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STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW

EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Volume LXXXIII] [Whole Number 193

THE I. W. W.
A Study of American Syndicalism

BY

PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN, Ph.D.
Sometime Assistant in Economics at the University of California and University Fellow at Columbia
Special Agent of the United States Department of Labor

SECOND EDITION

New York
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS
London: P. S. King & Son, Ltd.
1920

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Copyright, 1920
BY
PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN

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TO
R. O. L. B.

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[Pg 5]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

No very extensive changes are made in the new edition. The chart of early radical labor organizations, which appeared in the first edition as Appendix I, has been omitted in this edition. There is reproduced in its place a copy of the original industrial organization chart prepared by "Father" T. J. Hagerty at the time of the launching of the I. W. W. in 1905 and sometimes referred to as "Father Hagerty's Wheel of Fortune". This chart is believed to be of some importance as illustrating the earlier ideas of the revolutionary industrial unionists on industrial organization in relation to union structure. It has been considerably amplified by W. E. Trautmann and published in his pamphlet One Great Union, and still further developed by James Robertson who has very recently built extensions upon it in furtherance of the shop-steward propaganda in the Pacific Northwest. His version is published in a pamphlet entitled Labor unionism and the American shop steward system (Portland, Oreg., 1919).

The organization held its eleventh national convention in Chicago in May, 1919. This was the first convention held since December, 1916. It was attended by fifty-four delegates and it has been reported that forty-eight of them had never before attended a general convention of the organization. The General Executive Board reported that the organization in 1919 comprised fourteen Industrial Unions, each with its locals in various parts of the country, and a General Recruiting Union, with a total membership of 35,000. Since the convention it is reported that three[Pg 6] new Industrial Unions have been formed: an Oil Workers' Industrial Union, a Coal Miners' Union and a Fishery Workers' Union. Nearly fifty amendments to the constitution were adopted by the delegates at the May convention. Most if not all of these have been since approved in a referendum to the membership. The proceedings of the convention have not yet been published. Since the first edition of this book appeared the I. W. W. has launched a monthly magazine called The One Big Union Monthly and several new weekly newspapers.

The writer's attention has been called to the erroneous statement (on page 235) in regard to Daniel DeLeon's theory of industrial unionism. This has been revised to accord with the facts. There is added on page 241 some interesting comment from Lenin, the Bolshevik premier of Russia, on DeLeon and on the relation between revolutionary industrial unionism, and the soviet system in Russia.

P. F. Brissenden

Washington, D. C., September, 1919.

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This is a descriptive and historical sketch of the present drift from parliamentary to industrial socialism—as epitomized in the career of the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States. The I. W. W. is now thirteen years old. During the first half of its existence the general public hardly knew that there was such an organization. A few local communities, however, were startled into an awareness of it quite early in its history. The city of Spokane had an I. W. W. "free-speech fight" on its hands in 1909. Fresno, California, McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and Missoula, Montana, all had their little bouts with the "Wobblies" long before the Lawrence strike of 1912 made the I. W. W. nationally prominent.

Just now the Industrial Workers of the World, as represented by more than one hundred of its members and officials, is on trial for its life in Chicago. The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to hinder and discourage enlistment and in general to obstruct the progress of the war with Germany. The specific number of crimes alleged to have been intended runs up to more than seventeen thousand. Since the war-time activities of the I. W. W. most concern us now, it is regretted that this book cannot be brought up to the minute with a final chapter on the I. W. W. and the war. But this is impossible. The trial is still in progress and almost no trustworthy evidence regarding the[Pg 8] alleged anti-war activities is available outside of the court records.[1]

Though nowadays well aware of the existence of the I. W. W., the public still knows little about the organization and its members. Moreover, a great deal of what it does know is false. For thirteen years the I. W. W. has been rather consistently misrepresented—not to say vilified—to the American people. The public has not been told the truth about the things the I. W. W. has done or the doctrines in which it believes. The papers have printed so much fiction about this organization and maintained such a nation-wide conspiracy of silence as to its real philosophy—especially as to the constructive items of this philosophy—that the popular conception of this labor group is a weird unreality.

The current picture is of a motley horde of hoboes and unskilled laborers who will not work and whose philosophy is a philosophy simply of sabotage and the violent overthrow of "capitalism," and whose actions conform to that philosophy. This appears to be about[Pg 9] what the more reactionary business interests would like to have the people believe about the Industrial Workers of the World. If, and to the extent that these reactionary employing interests can induce the public not only to believe this about the I. W. W. but also to believe that the picture applies as well to all labor organizations, they will to that extent ally the public with them and against labor.

The negative or destructive items in the I. W. W. program are deliberately misconstrued and then stretched out and made to constitute the whole of I. W. W.-ism. In reality they are only a minor part of the creed. There are immense possibilities of a constructive sort in the theoretic basis of the I. W. W., but the Press has done its best to prevent the public from knowing it. And it must be said that the I. W. W. agitators have themselves helped to misrepresent their own organization by their uncouth and violent language and their personal predilection for the lurid and the dramatic. Even what the Wobblies say about themselves must be taken with a certain amount of salt. This matter of the currently-received opinion of the I. W. W. has been dwelt on because the writer believes that it is not alone important to know what an organization is like; it is also very important to know what people think it is like.

The popular attitude toward the Wobblies among employers, public officials and the public generally corresponds to the popular notion that they are arch-fiends and the dregs of society. It is the hang-them-all-at-sunrise attitude. A high official of the Federal Department of Justice in one of our western states gave the writer an instance. On a recent visit to a small town in a distant part of the state he happened upon the sheriff. That officer, in reply to a question, explained[Pg 10] that they were "having no trouble at all with the Wobs." "When a Wobbly comes to town," he explained, "I just knock him over the head with a night stick and throw him in the river. When he comes up he beats it out of town." Incidentally it may be said that in such a situation almost any poor man, if he be without a job or visible means of support, is assumed to be, ipso facto, an I. W. W. Being a Wobbly, the proper thing for him is pick-handle treatment or—if he is known to be a strike agitator—a "little neck-tie party."

Since we have been at war certain groups of employers, particularly those in the mining and lumber industries, have still further confused the issue and intensified the popular hostility to the Industrial Workers of the World. They have done this by re-enforcing their earlier camouflage with the charge of disloyalty and anti-patriotism. Wrapping themselves in the flag, they have pointed from its folds to "those disloyal and anarchistic Wobblies" and in this way still further obscured the underlying economic issues. Whatever the facts about patriotism on either side, it appears to be true that the greater part of the I. W. W.'s activities have been ordinary strike activities directed toward the securing of more favorable conditions of employment and some voice in the determination of those conditions. These efforts have been met by charges of disloyalty and by wholesale acts of violence by the employers, that is to say, they have been met by the night-stick and neck-tie party policy—as witness the wholesale deportation of "alleged Wobblies" from Bisbee, Arizona, and the hanging of Frank Little in Butte, Montana. As the President's Mediation Commission reported, "the hold of the I. W. W. is riveted, instead of weakened, by unimaginative opposition[Pg 11] on the part of employers to the correction of real grievances."[2]

By means of an insidious extension of the I. W. W. bogey idea, either that organization itself or some other labor body or both of them are made the "goat" in disputes in which the I. W. W., as an organization, has no part. If a lumber company, for example, gets into a controversy with the shingle-weavers union of the American Federation of Labor, it has only to raise a barrage and shout through its controlled news columns that "they are 'Wobblies!'" and public opinion is against them. Nor does the misrepresentation stop there. All who openly sympathize with the alleged Wobblies are, forsooth, themselves Wobblies!

Naturally the liberals in this country have no sympathy with this night-stick attitude toward I. W. W.'s nor with the night-stick interpretation of I. W. W.-ism. The writer is bound to say, however, that he considers the liberal interpretation entirely inadequate. The liberal attitude is expressed and judgment pronounced when it has been said that the I. W. W. is a social sore caused by, let us say, bad housing. It must be evident (unless we are prepared to take the position that any organization which purposes a rearrangement of the status quo—the Single Tax League, for example—is a social sore) that the I. W. W. is much more than that. The improvement of working conditions in the mines and lumber camps would tend to eliminate the cruder and less fundamental I. W. W. activities, but it would not kill I. W. W.-ism.

We can no more dispose of the Industrial Workers of the World by saying that it is a social sore on the body politic than we can dispose of the British Labor Party [Pg 12]or our National Security League by saying that they are sores on the Anglo-Saxon body politic. We can only completely and fairly handle the I. W. W. problem by dealing with its more fundamental tenets on their merits and acting courageously upon our conclusions. We shall be obliged seriously to study the problem of the organization of the unskilled; the question of the relative merits of craft unionism, mass unionism and industrial unionism; the question of the sufficiency of political democracy and of the possible future modifications of it and, not least, the question of democracy versus despotism in our economic and industrial life. The Wobblies insist that no genuine democracy is possible in industry until those who do the work in a business (from hired president to hired common laborer) control its management. It so happens that the British Labor Party, in its reconstruction report on Labor and the New Social Order, insists upon practically the same thing. The fact that the B.L.P. insisted in a more refined and intelligent manner than the I. W. W. may explain the almost universal obliviousness of our liberals to this item in I. W. W.-ism. The Industrial Workers of the World have even developed a structure and mechanism (crude and inadequate, naturally) for this control. The industrial union, they say, is to be the administrative unit in the future industrial democracy. All these will be dominant issues when peace breaks out, and if the Wobblies are no longer in existence the radical end of each issue will be championed by their successors in the field.

The most important item in the affirmative part of the I. W. W. program is this demand that some of our democracy—some of our representative government—be extended from political into economic life. They ask that industry be democratized by giving the workers—all[Pg 13] grades of workers—exclusive control in its management. They ask to have the management of industrial units transferred from the hands of those who think chiefly in terms of income to those who think primarily in terms of the productive process. The Wobblies would have "capitalism" (the monarchic or oligarchic control of industry) supplanted by economic democracy just as political despotism has been supplanted by political democracy in nearly all civilized states. When the British Labor Party asks for representative government in industry, those who do not ignore the request give it serious attention. When the I. W. W. echoes the sentiment in the phrase: "Let the workers run the industries," the editors are thrown into a panic, the business world views the I. W. W. menace with aggravated alarm and the more reactionary employers hysterically clamor to have "these criminal anarchists shot at sunrise."

Perhaps the very best way to run an industrial enterprise is on the currently accepted model of the Prussian State. It is simply a moot point and the I. W. W. has challenged the Prussian method. Whatever intrinsic merit there may be in the affirmative program of the Industrial Workers of the World, it must be admitted by even its most enthusiastic members that were they today given the power they ask, they would be no less relentless Prussians than are the corporations we have with us. Even though capitalism may be ripe for replacement, the I. W. W. are a long way from being fit to replace it. The Wobblies are grotesquely unprepared for responsibility. So far their own members do not understand how relatively unimportant is their much-talked-of sabotage method. They have challenged the autocratic method, but they have done it very crudely and with a weird misplacement of emphasis. They[Pg 14] whisper it in a footnote, as it were, to their strident blackface statements about method. "If labor is not allowed a voice in the management of the mines—apply sabotage!"

Unquestionably the I. W. W. ask too much when they ask that the producers be given exclusive control of industry. As to certain phases of management the workers (including, of course, all hand and brain workers connected with the industry) should perhaps be given entire control. The hours of labor and the sanitary conditions in any productive enterprise are primarily, if not exclusively, the concern of the producers. But the amount of the product which ought to be turned out and the price at which it ought to be sold are matters in which the consumers have no little interest. Consumers, therefore, should share in the management of the industry so far as it relates to prices and the determination of the amount to be produced.

The following pages are devoted to a mere matter-of-fact description of the Industrial Workers of the World as an organization and to a record of the facts of its history. The purpose has been throughout to write from the sources. The writer has tried to have the "Wobblies" themselves do the telling, through interviews, soap-box speeches, convention proceedings and official papers and pamphlets. The bulk of the record is based upon documents and other materials collected and impressions received since 1909 when the writer first became interested in the I. W. W.

The writer has endeavored throughout to abstain from philosophizing about the I. W. W. He is not unmindful of the fact that the interpretation of such a significant movement as is embodied in the Industrial Workers of the World is of very great importance. Indeed[Pg 15] the time has now come when it is urgently necessary. The first intention in writing this book was to incorporate in it an attempt at an analysis and interpretation of I. W. W.-ism, as well as its orientation with other economic isms. But the bony skeleton of historical record has crowded out almost everything else and perhaps filled more pages than its importance justifies. In spite of all this the temptation to comment has been strong and sometimes irresistible. Despite the effort that has been made to be accurate and entirely fair the writer realizes that the book probably contains errors both of fact and judgment. He would greatly appreciate having his attention called to these.

The writer is under great obligation to the secretaries of scores of the local unions of the organization in various parts of the country for their valued assistance in the task of gathering the material for this study. He is especially grateful to Mr. Vincent St. John, formerly General Secretary-Treasurer of the I. W. W., for his generous response to repeated requests for documents and information. Thanks are also due for like favors to Mr. William D. Haywood, General Secretary-Treasurer of the I. W. W. and to Mr. Herman Richter, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Workers International Industrial Union (formerly the Socialist Labor Party or Detroit wing of the I. W. W.). Finally the writer wishes to express his grateful appreciation of the numerous and helpful suggestions made during the later stages of the work by Professor Henry R. Seager of Columbia University. He has also to thank Professor Seager and Mrs. C. A. Stewart for their kindness in the tiresome work of reading the proof, and Mrs. M. A. Gadsby, of the staff of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, for her assistance in the preparation of the Bibliography.

P. F. B.

San Francisco, June 9, 1918.

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CONTENTS

PART I
BEGINNINGS

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CHAPTER I
Forerunners of the I. W. W.

The revolutionary doctrines of the I. W. W. are spoken of today as constituting the "new unionism" or the "new socialism". It cannot be too strongly emphasized, however, that neither I. W. W.-ism nor the closely related but materially different French syndicalism are brand-new codes which the irreconcilables, here and in France, have invented out of hand within the last quarter of a century. Industrial unionism, as a structural type simply, and even revolutionary industrial unionism—wherein the industrial organization is animated and guided by the revolutionary (socialist or anarchist) spirit—hark back in their essential principles to the dramatic revolutionary period in English unionism of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In America the labor history of the seventies, and especially the eighties, teems with evidences of the industrial form and the radical temper in labor organizations. The elements of I. W. W.-ism were there; but they were not often co-existent in the same organization. Contemporary writers have not failed to call attention to the striking similarity between the doctrines of the English Chartists and those of our modern I. W. W. The bitter attacks of the Industrial Workers upon politics and politicians and their appeal to all kinds and conditions of labor were also fundamental articles in the creed of the Chartists—who stressed the economic factor almost as forcibly as do the I. W. W.'s today.[3]

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In both America and England, especially during the periods referred to, there was abundant evidence of those tactics which we characterize today as syndicalistic. I. W. W. strikes were not invented in 1905. The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the Knights of Labor, the International Working People's Association, the "New Unionists" in the days of Robert Owen—all these and many another group have sought to push their cause by methods now once again made notorious by the French syndicalists and the American Wobblies. The general strike—mass action—the sympathetic strike—the solidarity of all labor—these concepts seem to have their prototypes and very possibly were put into action in still more ancient periods. Osborne Ward reports some revolutionary labor activities in years preceding the Christian era. He describes a strike of the silver miners in Greece—at Laurium, some thirty miles south of Athens. "The inference is unequivocal," says Ward, "that in 413 B. C. twenty thousand miners, mechanics, teamsters, and laborers suddenly struck work; and at a moment of Athens' greatest peril, fought themselves loose from their masters and their chains." He concludes that the strike "must have been well concerted, violent and swift," and "must have been plotted by the men themselves."[4] This strike, apparently, was widely heralded, but seems to have brought no more permanent results than has the average I. W. W. strike of today. The evidence for this very ancient prototype of syndicalism is not entirely conclusive. It was dug out of the old red sandstone—and there are missing links! It will be safer not to try to trace the lineage of syndicalist organizations—much less syndicalist activities and ideas—back more than one century.

[Pg 29]

There is no doubt that the idea of economic emancipation through economic as opposed to political channels, and to be achieved by all classes of workers as workers, i. e., as human cogs in the industrial, rather than the political, state had been very definitely formulated before the end of the last century.[5] Indeed, the conception runs back well toward the beginning of the nineteenth century. The "one big union" of which we now hear so much was surely in existence in England in the early thirties. Robert Owen at that time outlined his great plan for a "General Union of the Productive Classes." Sidney and Beatrice Webb report the establishment, in 1834, of a "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union":

The leaders of the New Unionists "aimed not at superseding existing social structures but at capturing them in the interests of the wage earners."[7]

[Pg 30]

American prototypes of I. W. W.-ism appear much later than in England. As early as 1834, however, workingmen in the United States were discussing the attitude of the union toward politics. There was some discussion at that time by members of the National Trades Union of a proposal to have resolutions drawn up to express the views of the convention on the social, civil, and political condition of the laboring classes, and after considerable argument the word "political" was omitted.[8]

In 1864 an unsuccessful attempt was made to organize in this country a national federation of trade unions. Two years later, in Baltimore, a National Labor Congress launched a conservative political organization, called the National Labor Union—a short-lived predecessor of the Knights of Labor. Ely says that it lived only about three years and died of the "disease known as politics."[9] It is probable that a general apathy and financial weakness were contributing causes.

