THE PREAMBLE.

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 7, 1 August 1913, Page 2

THE PREAMBLE.

After being adopted by the F.O.L. Conference last year, fading into the background for a time, to be again brought forward at the January Conference and embodied in the “ Basis of Unity/’ that statement of principles known as the I.W.W. Preamble was at last dropped by the Unity Congress. We now find it being described as “ crude” by an anonymous writer in the daily press, whose heavy article shows nothing but the author’s oavh pedantry and inability to grasp its significance or understand its simplicity and clearness. A word now on the Preamble is in season.

No regret nefed be felt that the Congress did not adopt it. At any rate a gathering made up of representatives of both classes could not, consistently, endorse a preamble which proclaims the Class-Struggle in the first sentence.

As a piece of literature the Preamble is remarkable for its condensation of a whole philosophy in so few words. There, in language too plain for a standard I. child to misunderstand, is stated the economic position of the Working Class, the nature of the struggle, and the remedy. It gives the promise of the Industrial Democracy which is to -be the foundation of the New Society.