ELEVEN BLIND LEADERS
(Address delivered before the Chicago Propaganda League
of the Industrial Workers of the World,
May 30, 1909.)
FELLOW WORKERS:
The subject I have volunteered to discuss with you tonight has recently formed the material of two lectures in this hall by prominent members of the Socialist Party. Mr. A. M. Simons' speech on "Revolutionary Tactics" was followed with one by Professor John C. Kennedy of Chicago University on the question of the value of political action to the labor movement. The two lectures were in a way supplementary to each other, and together contained about all that can be said in a general way in favor of "practical socialism" from a purely political stand point.
The substance of both Simons' and Kennedy's answer to their I. W. W. critics is contained in the statement that "any organization or any line of action is good so long as it leads in the direction of the overthrow of capitalism." That axiomatic conclusion was hurled at the I. W. W. with all the assurance of a teacher who presumes upon the innocence of his pupils regarding such an obvious fact.
But then the speakers proceeded to name some of the "good" means to the end of a social transformation as they conceived it.
One means was the union. And Mr. Simons contended in his opening speech that the American Federation of Labor was turning in the direction of socialism. When confronted by one of his critics with the statement from the Wall Street Journal that the "A. F. of L.