The most important of these forerunners of the "Wobblies" was the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor which was organized in 1869 and for the following decades carried on a remarkably successful propaganda. It had a membership of more than a million in the late eighties.[10] Soon after that the Knights suffered a decline [Pg 31]that was even more rapid than their meteoric expansion in the early eighties and ultimately broke down and degenerated into the shadow of an organization that it has been for more than twenty years past. Carroll D. Wright thought that the Knights of Labor reached its highest membership point in 1887 when it had probably about a million enrolled. In 1898 there were about 100,000 in the organization. Colonel Wright believed that this great falling-off in membership was due to the socialistic tendencies of the organization, especially to the attempt to place all wage workers on the same level.[11]

The characteristic motto of the Knights of Labor was: "An injury to one is the concern of all"—the same slogan which is today prominent among the watchwords of the I. W. W. The Knights proposed, first to bring within the folds of organization every department of productive industry, making knowledge a standpoint for action and "industrial, moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness"; second, "to secure to the toilers a proper share of the wealth that they create ..."; third, the substitution of arbitration for strikes; and, fourth, the reduction of hours of labor to eight per day.[12] The Knights advocated government ownership of telephones, telegraphs, and railroads; emphasized the principle of coöperation; admitted women and negroes, and believed in having working-class politics in the union and the union in working-class politics. "The fundamental principle on which the organization was based was coöperation," said Grand Master Workman Powderly, "... the barriers of trade were to be cast aside; the man who toiled, no matter at what, was to receive and enjoy the just fruits of his labor...."[13]

[Pg 32]

It was originally a secret organization, but that feature was later abandoned. The following restriction on membership appears in the constitution of the Local Assemblies: "... no lawyer, banker, professional gambler, or stock broker can be admitted." Prior to 1881 physicians were also excluded. It is composed of Local Assemblies (local unions) controlled by District Assemblies, a General Assembly and a Grand Master Workman. These parts were closely related to each other in a centralized system. Centralization of administrative authority was considered highly important—indeed, it was thought indispensable in order successfully to unite every branch of skilled and unskilled labor—a task the Knights considered of prime importance. They differed, however, from our more radical I. W. W.'s of today in placing no little confidence in political methods, maintaining as they did for many years a legislative lobbying committee at Washington. In addition they believed, with the I. W. W., in the sympathetic strike, the boycott—and the necessity of solidarity among all the ranks of labor. The following excerpt from the Final Report of the United States Industrial Commission (1900) explains the administrative policy of the organization:

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The emphasis placed by the Knights upon the union of skilled and unskilled is significant in relation to the later efforts of the I. W. W. to effect such a union. "I saw," said Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly, "that labor-saving machinery was bringing the machinist down to the level of a day laborer, and soon they would be on a level. My aim was to dignify the laborer."[15] Mr. Powderly is reported in the same interview as saying that his greatest difficulty in getting machinists and blacksmiths to join the Knights of Labor lay in the contempt with which they looked upon other workers.

There was a much closer connection in the Knights of Labor between the central organization and the local bodies than is today the case with the American Federation of Labor, which, as its name implies, is a comparatively loose federation of autonomous "international unions." This high degree of centralization of power in the hands of the General Assembly and the national officers was a factor in the disintegration of the order. More important still was the fact of internal dissension, especially the bitter animosity arising out of the Knights' participation in politics. "... There came the question whether the organization should go into politics as a body or not. That question was probably discussed in every Local Assembly in America ... [and] those political questions coming up drove men out of the organization...."[16]

The Knights were a curious mixture of conservative and radical elements. The organization was socialistic, but rather state socialistic than anything else. Despite their arbitration clause they did not believe in the identity of interest of employer and employee. As trade unionists they [Pg 34]were innovators and steered far from the narrow trade type of union imported from England. They said—in words—that they wanted to destroy the wage system. "To point out a way to utterly destroy this system would be a pleasure to me," said Grand Master Workman Powderly.[17] As to the Knights of Labor policy in regard to violence, Perlman says that "... although the leaders of the Knights preached against violence and what we now call sabotage both were nevertheless extensively practiced, as, for instance, in the Southwest Railway strike of 1886." He goes on to draw a parallel between the Knights and the "Wobblies," declaring that the latter preach violence without practicing it, while the Knights practiced it without preaching. He adds that the Knights of Labor adopted coöperation as their official philosophy and the I. W. W. adopted syndicalism and declares that neither practiced their doctrines very much.[18] The disrupted condition of the Knights of Labor in 1902, three years before the organization of the I. W. W., may be understood from the following press dispatch:

[Pg 35]

Simultaneously with the rise of the Knights of Labor in America came the International Workingmen's Association, the famous "International" which, springing up in Europe in the late sixties, soon spread to both sides of the Atlantic. It was first established in the United States in 1871. This first American section of the International made a slogan of the declaration that the emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves.[20] The organization appears to have been short-lived; for ten years later, in 1881, another body calling itself the International Workingmen's Association was organized at Pittsburgh. This organization, says Tridon, was "made up mostly of laborers and farmers who rejected all parliamentary action and advocated education and propaganda as the best means to bring about a social revolution."[21] In 1887, when they had about 6,000 members, they attempted to amalgamate with the Socialist Labor party, but the negotiations failed and they disbanded.[22]

Meantime the anarchists had been busy in this country. In 1881, the year which marks the birth of the American Federation of Labor (then called the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada), the difference between them and those who advocated political action finally assumed definite form in the organization by the anarchist advocates of physical force of the Revolutionary Socialist party. In 1883 there was held a joint convention of the "revolutionary socialists" and the anarchists which resulted in the birth of the International Working People's Association.[23] At this convention [Pg 36]were gathered representatives of anarchist and revolutionary socialist groups from twenty-six cities. These delegates drafted the famous Pittsburgh proclamation which demanded "the destruction of the existing government by all means, i. e., by energetic, implacable, revolutionary and international action" and the establishment of an industrial system based upon "the free exchange of equivalent products between the producing organizations themselves and without the intervention of middlemen and profit-making."[24] In the course of two years the membership of the International grew to about 7,000. Then in 1888 came the Haymarket tragedy and the International soon passed out of existence. The anarchists were in control of this organization and great stress was laid upon revolutionary tactics and direct action, with a corresponding depreciation of political action. John Most, the anarchist, had come to this country in 1882 and the organization of the International Working People's Association was largely due to his agitation here.

There is no doubt that all the main ideas of modern revolutionary unionism as exhibited by the I. W. W. may be found in the old International Workingmen's Association.[25] The I. W. W. organ, The Industrial Worker, asserts that "we must trace the origin of the ideas of modern, revolutionary unionism to the International."[26] Comparing the French cousin of our modern I. W. W. with the older Association, James Guillaume asks, "et qu'est-ce que la confédération générale du Travail si non la continuation de l'internationale?"[27] Many items in the program originally [Pg 37]drafted by the famous anarchist, Michael Bakunin, for the International in 1868 are very similar to the twentieth century slogans of the I. W. W.

It began by declaring itself atheist, "L'alliance se déclare athée," and went on to assert that its chief work was to be the abolition of religion and the substitution of science for faith. It advocated the political, social and economic equality of the classes, to achieve which end all governments were to be abolished. It opposed not only all centralized organization, but also all forms of political action, and believed that groups of producers, instead of the community, should have control of the processes of industry.[28]

"Ennemie de tout despotisme, ne reconnaisant d'autre forme politique que la forme républicaine, et rejetant absolument toute alliance réactionnaire, elle repousse aussi toute action politique qui n'aurait pas pour but immédiat et direct le triomphe de la cause des travailleurs contre le capital."[29]

A secret organization, known as the Sovereigns of Industry, was launched at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1874. It admitted both men and women. Its Preamble stated that it was "an association of the industrial working classes without regard to race, color, nationality or occupation; not founded for the purpose of waging any war of aggression upon any other class or fostering any antagonism of labor against capital ... but for mutual assistance in self-improvement and self-protection."[30] Its ultimate purpose, however, appeared to be the elimination of the wage system.

In the same year was formed a socialist organization [Pg 38]called "The Association of United Workers of America."[31] This body, together with several other organizations of socialists, merged to form the Workingman's Party in 1876. The following year the name was changed to the Socialist Labor Party. The year 1874 also marks the birth of the Industrial Brotherhood, an organization somewhat similar to the Knights of Labor but which did not survive the seventies.[32]

A decade later (1884) the National Union of the United Brewery Workmen of the United States[33] was organized. Next to the United Mine Workers this is today the strongest industrially organized union in America. This union has almost from the beginning admitted to its membership not only brewers but also drivers (of brewery wagons), maltsters, engineers and firemen employed in breweries, etc.—all workmen, in fact, who are employed in and around the breweries. Until 1896 the Brewers were a part of the Knights of Labor. Since then they have been almost continuously affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. They have, however, always insisted upon industrial unionism so far as structure is concerned and have more than once been at loggerheads with the Federation on this score. The Brewery Workmen's Union, although conservative in every other way, is cited by I. W. W.'s, no less than the Mine Workers, as a model of the correct thing in labor-union structure. In 1890 the United Mine Workers' Union of America was formed. The organization is today the largest union in this country, if not in the world. It is unquestionably the strongest industrial union in the world. Since [Pg 39]1905 the revolutionary industrial I. W. W.'s have looked with admiration upon the structural form of the Mine Workers' Union—and with impatient scorn upon their conservative tactics.

In England also there came at this time a high tide of sentiment for the "new unionism."

What is even more significant in view of the present day I. W. W. demand for industrial control is the fact that there was constantly cropping up in the eighties the Owenite demand that the workers must be allowed to "own their own factories and decide by vote who their managers and foremen shall be."[35]

In 1888 came the famous Haymarket riots in Chicago. The effect of this tragedy was unquestionably to give the labor and socialist movements a serious setback.

The labor movement [says Robert Hunter] lay stunned after its brief flirtation with anarchy. The union men drew away from the anarchist agitators, and, taking their information from the capitalist press only, concluded that socialism and anarchism were the same thing, and would, if tolerated, lead the movement to ruin and disaster. Without a doubt, the bomb in Chicago put back the labor movement for years. It ... did more to induce the rank and file of trade unionists to [Pg 40]reject all association with revolutionary ideas than perhaps all other things put together.[36]

Justus Ebert, who is now a member of the I. W. W., declares that the Haymarket affair "involved the new Socialist Labor party in a fierce discussion of the right course to pursue in the emancipation of labor."[37] Robert Hunter thinks that these riots really gave the French unionists the idea of the General Strike and thus helped to give form, first, to modern French syndicalism, and second, both by relay back to this side of the Atlantic and directly by its influence in this country, to American syndicalism in the form of the Industrial Workers of the World.[38]

Five years after Haymarket—in June, 1893—an industrial union of railway employees was organized in Chicago by Eugene V. Debs. A year later, at the time of the Pullman strike, it had a membership of 150,000. The failure of that strike, which by the way was an early example of I. W. W. tactics, broke down the union, and it passed out of existence in 1897.

The year 1893 also marks the beginning of the Western Federation of Miners,[39] which may well be ranked as the chief predecessor of the I. W. W. The coal miners had formed their national organization three years earlier. Both the coal and metalliferous miners' unions were built from the start upon the industrial type, that is, including in their membership in both cases "all persons employed in and around the mines." The Western Federation of Miners was organized in Butte, Montana, in 1893, and almost immediately affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. It separated from the Federation, however, in 1897 and, [Pg 41]after a period of independent existence broken by alliances with the Western Labor Union in 1898 and with the I. W. W. in 1905, rejoined the A. F. of L. in 1911.

During the twelve years of the Western Federation's existence before the birth of the I. W. W., it figured in the most strenuous and dramatic series of strike disturbances in the history of the American labor movement. Swift on each others' heels came the terrors of Coeur d'Alene in 1893, Cripple Creek in 1894, Leadville in 1896-7, Salt Lake and the Coeur d'Alene again in 1899, Telluride in 1901, Idaho Springs in 1903, and Cripple Creek again in 1903-4. The Federation was—in its first decade particularly—as militantly radical as the coal miners' union was conservative. The strikes in which it has engaged have been usually marked by much disorder and violence.[40] During the Idaho Springs strike in 1903 an indignation meeting of the citizens was called for July 29th by the Citizens' Protective League—an association of mine owners and business men. At this meeting one of the local merchants said: "Moyer and Haywood are the arch anarchists of this country, along with Herr Most. I see that Moyer is coming to Idaho Springs tomorrow. I want to say that if the people allow him to land his feet in Clear Creek County they are dirty arrant cowards." Very shortly the meeting passed a resolution to deport the strikers, adjourned to the jail, demanded the prisoners, ordered out 14 of the 23 there incarcerated and deported them.[41]

There is no doubt that the terrible strike troubles during the nineties and the early years of this century had their effect in working union men up to the radically pioneering pitch. These struggles were surely the birth signs of the [Pg 42]coming militant industrialism of the Industrial Workers of the World. Wm. D. Haywood, now General Secretary-Treasurer of the I. W. W., and Vincent St. John, for several years in the same position, were both active and leading members of the W. F. M. during its earlier years. The Federation was less scornful of politics than the I. W. W. The Western Miners were forced by the obvious connivance between the state and city governments and the mine operators, by the use of the militia for the suppression of strikes and by the abuse of the injunction, to consider the possibilities of political action along socialistic lines. At their convention in 1902 they resolved "to adopt the principle of socialism without equivocation."[42] This resolution was reaffirmed in 1903 and 1904. "We recommend the Socialist party," reads their statement in 1904, "to the toiling masses of humanity as the only source through which they can secure ... complete emancipation from the present system of wage slavery...."[43] "Let all strike industrially here and now, if necessary," runs another resolution (signed, by the way, by William D. Haywood), "and then strike in unity at the ballot-box for the true solution of the labor problem by putting men of our class into public office...."[44]

The Federation was not actually content, however, with political activity. It has been made quite evident that the economic weapon of the strike was not neglected. In addition to this the fundamental and at that time rarely discussed problem of employees' control in industry was seriously discussed. At the tenth convention, Wm. D. Haywood proposed that the Federation invest some of its money in mines, to be operated by its members for the benefit of [Pg 43]the unions.[45] At the following meeting President Moyer proposed that the Federation secure control of and operate mines and levy assessments for the purpose.[46] The plan had to be given up at that time because the Federation just then faced unusual difficulties because of the strike confronting it. Nevertheless, this idea of industrial workers' control had its effect in impressing the miners with the notion that in their union "they had an agency that could carry on and control production for their own benefit."

Some conception of the unusually radical temper of the Western Federation may be had from the Preamble to its constitution. It declares that

For these reasons, the Preamble concludes, "the wage slaves employed in and around the mines, mills and smelters have associated in the Western Federation of Miners."[47]

The Western Federation of Miners was the effective agency in the formation at Salt Lake City in 1898 of the Western Labor Union. It was in this same year that the [Pg 44]Social Democratic party (which became the Socialist party three years later) was organized in Chicago. The Western Labor Union in 1902 moved its headquarters from Butte, Montana, to Chicago, and changed its name to the American Labor Union, which in turn, and inclusive of the W. F. M., merged in 1905 with certain other radical unions to form the Industrial Workers of the World. The American Labor Union was in 1905 apparently on the verge of disruption—practically dead.[48] The Federation of Miners was always the Western (or American) Labor Union's largest and strongest component. It repudiated the American Federation of Labor. The bulk of its membership was unskilled labor and it soon had enrolled, in addition to the mine laborers, large numbers of the cooks, waiters, teamsters, and lumbermen of the western states. It was apparently the first labor organization seriously to attempt the organization of the lumber workers.[49] The Western Labor Union proposed to bring into an industrial organization western wage-workers of all crafts and no crafts; it aimed to include all kinds and degrees of labor, but until 1901 its activities were mostly confined to the mining camps of the West.[50] Indeed, Katz says that "the American Labor Union was practically only another name for the Western Federation of Miners: [being] called into existence to give the miners' union a national character."[51]

The American Labor Union was very decidedly an industrial union—more, however, by anticipation than realization.

[Pg 45]

It resembled our modern I. W. W. in some important particulars. "It believes," says one of the members, "that all employees working for one company, engaged in any one industry, should be managed through ... one authoritative head; that all men employed by one employer, in any one industry [should] be answerable to the employer through one and the same organization...."[52] The approval of its general Executive Board is required before any member local can call a strike.[53] An interchangeable or universal transfer system is provided, as it was later by the I. W. W.[54] The American Labor Union was an industrial organization of more decided political character and sympathies than is the I. W. W. It was, however, decidedly socialistic in its ultimate aim. It seemed to mark the climax of development of industrial unionism of that (political-socialist) type. It will be evident in the following pages that in 1905 began a sharp swing under the I. W. W. banner from socialist industrial unionism to anarcho-syndicalist industrial unionism.

A good many of the leaders of the American Labor Union were members of the Socialist party. "Believing that the time has come," runs the A. L. U. Preamble, "for undivided, independent, working-class political action, we hereby declare in favor of international Socialism and adopt the platform of the Socialist Party of America as the political platform and program of the American Labor Union."[55] Although it endorsed socialism, the A. L. U., unlike the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, admitted workingmen of any political views whatsoever, but resembled the latter organization in its opposition to the American Federation [Pg 46]of Labor and its desire to build up a revolutionary labor movement.

