Fellow workers I am compelled to address you on the present deplorable condition in which
you are placed by the want of solidarity in your ranks - thousands of you unemployed, and
those employed working under the worst possible conditions due to no other reason but want
of unity in your ranks. I write as one who is recognised or designated a leader in the
labour movement, but who prefers to be known as one of the rank and file.
Any special knowledge I possess of the conditions appertaining to the working class, and
more especially your section of the working class was acquired not by reading or
associating with workers but out of the hard brutal facts of life; and my pilgrimage as a
wage slave through every phase and in many climes, I have had like you, to submit to the
degradation of seeking an employer who, when forced, compelled me by force of economic
circumstances to slave under degrading conditions, during long hours for a miserable
pittance. First the denial of my right as a human being to the free access of life due to
the private control of land and capital by the employing class compelled me to hunger; to
satisfy that hunger I needs must work: Denied work, except under conditions laid down by
the class who dominate, the workers had perforce to bargain with the employer to be allowed
to work that they might so assuage the pangs of hunger, for it has been well and truly
said by Carlyle, 'If a man works not he must steal, howsoever he might call that
'stealing'.
Therefore being born into the class that needs must work, I was compelled to
think, and my study of life made plain to me one ugly fact - that he or she who works is
considered as of a lower order of humanity than the thief who will not work, no matter by
what name he or she may call that stealing.
I saw at a very early age that those who did
not work or would not work, belonging to the class who had power of the lives of other
human beings, was well housed, well clothed, well fed, well educated and well provided for
in every way, that the best that life could give was at their pleasure, and that on the
other hand those who were willing to work, belonging to the class from which I took my
being, either had to work and provide for the aforementioned idle, useless class or die of
starvation. I asked myself why it was that this idle, useless class, few in numbers, could
dominate and exploit the great majority.
I found an answer to my own question, I found the main reason for this dominating class's
position was their oneness, their belief in their right to enjoy privilege and exercise
monopoly. Their class solidarity was the base of their successful, satisfying position.
I studied the position in all its varied phases, and having satisfied myself that this
dominating class possess no inherent right to the position they usurp, that this useless
class possessed no attributes which gave them a claim to the position they hold, and
determined to do one man's part to dethrone them.
I was not afraid of their power or ability. I had proved to my own satisfaction the
hollowness of their pretension as a superior class, and falseness of their claim. I saw
these people demanding service of their fellows, and refusing to render service and I
therefore determined to appeal to the class of which I was a unit.
That appeal has met with
varying success, not because of its force nor because of the forces arrayed indirect
opposition to it, for I have proved - at least to my own personal satisfaction - that the
so-called superior class are not equal to their pretensions and have at all times failed to
prove their superiority when faced by a conscious, intelligent, well-ordered section of
the working class; and it is also manifest to me that the exploiting class will only
continue to hold their present position just as long as our class permit them to so
continue.
The most tragic feature of the struggle is the unconscious betrayal of the working class
by certain sections of that class, and the statement brings me to the main point in this
address to the Dublin section of the labouring class. During the past seven years by
untiring effort a certain amount of ground has been gained throughout the country but
especially in the city, by activity of the union to which I am connected. On many
occasions greater advances and more fruitful results might have been accomplished but for
the fact that we were cursed with the greatest drawback to the successful accomplishment
of our designs by the action of two other bodies operating in the same field of industrial
activity. Time and again in negotiations after victory we have been met with an argument
which was irresistible.
Oh! But here is the rules of another union recognised by the Dublin Trades Council, who
are
prepared to work for 4½d per hour. How can you claim 6d per hour?
We have had the spectacle of members of these unions offering to work below the demand
made; or still worse when we have had certain traitors and backsliders penned up these
other unions have given shelter to these wasters, and taken them into their fold, and the
black and dirty sheep have been given a dip. Now there is a unique opportunity for a
decided advance.
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