One Big Union the Need of All Mine Workers

From ‘Solidarity’, Chicago, Ill., July 21, 1917

By Frank Little

Metal Mine Workers’ Industrial Union No. 800 of the I.W.W. {Industrial Workers of the World] is making great strides in the West. The old-time fighting miners, who have made the hard fights in the W.F. of M. [Western Federation of Miners] before that organization became a boss-controlled union, are now building up the new fighting union.

The miners have met down in the hot stopes, crosscuts and raises, drifts and shafts. The men who crank the Burley machine, the swivel tail and jack hammer, the muckstick artist and car-runner — in fact, all the workers in the mines, mills and smelters, have decided that they must organize a union that the membership can and will control, an organization whose purpose is to assist them in their battles against the bosses.

The demand of Industrial Union No. 800 are for the present: A six-hour day, six-day week, with a minimum wage of $6 per day, abolition of the rustling card and physical examination, abolition of the sliding scale of wages, abolition of the contract and bonus systems. Besides these things the I.W.W. demands two men to work on all machines and two men to work on all raises. These demands are only a starter.

The W.F. of M. have always sought to justify their demands for the eight hour day by pointing to the fact that a miner can do more and better work in eight hours than they could before in ten hours; in other words, that union men were willing to work eight hours per day at a ten-hour pace. As a consequence, miners and muckers were forced to live up to this rule. Today they are doing more work by far in eight hours than they ever did in ten.

Now the I.W.W. wants the six-hour day for all mine workers because we want to do LESS WORK for the bosses instead of more. We want more time to study, to agitate, to strengthen our organization in order to be able to demand and enforce the four-hour day. The miners are organizing in order to have the power to gain, with the general strike of the metal mining industry if necessary, uniform hours, wages and working conditions for the workers in this industry everywhere. All miners into one big industrial union so that when we go on strike in one place to enforce these demands, we can close down all the mines of the big mining companies in order to make them come across.

An injury to one is an injury to all! So all together, you diggers and muckers, boost for the organization that is going to get you the things that will make life really worth living. Force the bosses off your backs, put them to work down in the hole with the producers; hand them their muck sticks and make them ears their living for a change.

If you haven’t got a card in the M.M.W.I.U. No. 800 get one NOW. Take out credentials and become a job organizer. The initiation fee is $2, and dues 50c per month.