The roots of I. W. W.-ism reached out most vigorously and numerously in the western part of the United States, and the greater part of its strength today is derived from its western membership. The way was prepared for it most largely by western organizations—the Western Federation of Miners being the forerunner par excellence of modern I. W. W.-ism. Two organizations in the East, that is, having their chief strength in the East, played a highly important rôle during the decade preceding the launching of the I. W. W. These organizations were the Socialist Labor party and its trade-union "brain child," the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Adequately to fill in this sketch of origins, it is necessary to refer briefly to these two organizations, especially to the S. T. & L. A., the Socialist Labor party's bright ideal of all that a labor union ought to be.

The Socialist Labor party was organized in 1877. It was a merger of the National Labor Union, the North American Federation of the International Workingmen's Association and the Social Democratic Workmen's Party. It[Pg 47] was first known as the Workmen's Party of the United States. The German socialist trade-union element predominated in it.[57] The Socialist Labor party has always been emphatically Marxian and its leaders have been so decidedly doctrinaire in their interpretation of Marxian socialism and in their application of it to the practical work of socialist campaigning and propaganda that they have been not unjustly called impossibilists. Since the organization of the Socialist party in 1901 these two political parties of the socialist faith have been in open and bitter opposition to each other. The Socialist party adopted an opportunist policy, endorsed and often leagued itself with the conservative trade unions, refrained from any attempt to form or coöperate in the formation of socialist unions, and contented itself with the endeavor to make the existing unions socialistic by converting their individual members to socialism—a policy which came to be known as "boring from within." The Socialist Labor party, on the other hand, embraced a doctrinaire "impossibilist" policy, violently attacked the trade unions, made its slogan "no compromise and no political trading," and insisted that new unions, industrial in structure and socialist in purpose and principle should be created in opposition to the craft unions, whose structure and spirit it despaired of changing by "boring from within." The Socialist party has waxed strong and powerful. Its rival has languished and is today too small a group to be called a party.

The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was organized in 1895, the same year which witnessed the birth of the organized syndicalist movement in France in the form of the Confédération Générale du Travail. On December 6th of that year a delegation from District Assembly 49 of the Knights of Labor met in conjunction with the Central Labor[Pg 48] Federation of New York City and launched the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. The idea of this organization seems to have originated with Daniel DeLeon, whom his enemies called "the Pope of the S. L. P." and who was undoubtedly the leading student of Marxian socialism in this country. He was convinced that, as one of his followers expressed it, "without the organization of the workers into a class-conscious revolutionary body on the industrial field, socialism would remain but an aspiration."[58] "The S. T. & L. A." declares N. I. Stone, "was the most unique example of a socialist trade-union, anti-pure-and-simple organization in the annals of labor history...." "It came down upon us," he said, "full fledged from top to bottom as the masterpiece of our 'Master Workman' [DeLeon] and took us by surprise; but take it did...."[59]

In 1896 at the first convention of the Socialist Labor party after the organization of the S. T. & L. A. the party formally endorsed the latter organization. Mr. Hugo Vogt addressed the convention in behalf of the S. T. & L. A. "The whole of this labor movement," he said, "must become saturated with socialism, must be placed under socialist control, if we mean to bring together the whole working class into that army of emancipation which we need to accomplish our purpose."[60] He went on to explain that "in order to make it impossible for any masked swindlers to obtain influence in the Alliance, and to swing it back to the conservative side, we have provided that every officer ... shall take a pledge that he will not be affiliated with any [Pg 49]capitalist party and will not support any political action except that of the Socialist Labor party."[61]

The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was patterned very closely after the Knights of Labor. Wm. E. Trautmann called it "a duodecimo edition of the K. of L."[62] "It had the same district alliances with the same intellectuals as leaders: the same local craft organizations and the same mixed locals [as well as] the same centralized autocracy at headquarters...." He concludes that "the most fatal weakness of all was the political union of the S. T. & L. A. with the S. L. P."[63] The Alliance was, after all, a revolutionary socialist trade union rather than an industrial union. It differed from the American Labor Union and other forerunners mentioned above in this lack of industrial structure as well as in the emphasis it laid on the need of rallying to the support of the Socialist Labor party, with which organization it stood in the most intimate relations and to which most of its members belonged. It was actually sceptical about the efficacy of purely economic action. In common with I. W. W. later on, and in spite of the fact that its own locals were virtually trade or craft locals, it nourished an almost bitter hatred of the craft unions. "We simply have to go at them," said one of its members, "and smash them from top to bottom...."[64] Its animus was directed, however, at their conservatism and not so much at their craft structure.

In its "Declaration of Principles" the Alliance asserted that

This Declaration concludes with the following statement of the chief object of the Alliance:

In the body of its constitution the objects of the Alliance are set forth more explicitly. They are declared to be to bring about the adoption of its principles

The Socialist Labor party naturally greeted the Alliance with enthusiasm. After officially endorsing the Alliance, the 1896 convention passed a resolution of welcome.

[Pg 51]

During this S. T. and L. A. period Daniel DeLeon looked upon revolutionary unionism as being necessarily pro-political rather than pro-industrial and non-political. He then felt that the political movement must dominate the unions as they are in Germany dominated by the Social Democracy. He later became convinced that revolutionary unionism must dominate the political movement, and that the revolutionary union had a decisive mission in the Socialist movement.

The composition and membership of the S. T. and L. A. in July, 1898, were as follows:

[Pg 52]

The Alliance was scarcely more than a phantom organization on the eve of the launching of the I. W. W. in [Pg 53]1905. The same may be said of all the western unions which in that year merged in the I. W. W., except the Western Federation of Miners. The S. L. P. and the S. T. and L. A. "talk of capturing the convention to be held on June 27 [the 1st I. W. W. convention].... That convention should be not a revival, but the funeral, of the S. T. and L. A."[71] This expressed fairly well the attitude of the Socialist party men. "Born in hatred, suckled in dissension," as one socialist writer sees it, "the sole partisan trade union that ever arose to deny the principles and policies of international socialism came to destruction by its own venom, not however, until it had implanted the poison of its spirit into the Industrial Workers of the World."[72]

The main ideas of I. W. W.-ism—certainly of the I. W. W.-ism of the first few years after 1905—were of American origin, not French, as is commonly supposed. These sentiments were brewing in France, it is true, in the early nineties,[73] but they were brewing also in this country and the American brew was essentially different from the French. It was only after 1908 that the syndicalisme révolutionnaire of France had any direct influence on the revolutionary industrial unionist movement here. Even then it was largely a matter of borrowing such phrases as sabotage, la grève perlée, etc. The tactics back of the words sabotage and "direct action" had been practiced by American working men years before those words ever came into use among our radical unionists. "The Western Labor Union," says Walling, "was applying these principles in the Rocky [Pg 54]Mountains, under the leadership of Haywood and others, several years before the French Confederation of Labor was formed...."[74] Some premonition of the power of a labor union including all—or even a large proportion of—the unskilled was given by the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, the American Railway Union, and other American organizations already referred to.

During the first five years of this century the idea of militant industrial unionism underwent rapid development. Unionists were coming to have a much broader view of the social rôle of the labor union. The actual trend of events opened the way for reorganization on new lines. The organizations which were to make up the I. W. W. were almost without exception in unprosperous straits, some of them being on the verge of disruption. All of them were bitter in their opposition to the American Federation of Labor—with which organization, indeed, few of them were affiliated. The United Metal Workers had been affiliated but withdrew in December, 1904. There was probably little left but a remnant when they joined the I. W. W. the following year. The same is true of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees. Even the American Labor Union—except its "mining division," the W. F. M.—was skirting the edge of dissolution.[75] The Socialist Labor party and its "puny child," the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, were in a bad way. Among the United Mine Workers there was dissension in many localities. There was dissatisfaction with the leaders and especially with the upshot of the strike settlement of 1902. Moreover, the miners as [Pg 55]well as the United Brewery Workmen were embittered by constant criticism of their industrial form of organization. The latter were threatened with the prospect of a revocation of their charter by the Federation. There were thus a number of "national" organizations and many locals in other bodies which were anxious to create some central labor organization to strengthen the forces of industrial unionism. The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, though on the decline, still included a considerable body of workers who were impatient of the conservatism of the A. F. of L. and desired somehow to build up a strong revolutionary (this meaning for them a Marxian socialist) organization. The Western Federation of Miners—stronger than all the others put together—was not excelled by any of them in its revolutionary zeal. It had the power as well as the enthusiasm. Moreover, it represented revolutionary industrial unionism more completely than did the smaller unions in the West and the Alliance in the East. The Alliance, in fact, was a revolutionary union without the industrial character and without much real appreciation of the meaning and importance of the idea of industrial as opposed to craft organization. The miners, however, had a big, powerful union of an emphatically industrial character and their experience had made them very militant.[76]

Much of this hard experience consisted in a gradual process of disillusionment about the virtue and goodness of the state so far as its relations with labor were concerned. The long series of violent and protracted strikes between the Western Federation and the mine operators and the rôle[Pg 56] played therein by the state government convinced the miners that they would be more successful in gaining their political ends if they had more economic power to back up their requests. The miners were convinced, therefore, that the imperative need of the hour was for the extension to other industries of their type of industrial organization inspired by socialist aims. This would make solidarity possible, not only between skilled and unskilled in the metalliferous mines but also in all mines, all shops, all industries. They felt that then indeed would an injury to one be the concern of all.[77]

[Pg 57]

CHAPTER II
The Birth of the Organization[78]
(1905)

The Industrial Workers of the World, now more generally known as the I. W. W.[79] was organized at an "Industrial Union Congress" held in Chicago in June, 1905. This first or constitutional convention had its inception in an informal conference held in that city, in the fall of 1904, by six men of prominence in the socialist and labor movement. These conferees were: William E. Trautmann, editor of the Brauer Zeitung, official organ of the United Brewery Workmen; George Estes, President of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; W. L. Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; Isaac Cowen, American representative of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers of Great Britain; Clarence Smith, General Secretary-Treasurer of the American [Pg 58]Labor Union; and Thomas J. Hagerty, editor of the Voice of Labor, official organ of the American Labor Union.[80] Several others not present at this conference were at that time actively interested in the matter and coöperated in carrying out these prenatal plans. Two of them, Eugene V. Debs and Charles O. Sherman, General Secretary of United Metal Workers International Union, were destined to play important rôles in the organization.

These men were impelled by a common conviction that the labor unions of America were becoming powerless to achieve real benefits for working men and women. This feeling was confirmed and intensified by many recent events in the trade-union movement. It was not the more conservative, "aristocratic" unions alone which were found wanting. Even those labor organizations of the industrial and radical type, such as the American Labor Union, the Western Federation of Miners, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, were believed to be, for one reason or another, quite unprepared to negotiate—much less to fight—with the ever more highly integrated organizations of employers. At the constitutional convention in June, 1905, Clarence Smith of the American Labor Union explained the reasons for initiating the movement.

In order to go over the matter and discuss plans more thoroughly, it was decided to arrange for a larger meeting. On November 29 a letter of invitation was sent to about thirty persons then prominent in the radical labor and Socialist movements. This letter contained the following significant paragraph:

It is noteworthy fact that, although the proposition was concurred in and the invitation accepted with enthusiasm by the great majority of those invited, agreement was not unanimous. There were two dissenters—Victor Berger and Max Hayes. It is not recorded that Mr. Berger even sent his "regrets," but Mr. Hayes explained his position at length. In a letter to W. L. Hall, December 30, 1904, he said:

The Western Federation of Miners did not lack enthusiasm for this wider venture in industrial unionism. President Moyer's report to the thirteenth convention, which met just one month before the constitutional convention of June, 1905, contained the following:

At about the same time J. M. O'Neill, the editor of the Miners' Magazine, wrote William D. Haywood, the treasurer of the Federation, that

The secret conference—thereafter to be known as the January Conference—was called to order in the city of Chicago on the second of January by William E. Trautmann. There were twenty-three persons present, representing nine different organizations; that is, of course, exclusive of members of the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties, who were not present formally as such. There were present five officials of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees and one member of the Brewery Workmen. Among [Pg 62]those present were: Charles H. Moyer, President, Western Federation of Miners; W. D. Haywood, Secretary of the Western Federation of Miners; J. M. O'Neill, editor of the Miners' Magazine; A. M. Simons, editor of The International Socialist Review; Frank Bohn, organizer, Socialist Labor party and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance; T. J. Hagerty, editor of The Voice of Labor; C. O. Sherman, of the United Metal Workers; and "Mother" Mary Jones. During a three days' session plans for a proposed new labor organization were seriously discussed and carefully worked out. The report of their committee on methods and procedure was worked up by the members of the conference into a "Manifesto"[86] which contained (1) an indictment of "things as they are" in the trade-union world; (2) leading propositions and tentative plans for a new departure in labor organization; and (3) a call for a convention to organize this new union.

The first part of this document is devoted to a discussion of certain modern tendencies in the labor movement. Trade divisions among laborers and competition among capitalists are both disappearing. The machine process is more and more tending to minimize skill and swell the ranks of the unskilled and unemployed. The incidence of the machine process is fatal to labor groups divided according to the tool used. "These divisions," in the words of the Manifesto, "far from representing differences in skill or interests among the laborers, are imposed by the employers that workers may be pitted against one another and spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions." The employees, however, are united on the industrial plan[Pg 63] and reënforce their consequent impregnable position by making use of the military power and their affiliation with the National Civic Federation.

The craft form of organization is severely criticized. It makes solidarity impossible, for it generates a system of organized scabbery, where union men scab on each other. It results in trade monopolies, prohibitive initiation fees and political ignorance. It dwarfs class consciousness and tends to "foster the idea of harmony of interests between employing exploiter and employed slave."

Passing on to the remedy proposed, the Manifesto declares that

The phrase, "craft autonomy," is odd—for industrialists. A. M. Simons gives an explanation. He says that any union entering the I. W. W. "will retain trade autonomy in matters that concern each trade as completely as at the present time, but when it enters the field of other trades, instead of being met by trade competition ... will be met by the coöperation of affiliated unions."[88] This phrase referring to political parties was the germ of the ill-fated "political clause" of the preamble, which formulated in an indefinite way the issue on which three years later the organization split into two factions.[89] Other clauses provide that (1) all power shall rest with the collective membership; [Pg 64](2) all labels, cards, fees, etc., shall be uniform throughout; (3) the general administration shall issue a publication at regular intervals; and (4) that a central defense fund be established and maintained. The document concluded with a call to all workers who agreed with these principles to "meet in convention in Chicago, the 27th day of June, 1905,—for the purpose of forming an economic organization of the working class along the lines marked out in this Manifesto."

The Manifesto was signed by all those present at the January conference and sent broadcast to all unions throughout America and to the industrial unions of Europe. At this January conference there was dominant a very radical idea as to what a labor organization ought to be. The conferees decided that such an organization should not only provide a means of unifying all crafts and industries for the better protection and advancement of the immediate interests of the working class, but that it must also offer, and consciously push on towards, a final solution of the labor problem, a solution very frankly assumed to be a socialistic one.

To say that these conferees were, broadly speaking, socialists and that they outlined a socialistic program of a certain sort does not mean, as the daily press report insinuated, that the Socialist party was in any way represented in the conference or that it was a political movement. Max S. Hayes, anxious to disclaim on behalf of party Socialists any responsibility for the new undertaking, explained that

The American Federation of Labor, as the embodiment of the craft idea, was the subject of bitter attack at this prenatal conference. The general opinion seemed to be that the A. F. of L. had outlived its usefulness, and that its extinction—but not necessarily the extinction of its constituent local unions—was a consummation very much to be desired.

The A. F. of L. very naturally resented its proposed annihilation.

But the members of the January conference did not propose any wholesale or indiscriminate "smashing from without." It is true they believed the Federation, as a federation, to be harmful to the interests of labor—and would have been nothing loath to "smash" it—but the federated units they proposed to take over and unite in a very different way.

[Pg 66]

Mr. A. M. Simons, who claims to have given the final draft to the Manifesto, says that "the idea expressed at the conference was to form a new central body, into which existing unions and unions to be formed could be admitted, but not to form rival unions."[92] Discussing the January conference in the International Socialist Review,[93] Mr. Simons traces this idea back to two vital tendencies of the day, viz., (1) the merging of trade lines in the class struggle, and (2) the accelerated growth of class-consciousness on the part of the capitalists. He concludes that "the only question about the desirability of forming such an organization is the question of timeliness."

The organized laborers were only a part of the concern of the conference. Over ninety per cent of those gainfully occupied are unorganized. It was, of course, realized that outside of all unions stood the overwhelming majority of all workingmen, and, as Daniel DeLeon put it, these men did not "propose to go into these organizations run by the Organized Scabbery, because they had burned their fingers thus enough. The organization of the future has to be built of the men who are now unorganized—that is, the overwhelming majority of the working men in the nation."[94]

Thus it was really hoped that much could and would be done by workingmen in the existent unions, without breaking away from these local unions. These latter must be pried away from the A. F. of L., but not themselves destroyed. By all means let us "bore from within" as far as that can be done; also when we can bore no longer, let us hammer from without and pound together new bodies from [Pg 67]out the great unorganized mass. This, in brief, was the position of most of the industrialists. However, not all would yet go this far. Even among the Socialist leaders a note of dissent was heard expressing the belief that to "bore from within" was the only revolutionary method not absolutely suicidal.[95] Just what fate awaited these January ideas was to some extent revealed in the proceedings of the June convention.

