INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION

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INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION

CALL TO ACTION (1871)

History of the American Working Classes
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The North American Central Committee of the International was formed in May 1871 and met
regularly at the Tenth Ward Hotel, in lower Manhattan. The committee consisted of delegates
from ten small groups (or sections), seven of them New York City.  Following is the appeal it sent
out to the workers of the United States.

The I.W.A. has spread over the entire civilized world and is planting its roots among the working
classes of all countries, where modern industry reigns (England, Germany, France, Belgium,
Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Russia, Holland, United States, etc.). Its central body or board
of administration, the General Council of the I.WA., is sitting at London and in its last official
communication of March 12th distinctly recognizes and acknowledges the organization of the
undersigned C.C. and “expresses its satisfaction with our activity." Every Trades Union or Labor
Society of this country may affiliate with this Central Committee of the I.W.A. by acknowledging
and defending the principles and rules of the I.WA. and remitting an annual dues of two cents per
member for the General Council and five cents pet member for this Central Committee to the
undersigned and also electing a delegate.

The principles of the I.W.A. may be condensed in the following extracts from its rules:

         *The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.

         *The struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class
           privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties and the abolition of all class rule.

         *The economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that
          is the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental
          degradation and political dependence;

        *The economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every
          political movement ought to be subordinate as a means.

        *All efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between
          the manifold divisions of labor in each country and from the absence of a fraternal bond of
          union between the working classes of different countries. The emancipation of labor is neither
          a local, nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries, in which modem society
          exists and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most
          advanced countries.
 

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