The mass produced, color sticker was an invention the I.W.W. made full use of. These ‘silent agitators’ were plastered along rail lines, by soup kitchens, in logging camps, skid rows, mines, restaurants, and mills from one end of the country to the other. As the U.S. increased its standing army and imperial footprint with invasions of Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico in the early 1900s, the I.W.W. began an anti-militarist campaign inspired by the French sabots.

‘Anti-Military Stickers’ by Walker C. Smith from Industrial Worker. Vol. 3 No. 7. May 11, 1911.

Young man: When you are asked to enlist in the army or navy to be used as food for cannon, be sure to look before you leap.

Remember: The Spanish-American war, with its vile and unspeakable record of embalmed beef, shoddy uniforms, bum fitting brogans, leaky tents, rotten ships and a rottener bureaucracy, blow-hole armor plate à la Carnegie, insufficient and inedible food, venereal diseases and malarial fever.

Remember: That the sugar and tobacco trusts got the goods, and the workers got the malarial fever.

Remember: That the officers got the honor and the glory and the men got shot at. Remember: That the officers got three squares each day, while the rank and file was starving on mouldy hardtack.

Remember: That these arrogant and overbearing officers were commissioned because they hadn’t energy enough to work, brains enough to beg, or courage enough to steal. Remember: That the American workers had no quarrel with the Spanish workers, anyway.

Remember: That the acquisition of Cuba and the Philippines never raised your wages, shortened your hours, or otherwise bettered your condition.

Remember: The pensions the men didn’t get.

Remember: Those who were maimed, mutilated and disfigured for life. Remember: The boys who never came back.

Think of the widows; think of the orphans; think of yourself. Let those who own the country do the fighting. Put the wealthiest in the front ranks, the middle class next; follow these with judges, lawyers, preachers and politicians. Let the workers remain at home and enjoy what they produce. Follow a declaration of war with an immediate call for a general strike. Make the slogan “Rebellion Sooner than War.”

Don’t make yourself a target in order to fatten Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, the Rothschilds, Guggenheim and the other industrial pirates. Don’t be fooled by jingoism. The workers have no quarrel with Mexico or Japan. American capitalists own most of the Mexican industries and operate them with peon or slave labor. The revolutionary insurrectoes threaten to give these slaves a taste of freedom. Both Taft and Diaz are pliant tools of the interests and U.S. troops are being used to keep the Mexican workers in subjection.

American capitalists want war with Japan in order to seize the rich Manchurian lands, gain railway, mining and other concessions, unload their surplus stock of shoddy goods upon the government, secure investment for their money in the interest-bearing war debt bonds and to kill off the surplus of unemployed workers who are threatening to overthrow the capitalist system. Japanese capitalists want war for just about the same reason. Even if they lose, they win.

“Workers of the world, unite!” Don’t become hired murderers.

Don’t join the army or navy.

20c hundred; $1.50 thousand.

WALKER C. SMITH, 715 W. 11th Ave., Denver, Colo.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

PDF of issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v3n07-w111-may-11-1911-IW.pdf