The convention called in accordance with the Manifesto of the January conference met two hundred strong in Chicago on Tuesday, June 27, 1905. This gathering was first referred to as the "Industrial Congress" or the "Industrial Union Convention," but since before adjournment it had organized itself as the Industrial Workers of the World, it is referred to as the First Annual Convention of the I. W. W. It was a gathering remarkable and epoch-making in more ways than one, and therefore the story of its activities is essential, not only to an understanding of the subsequent career of the organization, but as a fundamental chapter in the whole history of industrial unionism. The discussions and resolutions of the assembly and the final type of organization which grew out of them can be understood only in the light thrown on them by a study of the composition of this revolutionary group of men. Its occupational, structural, and doctrinal character should each be taken into account.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of this group of two hundred radicals was the bewildering range of occupations represented. The variety of different trades represented and the varying "quality" levels exhibited in the organization here gathered to sink all differences and become as one, were astonishingly great. The following list [Pg 68]of the different organizations represented at the convention reveals at least forty distinct trades or occupations:

• Bakers and Confectioners Union No. 48, Montreal.[96]
• United Mine Workers No. 171.[96]
• United Mine Workers, Pittsburg, Kans.[96]
• Western Federation of Miners.
• United Brotherhood of Railway Employees.
• Journeymen Tailors Union of America No. 102, Pueblo.[96]
• United Metal Workers International Union of America.
• American Labor Union. (The A. L. U. included primarily the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the International Musical and Theatrical Union.)
• Punch Press Operators Union No. 224, Schenectady.
• Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
• Flat Janitors Local Union No. 102, Chicago.
• Mill and Smeltermen's Union of the W. F. of M., Butte.
• Paper Hangers and Decorators, Chicago.
• Federal Union (A. L. U.) No. 252, Denver.
• United Brewery Workers No. 9, Milwaukee.[96]
• United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.
• Metal Polishers and Buffers Union.
• Journeymen Tailors Protective and Benevolent Union of San Francisco.
• Journeymen Tailors of Montreal.
• Wage Earners Union of Montreal.
• International Musicians Union.
• The Industrial Workers Club, Cincinnati.
• The Industrial Workers Club, Chicago.
• Workers Industrial and Educational Union, Pueblo.

The foreign organizations were each represented by at least one delegate with full powers and instructions. The following named bodies sent uninstructed delegates:[Pg 69]

• Metal Polishers, Buffers and Platers No. 6, Chicago.[97]
• Carpenters and Joiners No. 181, Chicago.[97]
• Scandinavian Painters, Decorators and Paper Hangers, Chicago.
• International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths and Helpers, No. 110, Chicago.
• German Central Labor Union.
• Switchmen's Union No. 29.[97]
• Bohemian Musicians Union.
• Hotel and Restaurant Workers.[97]
• Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees, Division No. 288, Chicago.[97]
• Barbers Union No. 225, Sharon, Pa.[97]
• United Labor League, Sharon, Pa.
• Utah State Federation of Labor, Salt Lake City.
• Cloak Makers and Tailors, Montreal.
• American Flint Glass Workers Union, Toledo.
• Commercial Men's Association, Court No. 1093, Milwaukee.
• Street Laborers Union, Chicago.
• Machinists, District Lodge No. 8.[97]
• International Protective Laborers Union, Dayton, Ohio.
• Typographical Union No. 49, Denver.[97]
• Central Labor Union, North Adams, Mass.
• International Longshoremen's Union No. 271, Hoboken, N. J.[97]
• Iron and Brass Molders, Schenectady.

Aside from the occupations represented above, the following were each represented by one or more individuals: machinists, tanners, electrical workers, bookbinders, editors, teachers, authors, printers, and shoe workers. An attorney-at-law from New York City presented himself at the convention. The committee on credentials recommended that he be seated as a fraternal delegate, on account of the mitigating circumstances that he wrote for several newspapers and was a "friend and sympathizer" of labor. After considerable debate the report of the committee was adopted [Pg 70]"with the exception of that portion which refers to the attorney."[98]

This array of occupational or trade types was scarcely more extensive than that of the structural types here grouped together. Of these there were the following types. (1) the simple industrial union, wherein all workers engaged, in whatsoever capacity, in any particular industry are members of the same union. This type was represented by the Western Federation of Miners[99]—really the strongest taproot of the I. W. W. (2) The multi-industrial type, a federation of industrial unions, such as the American Labor Union, which included railway employees, engineers, and musicians. (3) The so-called "international" union, rarely more than national in scope, and merely a national association of local unions of a given trade. This type was represented by the United Metal Workers International Union of America. (4) The non-federative industrial union, like the United Mine Workers of America with industrial rather than trade units, an industrial organization which excludes federation with similar organizations in other industries, or with employers. (5) The ordinary non-federative trade unions, here seen in two types: (a) the trade amalgamation, a federation of unions wherein the constituent bodies are so united as to preserve their individuality, although trade autonomy is thereby destroyed. This type is illustrated here by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers; (b) national unions of any particular trade like the iron molders, wherein the constituent unions are more subordinated to the national body than in the amalgamation. (6) The state federation—as typified by the Utah State Federation of Labor. And finally (7) the rather unconventional type of "union," represented by the Industrial Workers' clubs and the United Labor League.

[Pg 71]

It should be understood that but a small part of the "international" or national bodies was represented as a whole. The greater number were represented by one or two locals. A number of them were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor at the time, but had become dissatisfied with the policies of that body.[100] However, some of the unions most prominent in the activities of the convention were represented as central or national bodies with all their constituent local unions. Such were the American Labor Union and the United Metal Workers.

Those of the unions present which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, though forming a fairly large group numerically, represented no material defection from the ranks of the Federation and, generally speaking, played but a passive rôle in the work of the convention. Of the forty-three organizations seated by the credentials committee sixteen were affiliated with the Federation, but at least eleven of these were represented by but one local union. Of all these organizations which had merely local rather than national representation, the United Mine Workers of America was most widely represented, delegates from nine of its local unions being present.[101] A little study of the list of the organizations seated and the localities from which their delegates came, makes it quite evident that on the whole the strong delegations from powerful local bodies, located at strategic points, were those having no connection with the American Federation of Labor, and, conversely, that the fourteen American Federation of Labor unions just referred to were represented as a rule by small and solitary locals of doubtful strength.[102] The insignificant position of [Pg 72]the American Federation of Labor bodies in the convention will become still more manifest by an inspection of the lists given above.[103] It will be seen that only five of the sixteen local unions of the American Federation of Labor which were present had empowered their delegates to install their respective local unions in the new organization: two locals of the United Mine Workers and one local each in the Bakers and Confectioners, the Brewery Workers and the Journeymen Tailors unions. All the locals of the United Metal Workers were so empowered. The American Federation of Labor was represented in no direct way among the five great powers of this industrialist convention.[104]

It was confidently expected by many members of the January conference that there would be an immediate secession of a number of national unions from the American Federation of Labor. But whatever may have been the hopes of the originators of the movement, the constitutional convention proved by its very make-up that this new insurgent labor body could not, at the outset at least, build a new organization out of disaffected parts of an old organization.

It has been seen that not all organizations were present on equal footing. In the first place, no union could have any influence or any active part in the proceedings of the convention unless it sent its delegates with full power to install. The January conference had drawn up certain rules governing representation in the forthcoming convention:

The delegates to the convention were in this way grouped into two classes: representative delegates, with voting power proportional to the number of members represented, and individual delegates with merely their own vote, and in some cases not representing any union even as uninstructed delegates. This separation of the two hundred and three delegates, according to the character of their credentials, may be shown as follows:

Including the industrial workers' clubs there were forty-three organizations represented, of which number twenty-three were represented by delegates having full power to install. The above analysis shows that of the 142,991 members presumably represented, nearly two-thirds sent delegates merely to take notes of the proceedings and report back. About one-third, some 51,000, were then prepared to cast their lot with the new undertaking. Also it appears that about one-third of the delegates wielded practically the whole voting power of the assembly.

Moreover, the balance of power within this empowered one-third was most unevenly distributed. Of the 51,000 votes aggregated by those organizations prepared to install, 48,000 votes were distributed among five organizations (these being the only ones with a voting strength of more than 1,000) as follows:

These were the organizations which were most prominent in the activities of the convention. Among their delegates were a goodly number of the most active promotors [Pg 75]of the movement. From them—especially from the Western Federation of Miners—finally came the great bulk of the funds for establishing the new union. It is evident that, numerically speaking, one single organization, the Western Federation of Miners, held the balance of power, and of the remaining votes, three-fourths were in the control of the American Labor Union, these two bodies together outnumbering the others ten to one. The sequel was to show that the numerically weaker organizations exerted an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers, because of the great influence exerted by some of their individual delegates. Their representatives were radicals, representing more or less radical unions.

It might seem that the rôle played in the convention by an organization as comparatively weak in numbers as the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance could be accounted for, in some measure at least, by its proportionately large delegation. A glance at the table given above shows that the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance with a self-estimated strength of 1450[108] had fourteen delegates, while the Western Federation of Miners, 27,000 strong, had but five delegates. This was true to but a limited extent, for in the first place the voting power of each delegate was in direct proportion to the number of members he represented. Thus Haywood and his colleagues of the Western Federation of Miners had each 5400 votes, while DeLeon and each member of his delegation had 103.6 votes. In the second place, it was a contest of personalities. The fourteen Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance delegates comprised Daniel DeLeon and thirteen others. This same prominence of the individual was more or less evident among the other delegations. Some further concentration of power is evidenced [Pg 76]in the fact that William D. Haywood and C. H. Moyer were both empowered delegates from two organisations, since they represented the A. L. U. as well as the W. F. M.

Indeed it is rather significant that several of the organizations which finally merged into the Industrial Workers of the World had little behind them but leaders. In some cases it appears that the membership first credited was greatly exaggerated. Of the organizations installed as a part of the new body, St. John reports that three "existed almost wholly on paper."[109] Several of these labor bodies were really more shadow that substance. The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the United Metal Workers, and the American Labor Union, St. John's three "paper" unions, had come upon evil days and were in an advanced stage of disintegration. Hence perhaps their presence here. They did not want to expire. They preferred to be transformed into something yet more militant.

The most significant and interesting phase of this unique body of industrialists was its many-sided intellectual character. Some of the high lights of divergent doctrine preached and defended here show more clearly than anything else how stupendous the undertaking was. Perhaps the least indefinite term which would give them all standing-room would be "revolutionary socialism," though many delegates repudiated the name socialist as being synonymous with reactionist and conservative. If socialists at all, they were socialists with a radical adjective. In reference to some the word "anarchistic" should be substituted for [Pg 77]"revolutionary." They all believed in the "irrepressible conflict" between capital and labor. They were a unit in wishing for and aiming at the overthrow of the wages system—the downfall of capitalism. There was no place here for the "Gomperite" and his program of mutual interests of employer and employee; but the absence from the scene of the "identity of interest" and "coffin society" man did not guarantee harmony.[110]

As usual there was disagreement as to the methods to be used to reach the common end desired. Hence certain divergent types of doctrine were expounded and certain warring factions resulted therefrom. St. John enumerates four main varieties as being predominant: (1) Parliamentary Socialists—two types, impossibilist (Marxian) and opportunist (reformist); (2) Anarchists; (3) Industrial Unionists; and (4) the "labor union fakir."[111] This classification is ambiguous. No doubt the "labor union fakir," who gets into any new move of this sort for what he can get out of it, has no real economic creed except that of the profiteer, but he enters a movement of this kind as an exponent of a certain legitimate doctrine and is at least presumed to belong to that doctrinal faction. It has been seen that during the proceedings of the convention it developed that there were delegates present who were not sincere in their attitude. It is a fact, as St. John points out, "that many of those who were present as delegates on the floor of the first convention and the organizations that they represented have bitterly fought the I. W. W. from the close [Pg 78]of the first convention up to the present day."[112] By no means all of these are necessarily fakirs, since the outcome of the deliberations of the first convention was somewhat different from that anticipated even by the signers of the manifesto.

There was present a very definite group of anarchists which, though in a rather small minority, was a constituent element in the doctrinal types represented. The term "industrial unionist" was one which really included practically all the participants. The industrial unionist may certainly be a socialist, and even of more than one variety; and it is also conceivable that the industrial unionist may be an anarchist. Consequently the term can hardly be used to mark off any particular faction in a convention of industrial unionists. The parliamentary socialists constituted one of the most powerful elements at the convention. In fact, the two main hostile groups were the impossibilists and the opportunists, the first group comprising parliamentary socialists of the Socialist Labor party and anti-parliamentary socialists, naturally having no political affiliations; and the latter comprising members of the Socialist party.

The line of cleavage then was between the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor party, that is, between reformist and doctrinaire elements, both parliamentary and both leaning toward industrial unionism. In a less prominent position at first was the direct-actionist group, anti-political and anarchistic. This antagonism of ideas was of course the root cause of the defection of the Socialist Labor party and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance elements three years later, and was responsible for the existence between 1908 and 1916 of two national organizations called the I. W. W. The Socialist party, or doctrinaire wing, is very logically the descendant of the doctrinaire wing at the [Pg 79]first convention, but the direct-actionist or anti-political wing has, strange to say, grown out of and drawn its leaders from the reformist Socialist party.

These divergent creeds were given color and life by a few men who really dominated the convention. There is no organization in existence having less room for hero-worship than the Industrial Workers of the World. The manifesto provided that all "powers should rest in the collective membership." Its members seemed firmly convinced that all labor leaders (except I. W. W. organizers!) are really "misleaders" of labor, and throughout their propaganda literature there is evident this repudiation of leaders and apotheosis of the "collective membership." Nevertheless the I. W. W. has been led and misled by leaders ever since its inception. The first convention rang with the dominant notes of a handful of men: Daniel DeLeon, William D. Haywood, "Father" T. J. Hagerty, Eugene V. Debs, William E. Trautmann, A. M. Simons, Clarence Smith, D. C. Coates, and C. O. Sherman. Debs, Haywood and Simons were then, and are today, members of the Socialist party. Simons and DeLeon were leaders in the two opposing Socialist political parties, Simons in the Socialist party and editor of the Coming Nation, and DeLeon, editor of the Daily People and the one dominant and national figure in the Socialist Labor party. T. J. Hagerty was a Catholic priest. With the coöperation of James P. Thompson, and others probably, he framed the original I. W. W. Preamble. He was the designer of the chart which Samuel Gompers referred to as "Father Hagerty's Wheel of Fortune,"[113] and the author of a pamphlet entitled Economic Discontent.

[Pg 80]

Eugene V. Debs, the best known to them all, came into the movement with all his contagious enthusiasm and eloquence, full of optimism for the future of this new organization.

From the West came William D. Haywood with many years' experience with the Western Federation of Miners in Colorado. He was an experienced organizer and was full of the militant spirit of the Western Federation of Miners. He scorned agreements and contracts. Speaking of the Western Federation of Miners at the first convention he said: "We have not got an agreement existing with any mine manager, superintendent, or operator at the present time. We have got a minimum scale of wages" and "... the eight-hour day, and we did not have a legislative lobby to accomplish it."[115] And now he came to Chicago to help build up the same sort of an organization for not alone the mining industry but for all industries.

Probably the most striking figure of all was Daniel DeLeon, editor of the Daily People, a man with a university education, and a graduate of the Columbia University Law School. He was active in the organization of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance in 1895 and was an officer in the Alliance until it was merged in the I. W. W. He came to the first convention as a delegate from the Socialist Trade [Pg 81]and Labor Alliance. He, too, believed that harmony was possible.

He had been instrumental in creating the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, of which the Socialist Labor party was thenceforward to be the shadow. It transpired, however, that the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance actually became the "shadow" or understudy of the Socialist Labor party, and this fact was looked upon by A. M. Simons and others of the Socialist Labor party as having an ominous significance for any new organization to which DeLeon might wish to hitch the Socialist Labor party as a "shadow." There seemed, in short, to be some suspicion afloat at the first convention that the Socialist Labor party proposed, through DeLeon, to tuck the I. W. W. under its wing. Hillquit asserts that "the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance had a record of having caused more disputes and schisms within the Socialist labor movement in America in recent years than any other factor, and its affiliation with the new movement was fateful for the latter."[117] And Simons declared that if DeLeon "could in some way hitch himself on to this new organization, he would be able to infuse the semblance of life into the political and economic corpses of the S. L. P. and the S. T. & L. A."[118]

DeLeon emphatically opposed the policy of "boring from [Pg 82]within" advocated by the Socialist party opportunists. He believed it had been tried as a constructive policy and found wanting. So he proposed to build up on the outside the necessary economic organization, which finally should move "under the protecting guns of a labor political party."[119]

On the other hand, the Socialist party men believed in making use of the "boring from within" policy among the local unions, and considered it quite unnecessary for the economic organization to have any political connections whatsoever. They considered the political unity of the workers less vitally important than did the DeLeon group of doctrinaires.

