FROM THE MAN IN THE TRENCHES.
George Fenton, Secretary, Kansas City.
The magazines and newspapers are full of dope about the war in Europe and the sufferings of the armies there, but you hear very little about the Grand Army of the Unemployed, so small that the newspaper and magazine writers cannot see them.
The first reason is that the Army of the Unemployed is not organized and the Master Class
drive them from place to place, and will keep on doing so, until the men without a job make up their minds to organize.
One more reason is that the Master Class do not want you to know how big the Army of the Unemployed is; for, if you did know, you might some day make up your minds to get together and demand some of the good things your class has slaved for but did not get; it and cannot be ousted until as the Master Class just gave you enough so the earliest that you come to work the next day.
When the Master Class close down their shops and mills, you find that you are about a week from the Poor-house or on the road again, looking for another Master.
Now, Brother, are you going to keep this way all your life, or are you going to get together and organize and make the Master Class sit up and take notice?
The reason the Master Class will not do any. thing for you is because they see that you will not do anything for yourself.
Year after year, the Master Class sees you going in the bread line and looking for charity in the winter, and as soon as the Spring and Summer come you seem to forget what you have been through the winter past, and the Master Class feels safe once more.
You know this is the truth, because you come into the I. B. W. A. in the Fall and Winter, and as soon as the Spring comes around a you forget all about the I. B. W. A. as an organization until next winter.
The I.B. W.A. is open to you all, and we, the members of the I.B. W.A. want you to take out a card in this organization. We do not care how you vote on the outsid, if you vote at all; the only thing we ask you is not to take up fire-arms or the tools of production against your fellow workingman.
How many of you members in the I.B. W. A. said last winter, that as soon as you could get a Master you would see that the I.B. W. A. would have open head-quarters all the year round.
Now is your time to make good. Send in your dues to your Secretary, and also see how many new members you can get; also send into the National Office for a bundle of the ”HOBO NEWS.”
The cry with most of the members in the past has been that we must have a paper of our own. Now the Organization has got its own paper and the writer would like to know how many of the members are sending into the National Office for a bundle of the ”HOBO NEWS.”
Every member should get a bundle of 50 ”HOBO NEWS”’ and sell them in the Railroad Camps, and also try to yet the men working in camps to subscribe or the “HOBO NEWS.” DO IT NOW.
It is up to the unemployed themselves to better their conditions; nobody is going to do it for them; and it is most emphatically up to the man with a job, if only in self defence, to aid them in every possible way to secure their ends.
The unemployed are continually referred to, sneeringly, as ‘The Mob.”
Well and Good. Then the Mob must be transformed into a coherent body, knowing well its economic position in Society, and the cause of it go after the go all means.