the employer, but is the result of the propaganda and methods applied by the industrial. unionists, who, by having an "open union" for everybody who toils, can establish in reality a closed shop by the collective action and voluntary co-operation of all employed and exploited.

With such an organization and such methods it would be indeed a waste of energy if wage earners would prolong a strike or provoke a lockout on account of the employer's refusal to recognize the union.

In the big Portland, Oregon strike, conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1907, the primary object of the suspension was attained, that is, an increased standard of wages for all workers in the saw and lumber mills; that being accomplished, it was not necessary to continue the fight, as it was realized that all those who had secured these improvements would voluntarily help to maintain an organization, which, by its methods, had attained with the least of sacrifice for the strikers all that they had been contending for when the strike was inaugurated.