These, then, were the elements of the heterogeneous labor mass, which were to be worked up together into "One Big Union." The thing that made union possible in any degree was the binding influence of common antipathies. It has been suggested that all were at one in being opposed to a capitalistic society. They had no difficulty in making common cause of their mutual hatred of the capitalistic scheme of things. They were perhaps even more able to unite because of common opposition to certain things which they believed were helping to perpetuate the capitalist system. Most prominent and powerful of these was the craft form of labor-union organization.

[Pg 83]

CHAPTER III
The I. W. W. versus the A. F. of L.

The American Federation of Labor, as the alleged embodiment of everything "crafty," has always been the arch-enemy of the I. W. W. The convention opened with this thought to the fore, and throughout the eleven days of its session it was referred to again and again. William D. Haywood's speech calling the convention to order begins with this paragraph:

"It has been said," remarked Haywood, "that this convention was to form an organization rival to the A. F. of L. This is a mistake. We are here for the purpose of forming a labor organization."[121] This common opposition to what they called the "American Separation of Labor" proved [Pg 84]to be a fairly adequate "harmony plank" in the platform of these disaffected workingmen. The stress of opposition to the Federation was, of course, directed chiefly to its craft formation, but it also featured prominently the reaction against (1) its assumption of identity of interest between employer and employee, and (2) its absolute denial of the necessity of united political action on the part of the working class.

To these industrialists the American Federation of Labor was simply the symbol of the craft type of trade union. It was made the object of the most merciless criticism throughout the convention. One of its committees drew up a comprehensive indictment of "old line trade-unionism." "The A. F. of L., which is the fine consummate flower of craft unionism," it declares, "is neither American, nor a federation, nor of labor." This, they contend, because (1) it is adapted only to such conditions as existed in England sixty years ago; (2) it is divided into 116 warring factions; (3) it discriminates against workingmen because of their race and poverty; (4) its members are allowed to join the militia and shoot down other union men in time of strike; and (5) it inevitably creates a certain aloofness among the skilled workmen—the "aristocrats of labor"—toward those not skilled. "There are organizations which are affiliated," Haywood asserts, "with the A. F. of L. which ... prohibit the initiation of, or conferring the obligation on, a colored man; that prohibit the conferring of the obligation on foreigners."[122]

From the opening of the convention it was quite evident that an ideal labor union was conceived to be something more than an institution for improving the immediate condition of labor. Through it immediate interests must be [Pg 85]advanced, of course, but its primary object must be to make an end of labor as a slave function and to establish in place of the wage or capitalist system an industrial commonwealth of co-operators. The convention was convinced that the craft union was not only comparatively helpless in the matter of advancing immediate interests, but was absolutely useless as a fulcrum for removing the capitalist system. "The battles of the past," declared the manifesto, "emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia, and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago; ... the long-struggling miners of Colorado, hampered by lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized."[123]

The craft form or organization creates three types very obnoxious to the industrial unionist, viz., the "aristocrat" of labor, the "union" scab, and the "labor lieutenant." The "union" scab—the man who continues at work at his particular trade when the men of an allied trade in the same industry are on strike—is a scab in the sense that he is often—through this indirect scabbing—a fatal, perhaps the only obstacle, to the success of the strike. Haywood gave an illustration of this in the butchers' strike in Chicago:

It was quite evident that these men who laid so much at the door of the "union" scab, realized that the latter did not scab on his fellow union-men because he enjoyed it. He was forced to be a union scab because his craft had a contract—an agreement with the employer. Craftism is what it is, because it involves a separate binding agreement for each trade. These, being contracted independently by each craft, naturally expired at different dates, so that the several crafts in any given industry can never be free to act in unison. Little reverence for these agreements was shown in the convention.

Debs pointed to these same contracts as the cause of defeat. He cited the strike on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1888:

[Pg 87]

"Union scabbery" helped to create a kind of "union snobbery." The craft idea tended to develop the idea of caste among workingmen, and the skilled were set off from the unskilled as the "aristocracy of labor." The industrial unionists emphatically declared that a true labor union must include all workers, the unskilled and migratory as well as the "aristocrats."

But ultimately, according to Sherman, all workers—not merely the groups connoted by the term "working-class"—must be grouped in the proposed organization.

A third type condemned by revolutionary unionists was the so-called "labor lieutenant." This latter "mis-leader" of labor was the symbol of another objectionable feature of the A. F. of L., viz., the identity of interests assumption. Naturally the idea that the interests of employer and employee [Pg 88]are identical, is the only consistent one for an organization based on the craft idea. It is said that Mark Hanna once referred to the organizers and officials of the trade unions as the "labor lieutenants of the captains of industry."

The revolutionary (industrial) unionists believed that collusion existed between the tool-owners and the labor leaders of the country. It was declared on the floor of the convention that "the trade-union movement has become an auxiliary to the capitalist class in order to hold down the toilers of the land."[129] The delegates from the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance (members of the Socialist Labor party, though not formally present as such) were especially uncompromising on this point. At the 1900 convention of the Socialist Labor party the following amendment to its constitution was adopted:

Daniel DeLeon and the other Socialist Labor party men at the convention had absolutely no hope for the "pure and simple" union. DeLeon believed "that the pure and simple leaders give jobs to Socialists for the purpose of corrupting them, on the principle that the capitalist politicians give jobs to workingmen for the purpose of corrupting the working class...." "The labor movement," he said "has been prostituted in this country by the jobs ... that the capitalist politicians give to some individual workingmen...."[131]

[Pg 89]

The DeLeon faction was by no means alone in this attitude. The majority felt that the American Federation of Labor was hopelessly entangled in capitalist politics and irrevocably tied up to the captains of industry through its labor lieutenants. On the whole, the industrialists had no hope that the American Federation of Labor could ever become an industrial organization. Some of them, like A. M. Simons, believed it possible to further their industrial aim by "boring from within" certain of the constituent unions in the American Federation of Labor. Others differed—notably the DeLeonites. Their leader said that the theory of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was,

"We call upon the socialists of the United States," said another member of the S. T. & L. A., "to get out of the pure and simple organizations and smash them to pieces."[133]

Eugene Debs, too, was convinced of the futility of boring from within. "There is but one way," he said, "to effect this great change, and that is for the workingman to sever his relations with the American Federation and join the union that proposes on the economic field to represent his class."[134]

The industrialists were most at variance on the question [Pg 90]of the proper political attitude of labor organizations; consequently, they were not unanimous in their condemnation of the Federation's political polity—or want of it. Moreover, as became evident during the hot debate over the political clause, even those who condemned the Federation's attitude on politics were quite at outs about the political position which should be taken on behalf of the new organization.[135]

President Gompers took up the cudgels for the American Federation of Labor. The new movement was inaugurated, he said, "under the pretext that the American Federation of Labor refuses to recognize the changes which are constantly taking place in industry. That it is a pretext inexcusably ignorant and maliciously false any observer must know." He goes on to say that "the permanency of the trade-union movement depends upon the recognition ... of the principle of [craft] autonomy consistent with the varying phase and transitions in industry."[136] Mr. Gompers cited, among others, the case of the Boot and Shoe Workers' International Union. The workers in Lynn, Massachusetts, in a branch of the shoe trade—they were makers of "counters"—applied for a charter in the American Federation of Labor. The Federation authorities advised them first to join the industrial union of their trade, viz., the Boot and Shoe Workers' International Union. This they declined to do, and being refused by the American Federation of Labor, joined the American Labor Union.

The first five days of the convention were taken up with the adjustment of credentials, the explanation of the manifesto, and the indictment of the American Federation of Labor—"the consummate flower of craft unionism." On the sixth day the principal piece of constructive work confronting [Pg 91]the convention—the shaping-up of some sort of a workable constitution—was taken out of the hands of the committee and made the order of the day. Though Simons intimates[137] that the first days of the convention were too much given over to the reign of the "jaw-smith," yet mixed with all the chaff—unquestionably in evidence—was much intellectual grain. The ideas and suggestions brought out in all these discussions, the resolutions proposed, all these, after a crude but critical sifting at the hands of the committee and the speakers on the floor of the convention, became crystallized in the preamble and constitution. The following resolutions, selected and condensed from the report of the committee on resolutions, are fairly typical:[138]

To the discussion and emendation of the preamble and constitution was devoted the bulk of the time during the last five days of the convention.[139] The preamble drawn up by the committee on constitution was accepted by the convention practically in the form presented by that committee, and without dissent except for the second clause. The first two clauses read as follows:

The reference to the "political field" in the second [Pg 93]clause brought forth immediate challenge and the whole clause was the subject of exhaustive debate. Delegate Gilbert, who favored the clause, very concisely explained its significance.

Delegate Simons opposed it, declaring that, "as it stands it says that we are in favor of political action without any political party."[141] Delegate Richter also opposed it on the ground that the struggle has really only begun when the workers are brought together on the political and industrial fields,—whereas the preamble implied that at that stage the struggle ceases.[142]

Delegate DeLeon argued at length in support of the clause. To him this "political clause," as it has since been called, was quite essential to keep the proposed organization "in line and in step with civilization." "The barbarian," he said, "begins with physical force; the civilized man ends with that when force is necessary."[143] He believed it to be absolutely impossible to "take and hold" as the preamble puts it, without the protection—or at any rate the harmony—secured through political unity. Of course, the basis of [Pg 94]this political unity was to have no organic connection—not the remotest—with the economic organization. The clause under discussion recognized the two truths "that political action and the means of civilization must be given an opportunity—and that in this country, for one, it is out of the question to imagine that a political party can 'take and hold.'"[144] This was the Socialist Labor party position. It had been foreshadowed in its 1900 convention when it endorsed the following resolution:

The discussion brought out every shade of opinion on the ballot. These men were acutely aware of the fact that business is to a great extent the creator and controller of politics. As one delegate put it, "dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation for the working class and ... it never will...."[146] Even Daniel DeLeon had nothing but contempt for

[Pg 95]

The manifesto was very specific in proposing a purely economic organization. That the issue would be a political organization was the prophecy of Frank Bohn, an official of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.

In reply to this, A. M. Simons, the editor, declares that,

A very reasonable interpretation of this political clause is that the working class must be united politically, but not necessarily that that union is, or is in, or has any connection with, the I. W. W. However, the sequel showed that it was fatal to the unity of the organization. Three years later it proved to be the rock on which the movement split, bringing about the bifurcated organization we know at the present time; with a direct-actionist wing, non-political, and [Pg 96]with a new and expurgated edition of the preamble, and a DeLeonite or doctrinaire wing, pro-political—another Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance—with the same old preamble and the same old political clause.[150]

The constitution provided a highly centralized scheme of administration involving a mixed hierarchy of power. The general organization was divided into thirteen international industrial divisions (later called "departments"). Each of these departmental divisions was supposed to comprise an allied group of industries, grouped together for administrative purposes. In the original report of the constitution committee the industrial or occupational "sphere of influence" of each division was specified in detail. The world's industries were divided into thirteen administrative groups. The report provided that the organization should be composed of thirteen international industrial unions, designated as follows:

This section provoked instant debate. In fact, two days and a half—about half the time given to the whole constitution—were given over to the discussion of this clause.[152] Many delegates considered that such a specific division was not only a practical impossibility, on account of the very definite limits to the jurisdiction of most industries, but was a very inconsistent step for an industrial organization to take, since in their opinion it was nothing more or less than a recreation of craft lines.[153] There was considerable feeling in evidence that this clause did not satisfy the provision of the manifesto for "craft autonomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally, and working-class unity generally." Flaws and inconsistencies without end could, of course, be found in such a categorical division, and they were pointed out by critical delegates with much gusto. The main idea in this attempt at departmental demarcation of industries was that a centralized administration was imperative. Most of the delegates agreed to this. They believed that even the industry, although the unit or cell of the new structure, should not be the dominant basis of the administration. That must be departmental.

[Pg 98]

As finally amended, the clause omitted any specific category of departments and industries and simply provided for thirteen departments with appropriate subdivisions. It read as follows:

The list of specifically divided industries was later replaced in the constitution, but in a very much improved form. Wm. E. Trautmann has worked this up even further, and in 1911 published a still more improved outline in which the number of departments is reduced to six.[156]

The constitutional convention also made provision for other and subordinate bodies, i. e., industrial councils, which might be formed. These were to comprise seven or more local unions in two or more industries and the local industrial [Pg 99]union. These local unions were the smallest units of organization then provided for, except that when isolated individuals applied for membership in a locality where no local union existed, such persons were admitted into the organization as "individual" members directly attached to the general organization.

The same principle applied throughout. In case, then, there were not a sufficient number[157] of locals in any one industry to form an industrial department, the local was directly responsible to the general organization. Then, as now, the great majority of local unions were chartered directly by the general organization. At the close of the first convention the Western Federation of Miners became the "Mining Department" of the I. W. W.; the Metal Workers became the "Metal Department"; and the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, the "Transportation Department." All local unions are industrial in character, i. e., each one makes the shop its unit and comprises all the crafts engaged in and around the shop. The mucker in the mine must belong to the same union as the man who runs the drill. The idea is to get into the same union all those workers who are coöperating for the production of a given class of products.

The officers provided for were: a General President, a General Secretary-Treasurer, and a General Executive Board composed of these two officers and the Presidents of the International Industrial Division.[158] The constitutional committee recommended

[Pg 100]

In accordance with this recommendation, the Provisional Board was elected as follows: C. O. Sherman, Metal Workers, General President; William E. Trautmann, Industrial Workers Club, of Cincinnati, General Secretary-Treasurer; John Riordan, American Labor Union, member at large; F. W. Cronin, American Labor Union, member at large; Frank McCabe, United Brotherhood of Railway Employees; Charles Kirkpatrick, Metal Workers, and C. H. Moyer, Western Federation of Miners. The General Executive Board was given great power. In its hands was placed the entire responsibility for the conduct of the affairs of the organization between conventions. This board was given full power to issue charters to all subordinate bodies—industrial departments, industrial councils, and local unions; to supervise the work of general administration and audit the books of the general office; to levy special assessments when any of the subordinate bodies are engaged in strike and the condition of their local treasuries makes it necessary; to supervise and control the publication of the official organ and to elect its editor.

Specially worthy of note were the powers given the General Executive Board in regard to strikes and agreements. The clauses referring to these two points are here given:

[Pg 101]

The President, of course, had more extended authority than the other members of the Board, and was given entire supervision of the organization throughout its jurisdiction; but his official acts and decisions, as well as those of the General Executive Board, were at all times subject to appeal to the general convention, the decisions of which body, in turn, might be put to the final test of ratification by a referendum to the general membership. Thus the rank and file were supposed to be the final arbiters. Throughout the hierarchy "home rule" was to be accorded in all matters of strictly local concern, such as details of administration, by-laws, etc., but matters connected with the general welfare were made subjects of industrial rather than craft autonomy. Revenues were derived from charter fees, initiation fees and dues, all of which were made very low. A fixed proportion of all such revenues was to be paid into a central defense fund.

It is quite apparent that matters which were of purely internal concern were much more narrowly interpreted than in the orthodox union. Most things affecting one craft are [Pg 102]frankly declared to effect all crafts—even all industries—and only a few matters like by-laws and other routine affairs were considered to be of merely local concern. The constitution was built up around the socialistic motto, "An injury to one is the concern of all." The document was merely provisional, and in a crude way served as an initial guide for drawing up a more comprehensive and permanent constitution later on.

That the constitution was at least acceptable to most of the delegates was evidenced by the fact that it was adopted by a six to one vote,[161] and more definitely proven on roll-call for installation of organizations under the new constitution. Besides the five leading organizations—the Western Federation of Miners, the American Labor Union, United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, United Metal Workers, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, six local unions and thirty-nine individuals (representing no organization) unanimously voted for installation.[162] Having elected its officers and chosen Chicago as its headquarters, the Convention adjourned, sine die, July 8, 1905.

Delegate Kiehn (representing the Longshoremen of Hoboken, N. J.), among others, refused to install his union. He explained his vote, stating that in his opinion the constitution was "not according to the spirit of the manifesto." He believed that dividing the industrial activities of society into thirteen divisions meant the creation—not the destruction—of [Pg 103]craft lines, and also that "it [the constitution] gives the President or the Executive Board of this organization czarish powers that are not given to the executive officers of any pure and simple organization in this country."[163]

Unquestionably the outcome of the convention was very different from what those most interested had anticipated. In its final form, the preamble and constitution were not exactly shaped to the provisions of the January manifesto—at any rate they did not seem to satisfy the authors of the latter document. This is partly to be explained by the significant fact that Daniel DeLeon was not present at the January conference, although the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and the Socialist Labor party were represented by one of their organizers—Frank Bohn. We have seen that the fear of Socialist Labor party domination or Socialist Labor party wire-pulling and the fear of the influence of DeLeon were one and the same. A. M. Simons declared several months before the Convention that "nothing could more thoroughly damn the work of the conference which meets in Chicago next June than the prevalence of the idea that it was an attempt to revive the S. T. & L. A...."[164] These fears were to a certain limited extent realized. The same writer says that "At the first conference [the June convention] Daniel DeLeon with a crowd of followers obtained such power in the organization as to destroy its original point of view. Later he was thrown out, or resigned, or threw the others out [according to who is telling the story]."[165] In precisely what way the original point of view was destroyed is not easily determined. Even Simons admitted that "the only line of cleavage between bodies [Pg 104]representing any strength was over the method of organization." And "even here," he believed that "the difficulty was much less fundamental than the heat of the debate would indicate."[166]

Beyond any doubt the influence of the Socialist Labor party (through the delegates of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance), DeLeonism, as it was called, was wider than this statement would indicate. A "paper" organization, outnumbered by all of the organizations in what we have called the "Big Five," it unquestionably was influential to a degree quite out of proportion to its numbers, and in that way, at least, it dominated the convention. The political clause, which later proved such a rock of dissension and which was not passed in the first convention without considerable opposition, was one mark left in the constitution by DeLeonism. The virtual overthrowing of the "boring-from-within" policy was another mark left out of the constitution by DeLeonism. Both of these departures were of great importance but not the most vital by any means.

