﻿AN OPEN LETTER to the AMERICAN PEOPLE 
By T-BONE SLIM

Suppose you, as a nation, were working for Pierre LaRue Dupont of the General Industries Conglomerated, and he fired you without consulting anybody?
Would that be, I wonder, industrial autocracy, mebbe?
He fires the whole nation? Where would you go—Canada mebbe? Ah, my dear people, you cannot do that. One or two might slip across the border it they decided to run for it. but when 125,000,000 try to emigrate, the homed toads on horseback will be there to meet them with Flit guns.
You’re stuck. You’re fired . . . as a nation. So the question arises, was that industrial autocracy on the part of Pierre La Rue DuPont, or was it servile slavery on the part of you?
Ah, you say, that is pretty far fetched. Pierre wouldn’t be so cruel.
Conceded, then. He is less cruel. He fires only one.
Is that industrial autocracy?
There is no statute in the city ordinances that prevents him from firing part or the whole of te nation. He has the sweet liberty and will to do as he damn well pleases. He is the nation’s favored child. Instead of that he should be put in a reform school.
I can’t see the difference in whether he fires part of the people, or all of the people—it is autocracy, it is fascism struggling for a foothold—and th people’s rights hang in the balance, for fascism is the name given company unionism when it encompasses a whole nation. Government of the industrialists is another description that applies.
Communism on the other hand, as practised, is: Government of the communists by the communists for the people—a condition of people doing something for themselves by proxy, by coxey.
None of these succeed without the will of the people. I will not go into the respective merits of these except to point out that a nation evenly divided on these two viewpoints is in for a bloody revolution.
But there is a consoling feature— the One Big Union of labor can absolutely prevent this blood shed, and bring order out of chaos— but in the doing so, we shall have to sacrifice industrial autocracy (industrial dictatorship) and institute industrial democracy.
Political democracy was good enough for our fathers, and industrial democracy shall be good enough for our children. The world do move.
Now my dear people, what I’m trying to get at is: Are you willing to support the I. W. W. in all its moves to prevent this holocaust and establish peace and plenty? Is it industrial autocracy if this force, industrial supremacy, throws 13,000,000 of our contrymen out of employment forever? Now IS it? Aand leave 50,000,000 destitute? Looks to me like carte blanche.
T.Bone-Slim.