From the Archives

From the Archives

Declaration of Sentiments and Constitution of the New-England Labor-Reform League (1869)

October 21, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Having met to promote associative effort for the emancipation of labor, it is proper to indicate reasons which inspire this action, and the objects we aim to accomplish. Believing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, inalienable privileges, we affirm the right of every human being to the means necessary to secure and maintain them. Land, mines, air, water, vegetables, animals, all material and spiritual objects, unmodified by human skill are natural wealth, to be held free and common; […]

From the Archives

Henry Olerich, “What the American Civil War Has Not Done” (1893)

August 24, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

PERHAPS all well-informed persons admit that chattel slavery was the cause of the American Civil War. All other questions that were incidentally drawn into the controversy were but secondary, and would likely have been treated as ordinary questions of politics. The animosity which caused the Civil War was created by the agitation of the slave question; and it is altogether probable that if slavery had not been introduced in to the United States, the Civil War would not have occurred. The previous union of the southern with the northern states is evidence that a friendly feeling between them had once existed, and if no enmity had been created between them by the agitation of the slavery question, there would not have been a desire to secede; for no one desires to withdraw from a partnership that is harmonious and profitable. […]

From the Archives

Arturo M. Giovannitti, “The Constructive Side of Syndicalism” (1907)

August 8, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Like all the other new theories that have loomed up in the horizon on the troubled waters of capitalist society, or, for that matter, any society whatever, syndicalism is naturally going to be very much maligned, calumniated, and revolted against, not only by those that are not in sympathy with it from the economic point of view, but also from those that are sincere in their beliefs and earnest in uplifting mankind to the higher plane of civilization. It has been ever so throughout history, and it is so today. […]