The primary importance of the Western Federation of Miners in these beginnings cannot be too much emphasized. In a quite real sense the I. W. W. was born out of the Western Federation. It was from this militant miners union that most of the financial bone and sinew came for setting in motion the machinery of the new union. The Federation constituted probably one-third of the membership of the organization which had in its mining department (while it did have it!) by all odds the most vigorously militant of all American unions. The Federation's bitter fights with the mine operators, especially in Colorado, Montana, and Idaho, prepared the ground and spread the sentiment for the extension of revolutionary industrialism beyond the [Pg 105]relatively narrow limits of the metalliferous mining industry. It was not a coincidence that the I. W. W. sprang into being so hard on the heels of the strike terrors of Telluride and Cripple Creek. A delegate at the second (1906) convention declared that the Butte Miners Union was the father of the I. W. W.[167]

Despite the fact that the I. W. W. did continue to exist, and, periodically, to thrive after the Western Federation broke away, it is safe to say that had it not been for the Federation, with its practical strength and the stimulating example of its history, there would have been no I. W. W. It was Western-Federationism quite as much as DeLeonism that moulded the I. W. W. at its inception.

It certainly is not quite true that the first convention was "captured" by the DeLeon element, as so many insinuate. DeLeon was elected to no office and neither of the General Executive Board members elected at large were members of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Debs insists that "DeLeon did not 'capture' the organization and Debs is not 'disgusted' with it."[168] The dominance of DeLeonism was, then, a supremacy of ideas. These ideas may have been "insane delusions" and finally disastrous to the harmony of the movement; but they were presumably defended by their chief sponsor and his followers, in firm conviction that they were essential to the growth of the movement. DeLeon said on the floor of the convention, "When I came to Chicago to this convention, I came absolutely without any private ax to grind or any private grudge to gratify. In fact ... I have had but one foe ... and that foe is the capitalist class."[169]

[Pg 106]

Hermann Richter, now general secretary of the Socialist Labor party wing of the I. W. W., writes in a recent number of their official organ: "During the proceedings of the [first] convention it became apparent that not all delegates understood, or were in free accord with the spirit and intent of the organization."[170] This was very natural considering the composition of the gathering. The sequel proved that this was the least of the troubles in embryo at that first convention.

All this friction and internal discord was naturally made to loom large in the editorials of the American Federationist; Gompers, in fact, squinted hard enough at the Chicago conference to see absolutely nothing in it. The August (1905) number contained the following, under the caption "Those 'World Redeemers' at Chicago":

But in spite of dissension on the inside and bitter abuse and misrepresentation on the outside, the industrialists were, on the whole, very optimistic about the prospects of the new-born I. W. W. and held high hopes for its future. In spite of the emphatic declaration of the manifesto that the I. W. W. "should be established as the economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party," the newspapers and even the labor press persisted in representing the movement as a political one. Thus the Milwaukee Journal said:

The Advance Advocate, a labor organ, had this to say:

The Iowa State Federation of Labor issued the following statement:

[Pg 108]

The expectation that there would be a general secession from the American Federation of Labor to the new organization was not realized and there was practically no American Federation of Labor material in the new body. In numbers it seemed, in view of later shrinkage, to be at high tide. The reports of the convention estimated the membership at 60,000, and A. M. Simons estimated that at the very least the organization would in six months have 100,000 members.[175] The twelve organizations finally installed represented a membership of 49,010. This excluded the thirty-nine "individual" members. In regard to this Vincent St. John writes: "I know that the Annual Convention reports claim 60,000 members, but the books of the organization did not justify any such claim, and in fact the average paid-up membership, without the W. F. of M. (27,000), for the first year of the organization was 14,000 in round numbers."[176]

The I. W. W. was organized, as the constitution expressed it, to "subserve the immediate interests of the working class and effect their final emancipation." The attempt to realize this "final emancipation" was the thing which marked off the I. W. W. from the typical craft union. This latter body is craft conscious; the I. W. W. is class conscious. The structural and organic form it assumed at the first convention made for the stupefaction of craft consciousness and the stimulation of class consciousness. The idea of the class conflict was really the bottom notion or "first cause" of the I. W. W. The industrial union type was adopted because it would make it possible to wage this class war under more favorable conditions.

It is true the Socialist and Socialist Labor parties are working for the ultimate freedom of the working class, but [Pg 109]the (Chicago) I. W. W. considers their method—political action—a snare and a delusion, and (here both the Detroit and Chicago factions came together) absolutely impotent when used alone. It is rather significant that every member of the provisional board elected at the convention was a member of the Socialist party. But they emphatically declared that the Socialist party was not to be involved in any way; and it never did become involved except as an enemy. On the other hand, the Socialist Labor party did, through the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, indirectly affect the work of the first convention.

The anarchist element was weak in 1905, and the anarchistic leanings now so prominent in the direct-actionist wing of the organization were then quite overshadowed by the socialistic and industrial phases of the movement. Carlton says that "the Industrial Workers may be compared with the Knights of Labor shorn of their idealism and saturated with class-conscious Socialism";[177] and he might have added, with their decentralized administrative system replaced by a very strongly centralized one—this constituting a fundamental distinction between the I. W. W. and the Confédération Générale du Travail, a decentralized organization. Nor should the Industrial Workers of the World be quite shorn of idealism. That must surely be idealistic which is "saturated with class-conscious socialism." This was amply demonstrated at the constitutional convention. Their idealism was given more of a pragmatic character by the persistent tendency to place socialism on an industrial rather than a political basis. The immediate struggle must take place primarily in the shop—at the point of production—only secondarily at the polls.

"By organizing industrially," claims the Industrial [Pg 110] Worker, "we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."[178] And here he evidences an idea of the future state of society and the method of its realization, rather new even to the socialist, and somewhat akin to that of the anarchists. The First Convention surely laid its plans, crude as they were, with an eye to the future. The scope of organization implied that the proletariat of the future would include more, by far, than the unskilled; that all those gainfully employed in whatever kind or grade of work would some day become proletarians, in spirit at least, and get together in this "one big union."

The first constitution, crude and provisional as it was, made room for all the world's workers and so at the beginning is a vast and nearly empty structure, with groups of the lower grades of workers in some of the basic industries in their proper places in the scheme, but with all the rest a hollow shell. Whether this empty structure will ever be "filled up" is a question which time will decide. George Speed, formerly a member of the General Executive Board (direct-actionist wing), has characterized this convention as the "greatest conglomeration of freaks that ever met in convention." This may have been true, for freak ideas often did bob up in the convention and some of them got fixed in the constitution, but at heart this was a vital move, impelled by high and serious motives.[179]

[Pg 111]

PART II
THE "ORIGINAL" I. W. W.

[Pg 112]
[Pg 113]

CHAPTER IV
Maiden Efforts on the Economic Field

The adjournment of the organizing convention in July, 1905, left the body it had created in a very chaotic condition. The time and attention of the delegates was so exclusively taken up with the problem of building up "one big union" out of many little unions and the task of working out a harmony platform of law and policy on which all could come together, that the matter of business management was almost entirely neglected. Indeed some of the circumstances surrounding the I. W. W. at its inception quite precluded the ordered and efficient procedure possible to a well manned and adequately financed organization. The I. W. W. was not well manned and was practically destitute of financial resources. The dearth of ability and especially the want of honesty in its managing personnel were to become all too evident long before the second convention had come to a close, as was also its practically bankrupt financial status. Although there were three rather formidable-looking departments nominally organized as such—viz.: mining, metal and machinery, and transportation—none of these except the mining department represented material accessions either numerically or financially, and the early defection of the Western Federation of Miners quite broke down this one and, what was even more important, cut off from the Industrial Workers of the World the great bulk of its financial resources.

The industrial-union idea made marked headway among[Pg 114] the trade unions of the United States during the first year of the existence of the I. W. W., and this was very largely due to the influence and example of that organization. Organizers were sent to those places where serious friction existed between trade-unionists and employers, or between trade-unionists and the American Federation of Labor. The I. W. W. devoted very little attention at that time to the unorganized; its energy was chiefly centered on the reformation of the craft unions—a policy of dual unionism. The Federation lost rather heavily in some quarters to the I. W. W., the disaffection proving most marked among the brewers and machinists. Max S. Hayes, in reviewing the situation at the end of the year 1905, wrote as follows:

This same unrest and dissatisfaction with the condition of trade-union organization was evident among many local [Pg 115]unions of the United Mine Workers of America. Only two local unions of the Mine Workers had finally joined the Industrial Workers of the World at the first convention,[181] but before the end of the year there were several others desiring admission. In many cases, however, they were unable to go into the I. W. W. because they had contracts signed up with the mine operators, and must perforce await their expiration before any action could be taken. The Mine Workers' locals at Barrow, Muddy Valley, and Elkville (Ill.) were in precisely this situation. They reported themselves at the second convention as desirous of admission, but that immediate transfer of allegiance was impossible because they had two-year contracts with the operators which did not expire until April, 1908.[182] Although in these instances the contracts were respected and the locals did not join the I. W. W., that result was not due to any moral influence emanating from the Industrial Workers of the World, who, of course, repudiated the validity of contracts with employers. They believed that, as Haywood expressed it, "as all is fair in love and war, industrial unionists should abrogate all agreements which would compel them to violate the principles of unionism."[183]

Friction between the Industrial Workers of the World and the American Federation of Labor continued, of course, to be in evidence. The nominal possession of a defense fund by the I. W. W., and the want of such a feature in the Federation, doubtless appealed to craft unions in time of need. For that reason, if for no other, many craft unionists have felt that Haywood had some reason for saying that "the only function which the American Federation of Labor can assume is to act as an advisory board of the [Pg 116]trade-union movement," and that "the ideas of Mr. Gompers are hoary, aged, moss-covered relics of the days of the ox-team and the pony express, when the craftsmen owned or controlled the tools of production."[184]

There were a few trade unions which joined the Industrial Workers of the World as a last resort or merely to spite the American Federation. Such was the case with the Stogie Makers, who constituted an independent organization in January, 1906, and who, having been for some reason denied a charter in the American Federation of Labor, finally, and with noisy repudiation of the principles of the Federation, joined the I. W. W.[185]

Trouble most commonly arose between the Industrial Workers and the Federation in time of strike. The Industrial Workers objected to what they called the "unfair interference of the A. F. of L. in I. W. W. strikes." Numerous protests against this alleged meddlesomeness of the Federation were made on the floor of the second convention. The following excerpt from the report of General-Secretary Trautmann to the convention will serve for illustration:

The American Federation of Labor was undoubtedly often guilty of attempts of the kind just mentioned—activities which were looked upon by the "Wobblies" as crafty methods of undermining and antagonizing the work of their organization. It happened more than once during that first year of the younger organization's existence, and has happened on the occasion of many an industrial conflict since that time. However, the blame lies not entirely at the door of the Federation, nor has it alone been guilty of such practices. It is, in fact, quite likely that the first provocation to interference arose from the persistence of the I. W. W. in the policy of organizing—or rather of annexing to itself—unions already organized, and usually so organized in the American Federation of Labor itself. This policy of double affiliation was warmly discussed at the first convention, but no definite official decision of the convention appears in the stenographic report of proceedings. The I. W. W. has been accused of deliberately agitating among unions already organized, and that in the face of open declarations that the I. W. W. does not believe in dual organization. It is true that such declarations of policy may have been made by I. W. W. speakers, but it has not been officially declared to be the policy of the organization. A sharp distinction should be drawn here between reorganizing, or attempting to reorganize, already organized [Pg 118]bodies—dual organizing activities—which are not expressly approved or condemned, and the condition of dual organism—or dual membership—which last is expressly forbidden. No local union of the I. W. W. may belong to the American Federation of Labor or to any other national organization.[187]

The I. W. W. has constantly been guilty of agitating in and building from the old craft unions, and in the earlier days of its history most of its work consisted in thus "boring from within" the established unions. It is only in later years that it has even approximately lived up to its avowed policy of organizing the unorganized—the unskilled—the floating laborer. Consequently the provocation of the American Federation of Labor, and craft unions generally, to retaliate for the alleged meddlesomeness of the I. W. W. was even greater then than it is now.

The vigor of this retaliation on the part of the craft unions was evidenced by the action taken by such organizations as the International Association of Machinists, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the United Cloth Cap and Hat Makers, the United Brotherhood of Leather Workers, and others, which "decreed that the mere joining of the Industrial Workers of the World would deprive any man or woman of the right to work in industries controlled by these combinations."[188]

This strenuous opposition was largely the cause of more or less compromising on the part of the Industrial Workers of the World with the craft-union idea, though, of course, the very weakness of the new movement and the hard-fixed habit of years of life and work under the old craft form was a potent factor here. This much is plain from the [Pg 119]record of those early days of I. W. W. history. Many of its constituent unions retained to a considerable degree the characteristics of craft unions, and more than that—some of the I. W. W. locals (boasted types and rallying centers for industrial unionism) were nothing more or less than craft locals. Even this extremity was no doubt forced upon many locals on account of the lack of knowledge of industrial unionism among workingmen, and this made necessary that rather ambiguous phenomenon of a revolutionary industrial union largely composed of craft or pseudo-craft units. The delegates to the second convention had to face this very impossible situation. A typical one was that of the Bartenders and Waiters Local Union No. 83 of Chicago, concerning which Delegate Shenkan of San Francisco said:

The convention was very desirous that this condition be remedied as soon as possible, and a resolution was finally passed stipulating that the General Executive Board must always organize so far as possible on industrial lines: "The incoming General Executive Board is hereby directed to organize the new recruits in and by industries, and to promote the education in industrialism among those men to whom charters may have been issued upon a craft system before they could be enrolled in the I. W. W."[190] In his report to the convention General Secretary Trautmann recommended that

[Pg 120]

However, this antagonism from outside craft unions, and these involuntary internal compromises with the craft-union idea were not the most serious difficulties which now beset the Industrial Workers of the World. The organization was threatened with wholesale defection and very soon actually suffered it in some quarters. During the spring of 1906 it became evident that a movement was afoot in the lumber camps of the northwest to organize the lumber workers in a general union outside of the I. W. W. Moreover, it appeared that the moving spirit in the agitation was one Daniel MacDonald—charter member of the Industrial Workers of the World from the old American Labor Union—a man who had not long since been an organizer for the I. W. W., and who must at the time have been a member of that organization, since he was sent as a delegate to the second convention. Mr. MacDonald explained the nature of the proposed organization in a letter to Mr. James Brookfield of Crescent City, California, dated at Butte, Montana, March 27, 1906. He does not mention the I. W. W. He writes that

The attempt was not successful. The lumber industry was destined to be one of the most fertile fields for the propaganda of the I. W. W. and to be one of its most solidly established divisions. This disloyal agitation on the outside in 1906 was a comparatively insignificant movement. It merely deprived the organization of a few individual members, and delayed somewhat the I. W. W. invasion of the lumber industries.

The most serious defections occurred in the Metals and Machinery, and the Mining Departments. The former department at the outset comprised two groups of metal workers: the United Metal Workers International Union and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The United Metal Workers had been a part of the American Federation of Labor until shortly before the first I. W. W. convention, and was on its adjournment installed as a part of the Metals and Machinery Department of the I. W. W. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers had also been a part of the American Federation of Labor.

On the merging of the American Labor Union in the Industrial Workers of the World, the Metal Workers of that union organized in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers were naturally installed with the United Metal Workers in the Metals and Machinery Department. Mutual hostility and friction between these two groups thus arbitrarily forced into one department, added to a deplorable lack of coöperation and assistance from the General Headquarters, finally resulted in the breaking away of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and the consequent loss to the I. W. W. of about four thousand wage-earners in this one department during the first year of its existence. This left the Metals and Machinery Department, about three thousand strong, practically limited in membership to the United Metal Workers International Union.[194]

The most paralyzing blow of all came with the loss of the whole of the Mining Department in the defection of the Western Federation of Miners in 1907. Indeed, the Federation really ceased to be an active member of the I. W. W. after the second convention of the latter organization in September, 1906. The W. F. of M. defection was so intimately connected with other dark troubles which came to light at the second convention that the subject will best be treated in that connection.[195]

The strikes conducted by the Industrial Workers of the World during the first fifteen months of its existence were almost uniformly unsuccessful. Its strike activities were, [Pg 123]however, quite widespread and pushed in most cases with energy and enthusiasm. The following groups of workers were involved: the Stogie Workers of Cleveland, Ohio; Hotel and Restaurant Workers of Goldfield, Nevada; the Window Washers of Chicago; the Marble Workers of Cincinnati; the Miners of Tonopah and Goldfield, Nev.; the Silk Workers of Trenton (N. J.) and Staten Island (N. Y.); and the Saw Mill and Lumber Workers of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The Stogie Workers were on strike from January 1 to October 1, 1906. They demanded a ten per cent wage increase, abolition of the black list, and one apprentice to every ten employees.[196] Although the strikers were unable to get the aid they needed from the General Organization, the strike seems to have been quite successful.[197]

In Goldfield, Nevada, strikes were conducted by two different locals. The demand of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers for the eight-hour day was finally acceded to. The Miners were on Strike both in Goldfield and Tonopah. They were bitterly opposed by the Allied Printing Trades Council of the American Federation of Labor, and seem not to have reached a settlement until late in 1907.

