Sunday May 21, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: War and Wages by Robert Minor

From this month's Review, some thoughts on War, Patriotism, and International Solidarity:

WHEN THEY ASK YOU

IN just a little while your boss is going to tell the newspaper publishers and his paid servants, the congressmen and senators and aldermen, the governors and mayors, that unless you will consent to work longer hours or for lower wages, he will have to close down his factory, his mine, his shop or his mill.

He will say that the German workers or the English or French workers are working for lower wages than you receive and he will appeal to you to produce more for lower pay.

He will say that unless you do these things the "barbarous" Germans will take away his business by selling the thing you produce at a lower price than he can sell them—at a profit to himself.

He is going to beg you to be Patriotic—and protect his business against the English or the Germans.

And the Germans and French and Belgian and English employers are going to appeal to their working men and women to save "their country," and the business of their employers from the French or the Americans or the Germans.

And in every land they will appeal to your Patriotism.

All over the warring nations of Europe the Capitalist, or employing class, is talking of commercial war to follow the present military conflict.

In every country they say the whole life of the nation will depend on whether the workers of that nation will work for lower wages or can be forced to work for lower wages.

Now if the German workers yield to pressure and accept lower wages and longer hours the German employers can afford to sell their commodities at lower price than the American and English employers.

Then suppose the English workers offer to work for less than the Germans and the American workers decide to be very "patriotic" and work for less than the English, what will happen?

The same thing will happen as occurs when many men are fighting for jobs today: men offer to sell their labor power below the prevailing wage scale to get jobs. The higher priced men are let out and the lower priced men get the jobs. But along comes the unmarried men, and the unorganized workers who work for still lower wages, and the men who cut the prevailing wage scale find wages lowered.

And this keeps on. The bosses always looking for lower wages and more profits and the spineless, brainless workers competing with each other to see which can work for the lowest wages and get the job. The struggle never ends and this is why wages stick just around the barest cost of living in the unorganized industries.

But the employing classes, especially in Europe, have already announced that they mean to make this a national issue, a national struggle for the business of other nations.

And what are the French and English workers, the German and Belgian and American workers going to do about it?

What are you going to do about it?

The bosses are going to threaten you with losing your jobs, unless you will work for lower wages. They will appeal to you to save your country, commercially—and their businesses. They will try to force lower wages upon you.

They will appeal to the Patriotism of fake labor leaders like Sammie Gompers to get the craft unions into line for wage reductions.

Now this is what we all need to remember: that working for lower wages will injure the working class. It will set the pace for our French comrades, our German and English fellow workers and help to force them to accepting lower wages. And the lowering of wages will never end.

Every time a group of workers maintains its wage scale or raises it, it will spur our "foreign" friends to do the same thing.

They have fought and are fighting the great war for the benefit of their national exploiters. We must urge them not to fight their commercial battles and prove themselves "Patriotic" spineless tools of the capitalist class.

For such a fight we need—not individual struggles, nor craft strikes nor even national industrial union battle alone—we must have some sort of real international working class organization for carrying on agitation and educational work, for communicating with the various national groups so that they can act together on the industrial field and maintain and raise their wage scale, expose the "Patriotism" bred of a creed for profits and to organize and educate the international working class for the revolution.

If all the machinists and electricians, the moulders and machine builders, the miners and the railroad men, the boilermakers and producers generally, declare they will go on general strike rather than submit to a wage reduction or longer hours of labor, if they demand even higher wages and revolution, they can force the capitalists of every nation to grant all their demands. They can gain time and strength and experience and knowledge for the revolution.

The Review is going to jump into the fight now. We are going to try to get in touch with the national labor organizations as soon as possible with a view of getting them to take a stand for raising wages in the interests of the workers instead of permitting them to be lowered for the benefit of the capitalist class.

The ruling classes are going to do all they can thru Church, Press, School and College to arouse the nationalistic pride of the workers. By every means they will seek to inspire hatred in the minds of the workers in each country for the workers in every other country. They will call this "Patriotism."

Patriotism means the sacrifice of those who produce—for the benefit of those who rob and exploit them.

The capitalist class is the same in every country. It will sacrifice millions of useful working men—in war, in factory, mines or mills—for the enrichment of the non-producing property owners.

The working class has no country. The employing class has stolen them all. And so our battle cry should be:

To the bitter end for the working class, but not one life for "Patriotism."

SOURCE & IMAGE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 16
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company,
July 1915-June 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ
ISR, May 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
"When They Ask You" by Robert Minor
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

See also:
Robert Minor
http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTminor.htm

The Workers Song - Dick Gaughan
Lyrics: Ed Pickford
http://unionsong.com/u608.html

But when the sky darkens
And the prospect is war
Who's given a gun
And then pushed to the fore
And expected to die
For the land of our birth
When we've never owned
One handful of earth?