Perhaps the I.W.W.’s greatest contribution to the class struggle in the U.S. was its determined rejection of the then labor movement’s racial and national exclusion. From the beginning, the I.W.W. appealed to immigrant workers and rejected any color line. Not only in the languages of Europe but of the Pacific as well were wobbly tracts published. Indeed, for the class-conscious wob, race discrimination was the clearest sign of being a yap and a boot-licker to the boss. An editor of Industrial Worker below.

‘Race Prejudice Akin to Race Ignorance’ by J.A. McDonald from Industrial Worker. (new) Vol. 1 No. 4. May 6, 1916.

The worker has been like a dog with a tin can tied to his tail. One of the commonest cans used by the boss is race prejudice. Our boss, the can securely tied, yells? Do you want to change human nature?”

“No,” says the’ I.W.W., “we merely want to remove the tin can so that the dog can be natural!” This is an invitation, a reason, worker, why you should get that can off your tail so you can be natural! Tin cans do not come natural to dogs, nor race prejudice to thinking workers.

Race prejudice is race ignorance. The man who is proud of being born of certain parentage or in a certain country is giving himself credit for using good judgment nine months before birth. That is the last good judgment some of them ever show.

The native son of the Golden West–golden only for the boss–is cussed roundly and rightly, by the migratory worker for his narrow, state prejudice. Thousands of migratory workers, many of those who cuss the loudest–have a prejudice wider geographically but as narrow in mental grasp. The man who has nothing to be proud of except nationality and ancestry has no reasons for pride but for shame. He is like a potato. All that is good of him is underground, dead, buried and often rotten.

Ignorance and intolerance go together. Capitalism needs both in the mind of the worker. The less knowledge and tolerance the worker has the quicker he can be chloroformed into thinking he is fighting for his country when he hasn’t any, for his home when he hasn’t even a boarding house. And the less he will fight for a country of his own, a home of his own.

A worker unblinded by ignorance and prejudice would immediately see the difference between fighting for a home and fighting for a munition trust. The boss has to keep worker fighting worker in order to continue his “do-em-all,” “skin-em-all” graft. Race prejudice is, from a boss viewpoint, the prize equipment of a working sucker.

Race prejudices is murdering millions of workers in Europe to a tune that makes hell sound comparatively like a social meeting of the ladies aid society. In the United States it stands as a bar between the worker and the clothing and food he produces.

Wake up, American, self-styled, that other foreigner along side of you is organized on the job with you–organized with you by the boss and for the boss. Modern industry spells O-r-g-a-n-i-z-a-t-i-o-n. Individualism no longer can exist on the job.

The job means cooperation. Don’t say you would not organize with the other foreigner. You are organized with him now. The boss disregarding race creed, sex, color has you organized to produce. The I.W.W. wants you to organize, cooperate on the job for yourself to consume what you produce.

Not any nationality is responsible for your present condition industrially. What is keeping the millions of workers in slavery submission and ignorance is not any one nationality but the obedience and prejudices of thousands of yaps. We may have all kinds of ancestry, but we hope no posterity. There are various types and brands and breeds and clans of yaps, but it would be equally valuable to subdivide the various kinds of filth in a cesspool.

The I.W.W. wants you to organize as a class for yourselves, with all workers as you need them as much as they need you. We don’t want you to organize with them socially unless you wish. In society there are foreigners, but there is no nationality on the job. You are all workers–a class, not a nationality! We don’t want you to marry the woman of another race. She may not want you, if you are not organized, a fighter, she may be using good judgment.

The cry of: America for the Americans! is with the worker. An echo of a slogan made by the boss who brought all the foreigners here, for working yap consumption and might have had some meaning in 1492 The scissorbill worker then lost his glorious opportunity by not organizing a delegation, he probably didn’t because being a yap he hates that word “organizing”–and warning that “dago” Christopher Columbus away from his shores. Of course they are his shores where the yap owns all his property–in his mind. If psychological property were capable of materialization the yap would be a millionaire instead of just a yap.

Here, worker, is a new slogan, profitable common sense bread-and-butter effective,–“America for the workers, the world for the Industrial Workers of the World or the workers in the world’s industries.” Organize on your job to make the job yours. Organize for yourself and your class as the boss now has you organized–industrially as a class. Make humanity your nationality, your race, the world your home and industrial freedom and control your aim with this nationality, this home, this aim–the workers bound in class interest and solidarity will be invincible. We can make the slavery founded on ignorance and prejudices, on the idiot war of worker against worker, a dark nightmare of the past.

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.”

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