The Window Washers' strike in Chicago began August 1, 1906, and was on at the time of the second convention. Members of the Window Washers' Union quit work in thirty-five buildings in the down-town district of Chicago. The General Executive Board advised that the striking men be kept at work in other occupations so far as possible in order to keep down expenses. The Marble Workers of Cincinnati demanded a nine-hour day and a Saturday half-holiday. There appears to be no record of the result of their efforts.

The strikes of the Silk Workers at Trenton, N. J., and

[Pg 124]

Staten Island, N. Y., were both lost, the cause assigned by the strikers for their defeat being the fact that they could get no support from the General Organization.[198]

There was a disproportionate amount of energy given to strikes at this time. Moreover, most of this energy was misdirected. President Sherman, in his report to the convention, said: "There has been no time since August, 1905, but what we have had one or more strikes to contend with, which has been more or less responsible for our organization not being in a position to place more organizers in the field than what it has maintained."[199]

In discussing the I. W. W. strike record, Secretary Trautmann declared that "there was not a single solitary strike that the I. W. W. won." They were not rightly conducted, nor called at the right time.

There was certainly little or no coöperative planning of strikes, especially no careful timing of them, between the local unions and the general administration. Often during the first year "strikes were called in times when the general organization was least prepared, and when it required strenuous efforts to meet the requirements of such a conflict with the employers."[201]

[Pg 125]

President Sherman believed that the strike activities had been too exclusively confined to the eastern states, and even suggested that it might be better for the time being to conduct strikes only in the West. He explained his position as follows:

At the same time that the industrial unionists were pushing their strike propaganda some of them who were also members of the radical political parties were trying to bring those parties (viz., the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor party) together. To do this they realized that the two parties must agree upon a policy in regard to the attitude which the party should assume toward the trade unions. With this object in view representatives of the two socialist parties called a conference which was afterwards known as the New Jersey Socialist Unity Conference. The sessions of this conference were held in various New Jersey towns—Orange, Paterson, West Hoboken, Newark—at irregular times between September 10, 1905, and March 4, 1906. The purpose of the conference, as expressed in the Manifesto issued at the close of its sessions, was "to consider [Pg 126]the causes of the division between the two [socialist] camps and ascertain, if possible, whether solid grounds could be found for a union of the militant socialist forces ... of the State...."[203]

The conference believed that any union between the revolutionary groups in America depended upon a proper solution of two problems: "First, the proper attitude for a political party of socialism to assume toward the burning question of trades unionism; and second, the proper attitude for a political party of socialism to assume toward the ownership of its press, the voice of the movement."[204]

The first of these two problems took up the greater part of the attention of the conference, and it is the only one which was of special import in the development of industrial unionism. The very fact of such a conference indicates that there was at least that harmony between the two camps which was necessary to enable them to get together to discuss differences. Members of both parties, too, believed that a harmony platform was actually in process of successful application, so far as the economic or labor-union policy of both parties was concerned. For—behold the I. W. W.! "Such a conference," said the secretary of the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor party, "taking place at a time when the hitherto divided socialists are approaching one another and joining hands on the basis of the Industrial Workers of the World—such a conference we feel confident, at least feel hopeful, will promote the desired end of socialist unity."[205]

Shall the political party, the radical political party, be [Pg 127]neutral in its attitude towards the economic organization of the working class? This was the real question at issue. The prevailing sentiment at this conference was in the negative.

Some of the delegates were more hesitant about such a proposition as the unqualified endorsement of the I. W. W. One of the Socialist party representatives expressed his opposition to such support in these words:

The I. W. W. has changed—shifted very decidedly—and in that the delegate proved himself something of a prophet, but its new position is anything but that of a reactionary [Pg 128]labor organization voting for a Democratic—or Republican—candidate!

The majority were emphatically for a recognition of the principle of industrial unionism, but there was some difference of opinion as to whether any particular organization should be endorsed. A number of the conferees felt that the I. W. W. should simply be commended as useful for working out the industrial-union idea, rather than given an unreserved endorsement. The final conclusions of the conference were embodied in a series of resolutions, and also expressed in detail in the Manifesto already referred to. The resolutions pertaining to the question of political-economic relations were as follows:

The second I. W. W. convention met on September 17, 1906, with ninety-three delegates. The sessions continued for sixteen days. It had been predicted at the first convention that the Industrial Workers of the World would within a year be one hundred thousand strong. This forecast was, according to Secretary Trautmann's report to the second convention, very much too sanguine. This report indicated that there were some sixty thousand members (including 27,000 in the Western Federation of Miners) at the opening of the second convention. The following tabulation of the growth of the membership during the first year is arranged from the data given in Mr. Trautmann's report:

[Pg 130]

I. W. W. Membership—First Year[210]

The data, it will be noticed, is very fragmentary in regard to the growth of the various departments, and even the figures representing total membership can be considered by no means conservative. Mr. St. John, until recently Secretary-Treasurer of the organization, wrote "that the Second Annual Convention reports claim 60,000 members, but the books of the organization did not justify any such claims; in fact, the average paid-up membership with the W. F. of M. for the first year of the organization was 14,000 members in round numbers."[212]

As has already been intimated, the Mining Department was from the first not very securely held in the bonds of the [Pg 131]general organization, and it is very doubtful whether the 27,000 miners should be included in I. W. W. membership estimates even during the period while the Western Federation was nominally a department of the Industrial Workers of the World. According to Secretary Trautmann, it was evident "on August 1, 1905, that those brave men of the American Labor Union, numbered then 1,100, and approximately 700 in the Metal Department, [and] could not be swayed by the denunciation of the opposition in the West, those under cover as friends, often more dangerous than those openly fighting the I. W. W." "These 1900 [1800]," continued Mr. Trautmann, "constituted the only force with which the constructive work was begun."[213]

President Sherman reported that on September 10, 1906, the locals holding charters in the Industrial Workers of the World numbered 394, of which number 120 were not at that time in good standing, so that there were at the time of the second convention 274 active locals enrolled.[214] The greater part of this number consisted of local unions directly attached to the general organization without any intervening subordinate division or subdivision. A considerable minority of the total, however, comprised local unions which were only indirectly attached to the general organization, such locals being enrolled in District Councils or National Industrial Unions, or even Industrial Departments and being directly responsible to that council, national union, or department.

There were but three departments actually organized as such during the first twelve months. These were the Transportation Department, the Metals and Machinery Department, and the Mining Department. The Mining Department [Pg 132]was the only one of the three having the members necessary to justify existence as a separate autonomous department, and it was finally the only department recognized as such at the second convention. The Western Federation of Miners was thus the I. W, W.'s only genuine department—and a department, moreover, which was agitating sub rosa all the while against the general organization of which it was even a nominal department for but a few months.

Concerning the Transportation Department, Secretary Trautmann reported to the convention that, "the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees ... installed itself as the Transportation Department of the I. W. W., it being accepted as a fact that said Brotherhood was an integral part of the American Labor Union and had at the time of installment 2,087 members...."

Although the convention decided not to recognize the Transportation Department, it did endorse a resolution providing "that the credentials of all local unions of transportation workers who are sending delegates, be recognized and the delegates seated."[216] The break-up of the Metal and Machinery Department and the bolting of that (chief) subdivision of it which was formerly and now again became the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has been referred to above.[217] The convention took the same action in regard to [Pg 133]this as in the case of the Transportation Department, denying recognition to the Department but granting it to those local unions (the United Metal Workers Union in this case) which had sent delegates to the convention.

It was claimed that seven international unions voluntarily joined the Industrial Workers of the World, "even though they were forced by the power of the capitalist combinations to remain ... attached to the American Federation of Labor."[218] The seven "international" industrial unions are nowhere specifically mentioned but must presumably have included unions belonging to the three departments mentioned above and which were organized during the first year. The International Musical Union was one of these so-called international unions. This organization was not even satisfied to be an international industrial union—it insisted on being a Department as well—and claimed the title of

There is not now and never has been a genuine, that is to say a constitutional, Public Service Department in the I. W. W., and of course the convention could not recognize a mere fragment of what might some day become a Public Service Department.

Since 1906 there have been no Industrial Departments [Pg 134](i. e., no divisions larger in scope than the National Industrial Union) in the I. W. W. Nevertheless, the Constitution continued, up to the tenth convention in 1916, to speak of the organization as being composed of National Industrial Departments, National Industrial Unions, etc.[220] The Agricultural Workers' Organization (the "A. W. O."), organized in 1914, which now constitutes a large and increasingly important division of the I. W. W., is akin to what the founders wanted to have in the I. W. W. in 1905. There is more body to it today than there was to any of the so-called International Industrial Departments of the earlier period. It is to be noted that in all the editions of the Constitution since 1906 the word "International" has been replaced wherever it occurred by the word "National."

Throughout the whole of its history the Industrial Workers of the World has been composed almost entirely of local unions scattered throughout the United States and Canada, all directly connected with the central office or what is called the General Organization. The development of subdivisions (such as Industrial District Councils, International Industrial Unions, and Industrial Departments), between the general organization and the local union has not been appreciable until within the last two or three years.[221]

[Pg 135]
[Pg 136]

CHAPTER V
The Coup of the "Proletarian Rabble"
(1906)

The second convention was the occasion of the first split in the ranks of the Industrial Workers of the World. At this time the friction seemed to be chiefly personal, whereas the second schism in 1908 was primarily due to differences in regard to principles and policies. It is true that principles and policies were involved in the feud of 1906, but they lurked obscurely in the background, while personal antagonisms—charges and counter-charges of graft, corruption and malfeasance in office—held the center of the stage. From the inception of the movement the year before a smouldering dissension developed between the poorer and less skilled groups of workers—largely migratory and casual laborers, the "revolutionists" or the "wage-slave delegates" as they were called in the second convention—these on the one side, and the more highly skilled and strongly organized groups called (by the other side) the "reactionaries" or the "political fakirs." It might be remarked in passing that, in this ultra-revolutionary I. W. W., the "conservatism" of the "reactionaries" ought to be heavily discounted and the radicalism of the "revolutionists" raised to the nth degree to get the true perspective! Involved with this group hostility was the trouble stirred up by various members of the two Socialist political parties.

But all this internal antagonism was very obscure. It evidenced itself chiefly in the personal fight between the Sherman-Hanneman-Kirkpatrick faction and the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction at the second convention, which finally resulted in the deposition of C. O. Sherman as General President. Mr. St. John has described the situation as it appeared from his side of the controversy. At the second convention it soon developed, he says,

The revolutionists, who were referred to later by their opponents as the "proletarian rabble" of the "beggars," held a pre-convention conference in Chicago on August 14, 1906. This little "curtain-raiser" was called by Local [Pg 138]Union No. 23 of the Department of Metal and Machinery which on July 20 sent out a letter to the various I. W. W. locals in Chicago, which declared that "developments during the past year have proven to us that the constitution does not come up to the requirements of the rank and file ...," and urged a preliminary conference to consider the following propositions:

The conference met with delegates present from about sixteen local unions and unanimously decided that a president was unnecessary, that all organizers, lecturers, etc., should be nominated by the local unions and elected by the "rank and file," that each local should receive reports of all Executive Board sessions, which, moreover, should be open to the rank and file, and that every local union be represented at the approaching convention by at least two delegates.

Commenting on the conference, J. M. O'Neill remarks that "there is a vast difference between being class-conscious and being class-crazy."[226]

An inkling of the beautifully chaotic condition of affairs no later than December, 1905, is given by the comments of Max Hayes in the International Socialist Review for January, 1906.

The principal charge against President Sherman was that of misdirected and generally extravagant expenditure of the funds of the organization. The auditing committee at the 1906 convention reported that "the expenditures of the [Pg 140]ex-General President show gross extravagance and strong evidence of corruption. During a period of thirty-three days he flung away on a junketing trip, not a single local being organized by him at any time, the sum of $731.55...."[228] William. E. Trautmann, the General Secretary-Treasurer, reported that he was "compelled to pay bills under protest for services never rendered, or for such things as should be considered an insult and outrage against the entire membership."[229]

The opponents of Sherman did not believe that these alleged offenses were either the most important or the most dangerous of his pernicious activities. When the case finally came before the Master in Chancery, there was among the affidavits filed in the case of St. John versus Sherman one by a certain Lillian Farberg,

The foregoing charges were flatly denied by J. M. O'Neill, the editor of the Miners' Magazine; at the fifteenth convention of the W. F. M., he repudiated these and other accusations made by the "DeLeon coterie" and offered $500 [Pg 141]reward for the establishment of the truth of any of them.[231] Delegate Parks, one of the "wage slave" delegates, declared that

Immediately on the adjournment of the 1907 convention, ex-President Sherman issued a statement "to officers and members of all local unions and all departments of the Industrial Workers of the World" in which he declared, "that the recent convention ... violated the constitution in various ways"; "that the convention was controlled by the members of the Socialist Labor Party under the leadership of Daniel DeLeon," and that this "most disgraceful gathering" was "illegal and unconstitutional."[233] A month later Sherman issued on his own behalf a letter to the I. W. W. membership, in which he denied the various charges of extravagance and connivance at illegal tactics on his part. In this letter Sherman says that "not a vote was cast on any important matter in this so-called convention until DeLeon had been consulted, or he had given them the 'wise business wink.'"[234]

As far as parliamentary convention tactics are concerned there is no doubt that both factions displayed a lofty contempt for parlor etiquette. Several months later William [Pg 142]D. Haywood wrote to St. John in regard to this matter. He emphatically condemned "Shermanism," but goes on: "You were entirely too harsh, unnecessarily so; the Gordian, presidential and other knots that you cut with a broad axe were only slip knots that could have been easily untied." "In this way," he concludes, "much dissension could have been avoided."[235] An anarchist sympathizer with the "proletarian rabble" frankly writes: "Some might claim that the action of the convention of 1906 was illegal ... [but] in a crisis there is no question of legality. It is the time for deeds...."[236]

Seven days had elapsed since the opening of the convention before the reports of officers were given. During this time—nearly half the time the convention was in session—almost nothing was accomplished. This delay made very plausible indeed the accusation made by the "wage slave" delegates that the reactionaries had deliberately planned to force them out of the convention by resort to these dilatory tactics. Whether or not the Sherman faction had decided on such tactics, there is no question but that the freezing out of the "wage slaves" would be a very natural result. Article VI. of the Constitution provided that "the expenses of delegates attending the convention shall be borne by their respective organizations." Now many of the local unions could afford to provide their delegates with adequate expense money; others could afford but very inadequate provision for expenses. Thus, most of the delegates from unions in the Mining Department—and those in general from the relatively better established unions—were quite well provided for, the Miners' delegates, e. g., receiving mileage plus five dollars per day expense money for every day [Pg 143]they were away from home. The great majority, however, were paid nothing but mileage and were obliged to pay their own expenses and had come with funds absolutely insufficient for a prolonged meeting. Delegate Lingenfelter, in a speech in support of an unsuccessful motion to allow proxies to delegates who were compelled to leave on account of lack of funds, said:

The "beggars" gained the upper hand. Mr. DeLeon succeeded in putting through a motion to suspend the above mentioned article of the Constitution concerning delegates' expenses, and a resolution was finally passed which authorized the payment of $1.50 per day from the general treasury to all without the necessary expense money.[238]

In this way the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction secured control of the convention and brought about the deposition of President Sherman—the first and last President of the Industrial Workers of the World. The convention now proceeded to consider some of the problems of industrial unionism which had cropped out in the course of twelve months' experience. Meanwhile ex-President Sherman and his followers had decided to stand pat—but not on the floor of the convention. They took possession of the General Headquarters and with the assistance of the police successfully held them against all comers.

