(C) Resolution of 1922 Spring Conference of Agricultural Workers' Union No. 110, of the I.W.W.
Whereas: The members of the United Mine Workers of America are now on strike and experiencing all the difficulties and hardships which the capitalist class of this country can visit upon them, and,
Whereas: We recognize in these striking mine workers, fellow fighters in the common struggle of the working class against the forces of capitalist repression;
Therefore, be it Resolved: That members of the U.M.W.A. organizations on strike shall be accorded all the rights and privileges of members of the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union No. 110, in the harvest fields of the United States this season.
AGRICULTURAL WORKERS' INDUSTRIAL UNION NO. 110, OF THE I.W.W.
July 28, 1922 - 1001 W. Madison St., Chicago, Ill.
To the Striking Railroad Shop Crafts:
Fellow Workers, Greeting:
In this time of crisis the sympathy of the I.W.W. is with you, and the support and co-operation of its members are yours to command. We recognize that your strike is a skirmish on the long battle front of labor. Need we say that we deplore the odds against which you are compelled to fight, or to assure you that whatever assistance we can render, we stand ready to offer. You are struggling for a living wage and human conditions in your employments. You are striving to retain and stabilize living and working standards at a minimum to which you and we feel the American worker of the twentieth century is entitled. Upon that score you and we are in entire accord. It is our pleasure, as it is our duty, to volunteer whatever help we are capable of giving you, so that in this effort you shall not sustain defeat.
But for many years we, too, have been engaged in an effort to achieve a position where a decent living standard would be secured to us. In pursuit of that object, we have encountered all the opposition which the employing interests could array against us. Brutality has hounded our footsteps and claimed its victims from our members by the hundreds. We have been slandered, vilified, and framed. Our members have filled the prisons and decorated the scaffolds. They have been lynched, tarred and feathered, hunted, crippled, and murdered. The motive underlying and inspiring the long record of vilification and repression was, and is, to prevent organization of the unskilled migratory workers who constitute the bulk of the membership in the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union No. 110 of the I.W.W.
From the tools and minions of the employing interests we expected no other treatment than what we have received; but from workers, particularly from. striking workers, we expected an understanding sympathy and active cooperation. It is with pain then, and with some surprise, that we learn of striking railroad shopmen, through their organizations, preparing to invade the harvest fields with a total disregard of our efforts to win living wages and decent working conditions. We had anticipated your coming, and had made preparations to extend to you the hand of welcome. We had expected you to cooperate with us in the true spirit. of unionism, so that all of us together might raise the common level of the workers. We are loath to believe that a body of men like you even for a moment, and at a time like this, would waver in your loyalty to the cause of labor. If our information is correct, which we would regret, and the conduct alleged is continued, we shall be compelled to regard it as an act unfriendly to labor, which would indeed be deplorable.
The moral code of labor decrees against resisting a wage cut for yourselves by helping to impose wage cuts upon some other, and presumably more helpless body of workers. The "going wage" of the farming communities is the counterpart of the railroad corporation's wage, as determined by their Railroad Board. You regard it as a matter of principle to resist the wage this Board has set, and the conditions that accompany that wage. By what process of reasoning can you justify resistance in the one (your own) case, and in the other (that of the harvest workers) force upon us even worse conditions than those you, yourselves, refuse to accept? This is not a consistent attitude, nor is it one that promises to advance the interests of the workers of America. To win for yourselves, if, by the present alleged harvest policy, you would win, would be to have sacrificed the migratory workers -- something, which we feel sure, upon mature deliberation, you will not be willing to undertake.
Our delegates in the harvest sections stand instructed to extend every courtesy to striking workers of every calling, and to assist them in every way. We shall expect you to take this matter up seriously, and to devise ways whereby unanimity of action between your members and ours will bring about living wages and human conditions in harvest employments.
Again pledging you the friendship of our members, and assuring you of our entire sympathy; and that our organization is at the service of the shopmen whenever they act in the spirit of unionism, we are,
Yours for Labor Solidarity, Tom Doyle, Sec'y-Treas.
Tom Connors, Chairman, G. O. C.
A.W.I.U. No. 110, I.W.W.