when the interests which this class aggressively pursues conflict
sharply and vitally with the interests of another class, class
antagonism arises and a class struggle is the inevitable result.
One great organization of labor alone has a membership of 1,700,000
in the United States. This is the American Federation of Labor, and
outside of it are many other large organizations. All these men are
banded together for the frank purpose of bettering their condition,
regardless of the harm worked thereby upon all other classes. They
are in open antagonism with the capitalist class, while the
manifestos of their leaders state that the struggle is one which can
never end until the capitalist class is exterminated.

Their leaders will largely deny this last statement, but an
examination of their utterances, their actions, and the situation
will forestall such denial. In the first place, the conflict
between labor and capital is over the division of the join product.
Capital and labor apply themselves to raw material and make it into
a finished product. The difference between the value of the raw
material and the value of the finished product is the value they
have added to it by their joint effort. This added value is,
therefore, their joint product, and it is over the division of this
joint product that the struggle between labor and capital takes
place. Labor takes its share in wages; capital takes its share in
profits. It is patent, if capital took in profits the whole joint
product, that labor would perish. And it is equally patent, if
labor took in wages the whole joint product, that capital would
perish. Yet this last is the very thing labor aspires to do, and
that it will never be content with anything less than the whole
joint product is evidenced by the words of its leaders.