[Pg 144]

This picturesque situation is explained to the membership in an official announcement issued by the new Executive Board in behalf of the "proletarian rabble":

The success of the "beggars, tramps, and proletarian rabble," that is to say, of the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction, was hardly complete. They were officials without an office in which to do business, without equipment of any sort, and without money. Secretary St. John writes that they "were obliged to begin work after the second Convention without the equipment of so much as a postage stamp." The financial routine in the general office had required the signature of the president on all checks and prohibited the [Pg 145]withdrawal of funds from the bank without that signature. Now the President was deposed, the office abolished, and the deposed President refused to sign the necessary requisitions so that the four thousand dollars belonging to the I. W. W. in the Prairie State Bank of Chicago was safely out of reach of both factions.[241]

The matter was at last taken to the Court of Chancery and a restraining order issued prohibiting Sherman and his friends from appropriating the property of the Industrial Workers of the World. The findings of the Master in Chancery were in substance as follows:

The findings were on the whole favorable to the "wage slaves" faction, but even so the latter were in a rather forlorn position now, having been abandoned to their fate by the Western Federation of Miners (whose delegates supported Sherman, some of them bolting the convention before its adjournment), and by the Socialist party. Before long the Western Federation finally withdrew its support from the Sherman faction and early in the year 1907 the "would-be usurpers" gave up the struggle,[243] but the Western [Pg 146]Federation of Miners did not come back into the fold. They decided to withhold payment of dues to either faction pending their anticipated and formally realized secession at their convention in May, 1907.

Mr. Sherman had made a desperate fight. He and his followers conducted what was virtually a duplicate even if spurious general office and organization of the I. W. W. The Shermanites, who had retained control of the "Industrial Worker,"[244] the journal of the organization, continued its publication for several months at Joliet, Illinois. Herein were published refutations of the charges set forth by the "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" in their special series of Bulletins of the Industrial Workers of the World. With the surrender of the Shermanites the "Industrial Worker" was discontinued, and the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction—now the I. W. W.—established the Industrial Union Bulletin as a weekly organ.

The now triumphant revolutionists considered that the whole trouble was due to an attempt to sell out to the capitalists, to make the organization a conservative—and therefore a perfectly harmless—association. Mr. Trautmann insisted that their "sole object when forcibly taking possession of headquarters and all their documents" was to destroy all evidence of their plots for

"The danger was great," declared Daniel DeLeon in his speech at the adjournment of the 1906 convention. "The conspiracy was deep laid. We see it appearing in the papers from Denver all the way across to New York. It was a conspiracy to squelch the revolution in this convention, and to start over again another American Federation of Labor."[246]

DeLeon's sentiments regarding the schism of 1906 are particularly worthy of note, because of the fact that he was destined two years later to figure with seceders in a split of that same "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" which was now victorious and of one mind in overthrowing "usurpers" and apparently in harmony in every way. But in two years the "DeLeon-Anarchist Combine" was to change to the DeLeonites versus the Anarchists, each of whom was to constitute a separate organization called the Industrial Workers of the World.

Socialist party leaders were as firmly convinced as was DeLeon that there was a "deep-laid conspiracy," but they believed that DeLeon was the arch conspirator. When the Seventh International Socialist Congress met in Stuttgart in 1907, Morris Hillquit and J. Mahlon Barnes presented the Socialist version of the affair.[247] The fatal trouble from the [Pg 148]very beginning, they thought, was the inclusion in the I. W. W. of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the "enfant chétif" (as they expressed it) of the Socialist Labor party.[248] They go on to tell how this alleged conspirator prepared the ground for the "capture" of the convention in the interest of this "enfant chétif":

[Pg 149]

Vincent St. John offers some interesting testimony against the allegation that DeLeonism dominated the second convention:

These conflicting opinions are presented for what they are worth. On both sides they should be taken with salt. The writer makes no attempt to pass judgment except to point out that the Socialist party report to the Stuttgart Congress is obviously in error in claiming that the Master in Chancery pronounced in favor of the old (i. e., the Sherman) administration.[251]

The "proletarian rabble" recognized that the power of the opposition would be fatally undermined if it lost the active support of the Western Federation of Miners. It has been seen that they did finally lose that support when the W. F. M. finally cut loose entirely from anything and everything calling itself I. W. W. This—the most staggering defection of all that the young I. W. W. had to face—had been rather plainly foreshadowed as early as the fall of [Pg 150]1905. Within three months of the adjournment of the first convention the report was circulated among various unions in the West that the Western Federation had refused to join the Industrial Workers of the World.[252] This rumor was without foundation. The Western Federation did join the I. W. W.

But this was not to be for long. Although the break did not come for some months after the second I. W. W. convention, some premonitory evidences of disaffection came to the surface at that meeting. As will be seen, there were several things which aggravated the trouble in the Mining Department. The deposition of President Sherman by the delegates to the second convention, and the consequent confusion, especially in regard to finances, resulted in the bolting of the convention by the delegates of the Mining Department (the Western Federation of Miners).[254] From the close of the second convention until the summer of 1907 the Western Federation was nominally a part of the Industrial [Pg 151]Workers of the World, but was all this time becoming more and more alienated in spirit. For all practical purposes, January 1, 1907, may be regarded as marking the termination of the Federation's connection with the I. W. W. This whole controversy between the I. W. W. and its Mining Department, i. e., between the "proletarian rabble" (the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John faction) on the one hand, and on the other the "reactionaries" (the Sherman-Hanneman faction), supported for the most part by the Western Federation of Miners—all this frenzy of squabbling is given a great deal of space in the Miners' Magazine (the official journal of the Western Federation) during the last three months of 1906.[255]

The men most prominent in the activities of the second convention were Daniel DeLeon, Vincent St. John, C. O. Sherman, and Wm. E. Trautmann. Members of the Socialist party were less prominent and numerous than they had been a year before. Neither Mr. Simons nor Mr. Debs was present at the 1906 meeting. The Socialist Labor party contingent was, however, quite as strong as ever—one of its new delegates being Mr. Paul Augustine, later the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor party.[256] DeLeon's influence was as strong as ever. He was declared to have controlled the convention—this was reiterated by individuals both inside and outside. Ex-President Sherman, in a speech in his own defense on the convention floor, said:

The members of the Socialist party, naturally biased against the Socialist Labor party, were quite ready to accuse its representatives of steam-roller methods at the 1906 convention. As before, these insinuations were quite correct in that the Socialist Labor party, through its unofficial representatives, most of all through DeLeon, did thus indirectly have a great deal of influence in the convention. But it is yet open to question whether this influence was a pernicious one. Moreover, the dominant policy of the convention was not an unmixed DeLeon policy and the dominant group contained another element, viz., the more thoroughgoing non-, or rather, anti-political faction, attaching to no political party whatever. The chief spokesmen of this element were William E. Trautmann, the Secretary-Treasurer, and Vincent St. John,[258] who was to succeed the former in that office several years later. He was a member and official of the Western Federation of Miners, and a radical and enthusiastic devotee of the principle of industrial unionism. He emphatically opposed the action of the Western Federation officials at the 1906 convention and instead of following the majority bolt from the I. W. W., he bolted the Western Federation and was elected a member of the General Executive Board of the I. W. W.[259]

[Pg 153]

These two men represented the alleged Anarchist end of the so-called "DeLeon-Anarchist combine" and were the real spokesmen of the more revolutionary element. They would have preferred to have had the political clause of the Preamble stricken out, but were not powerful enough to swing the majority of the delegates to that position and finally agreed as a compromise to stand with DeLeon and his followers for the retention of the political clause. The fight over the political clause was thus postponed to a later convention.

The financial problem was from the first made more difficult by a kind of dual unionism which was contrary to the spirit, at least, of the I. W. W. law, but which was tolerated because quite unavoidable. The involuntary connection of many local unions with more than one general organization resulted in the subjection of such unions to the payment of dues to each central organization. To relieve this excessive burden of taxation it was decided by the General Executive Board to make a discount from the regular dues in favor of all locals thus situated. This discounting policy, felt to be necessary in order to hold many unions in the organization, meant a loss of revenue which could ill be borne.

Moreover, in consideration of some material equipment in the way of office furniture and supplies, seals and charters were furnished free of charge to all unions formerly with the American Labor Union or the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. To top all, the mismanagement and extravagance resulting from discord in the general office, and incompetence among the officials, almost strangled the organization before its first anniversary. Debts were contracted with manufacturers and

[Pg 154]

Despite these difficulties there was turned into and expended from the General Defense Fund (in addition to the voluntary subscriptions) the sum of $8,910.00 in behalf of twelve different strikes. The report of the auditing committee showed that there was on hand August 22, 1906, a net balance of $3,555.92.[261]

[Pg 155]

CHAPTER VI
The Structure of a Militant Union

With its "house-cleaning" job off its hands, the convention now turned its attention to some of the specific problems of policy and constructive work. The activities of the past fourteen months had brought new and challenging questions to the fore. One of the most important was the problem of the agricultural laborer. Attention centered upon the farm laborers and the lumber workers. Most of the industrialists agreed that the coöperation of the country workers—farm laborers and lumbermen—and the city proletariat was absolutely necessary for the success of revolutionary industrialism.

The I. W. W. had already made some headway among the lumber workers, and it was in connection with this element that many believed it most feasible to organize the farm laborers. Secretary Trautmann devoted two solid [Pg 156]pages of his report to the discussion of the relation of the farm and forest workers with the city proletariat. He believed that the failure of revolutionary movements was often due to the lack of coöperation between these sections of the working class. He urged the organization to follow among the farm laborers those methods which had already been applied with some success in the lumber camps.

An important change in the geographical distribution of [Pg 157]propaganda and organizing activities was that suggested to the convention by President Sherman. He thought that these activities of the Industrial Workers of the World should not be immediately spread indiscriminately over all parts of the country, believing it to be most expedient to allow the eastern section of the United States to lie fallow for a time, so to speak. He recommended that

This proposal was, however, not very favorably received by the convention. The committee on reports of officers made, among others, this recommendation, which received the endorsement of the convention:

[Pg 158]

The average member of the Industrial Workers of the World was exceedingly sceptical of the value of undiluted representative democracy for either a labor union or a political state. He suspected that any official might, and probably would, be disloyal. He realized how difficult it is for any organization which depends on representatives to maintain a body of such representatives who really represent. He knew how easy it is for a delegate to be "reached"—to be influenced by one of a score of insidious forms of corruption. This accounts for the stress laid by the Industrial Workers of the World upon the referendum idea, from the very beginning of its existence. Let the acts of delegates in convention be ratified by referendum vote. The convention is the law-making body, but it is always subject to the will of rank and file. All factions, even that one which plotted disruption, united in lip service, at least, to the idea of the referendum. Labor-union democracy must be made democratic by referendum control. How much of all this referendum clamor was "sounding brass" is indicated by some remarks made by Mr. DeLeon (who, of course, believed in the referendum) at the second convention:

The convention had to face the important fact that a very large proportion of the human raw-material for I. W. W. [Pg 159]propaganda were foreigners, new to America and speaking alien tongues. From the very first a very liberal policy in regard to the foreign element had been adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World. Certainly they could not consistently adopt a narrow policy here and draw the color line it they intended really to become an all-inclusive democratic organization. It will be remembered that protest against discrimination against the negro by craft unions was voiced by William D. Haywood at the very opening of the first convention.[267] At the second convention this liberal attitude was maintained in regard to all foreign elements. Moreover, in the work of organizing the immigrants it was proposed to go still further and take the aggressive.

[Pg 160]

Requests were made at the convention for literature in many foreign languages—Macedonian, Jewish, Italian, Slavonian, Spanish, etc.—on behalf of these and others. Foreign-language publications and pamphlets were issued and foreign-language branches of the local unions had been established and continued to be extended in scope after the second convention. The Italian Socialist Federation asked for the services of an Italian organizer, and one was provided. An Italian paper, Il Proletario, had been appearing for a short time as an official organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, and its publication was continued under the supervision of the General Executive Board.[269]

Furthermore, the structure and scheme of organization in the local unions was modified to suit the requirements of a polyglot membership. A motion was proposed and carried

It is worthy of note that sex lines were ignored quite as completely as race lines. Perhaps the organization leaned backwards a little in the policy of special inducements to women and "juniors"—indicated in the resolution carried "to remit for female members, ten cents per member per month to the union, the same to apply to juniors."[271]

The character of the unit group—the local union—as being preëminently industrial in nature, was emphatically reaffirmed and more fully defined than ever before.

[Pg 161]

There was some agitation in New York City in the summer of 1906 to organize that section on a basis of one local union to each industry, with each local divided into sub-branches as the needs and extent of its constituency might require. These latter sub-branches were, moreover, to have no direct connection with the General Organization. This plan was opposed at the convention. It was in conflict with the policy of centralization which characterized the earlier stages of I. W. W. development. It was emphatically condemned by President Sherman as a violation of the constitution. He asserted that it centered the "power of the whole industry in the hands of the members of one local union."[273]

Centralization was wanted—but it was national (or international) centralization, not district centralization. A provision had been made the year before for what were called "mixed locals" which were to include workers in various [Pg 162]industries, but only so to include them temporarily; it being understood that so soon as a sufficient number of the workers in any particular industry came into the locality to warrant their organization into a union that all members of the mixed local who belonged to that industry should immediately withdraw from the "mixed" and join the "pure" industrial union. It was, of course, assumed that no one should join a mixed local or remain in a mixed local when a union of his industry existed in that locality. The privilege of membership in the mixed locals had already been very much abused. In numerous instances it was found that members continued as members of the mixed local, even after their particular industrial union had been organized, or even maintained membership in both the mixed and the industrial body at the same time. This double membership was not only of no value—it was usually positively disastrous. It made confusion and brought on factional fights between "mixed" and industrial bodies,[274] and resulted in a double, and consequently inflated, membership representation at the annual conventions. After an extended discussion of the seemingly unmixed evils of mixed "locals," the convention passed a resolution defining their functions. "The mixed local," runs the resolution, "is not to be a permanent institution in the I. W. W. It is merely the propaganda [body] that will build up an industrial union for the future. It is a recruiting station [only]."[275]

[Pg 163]

Important subdivisions of the organization were the Industrial Councils. These had been constitutionally defined as "central bodies composed of seven or more local unions in two or more industries."[276] Such central bodies had been organized during the first year in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Paterson, N. J., and Flat River, Mo., and were, according to Secretary Trautmann, "in process of formation in Cleveland, Seattle, and Toronto, Canada."[277] Steps had also been taken toward the formation of the Arizona (state) District Industrial Council. These bodies had a definite future rôle as well as an immediate function mapped out for them. Here is given some little conception of the anticipated modus operandi of one part of the coöperative machinery of a future industrial society—of which the Industrial Workers of the World is proposing to be the framework. The work of the industrial councils, present and future, is explained by Wm. E. Trautmann as follows:

The original constitution had provided for thirteen international industrial departments, which could be organized in any industry so soon as it contained ten locals with a membership of not less than 3,000 members.[279] The reaction against the departmental idea at the second convention was sufficiently strong to carry an amendment to the constitution making the prerequisite to departmental organization in any industry "ten locals with a membership of not less than 10,000 members." This change was partly the result of a general feeling that the departmental system was not as practicable as had been at first believed. Moreover, it was believed that, so long as departments could be organized on the basis of a membership of only 3,000, departmental autonomy would be an absolute farce, and simply resolve itself into local union or locality domination. The defenders of the departmental idea rightly insisted that that idea be given a fair chance to work itself out. Another group—industrial unionists who laid great stress on the local industrial union as the division which should first of all be possessed of complete autonomy—felt that this change was a change in their favor in so far as it made the attainment of the departmental status more difficult and the existing number of departments actually less. The departments, thought DeLeon,

The Universal Label, provided for in Article IV., Section 10, of the original constitution, had not given entire satisfaction. In fact, a number of the delegates wished to abolish the label altogether. This demand grew out of the misuse of the label itself. Many locals suffered it to get into the hands of employers, others coöperated with their employers in its use. Now coöperation with employers in any way whatever is in absolute violation of the spirit and letter of the I. W. W. law. Hence the label was looked upon by many as something of a very compromising nature. It came near being entirely abolished, but finally it was decided that the label be retained, but used only in strict accord with the provisions of "Resolution A," which reveals the rôle of the red (revolutionary) label as opposed to that of the orthodox ("pure and simple") trade-union label. The resolution reads:

It has been stated that experience with, and the deposition of, President Sherman resulted in the abolition of the office of General President. No doubt the Sherman controversy [Pg 167]was the principal predisposing cause, but it is very probable that there would have been some agitation for the abolition of that office even if there had not been a single charge against Sherman as President. A good many were a little shy of the name "President"—it savored of the present political state! Others thought it involved too great concentration of power in the hands of one individual. These latter were the sponsors of the "rank and file" and the forerunners of those who later figured as "decentralizers" in the controversy concerning centralization in the Industrial Workers of the World.[282] "The people who direct the Industrial Workers of the World," said Delegate Reid, "are the rank and file.... In a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom, and wisdom is not in the brain of one man to direct this institution."[283] Furthermore, as DeLeon pointed out, "the President is mainly, essentially and exclusively an organizer, a general organizer with a high-sounding title and wages and expenses to match...."[284] The committee appointed to report on the advisability of retaining the office of President reported that it came to its negative conclusion "on the assumption that there was not a man in this convention strong enough or capable enough to assume the office of President."[285]

The efforts of the industrial abolitionists did not end with the attempt to abolish the departments and the universal label, and the successful abolition of the office of General President. Many less important matters were put under the ban. It was decreed that "all rituals, signs, grips and [Pg 168]passwords, borrowed from pure and simpledom, be abolished," and that the use of all terms of salutation of the more orthodox sort, such as "brother" and "comrade" be abolished and the term "fellow-worker" be used on all occasions.[286] Of more material consequence to those concerned was the reduction made in the salaries of the national officers. The salaries of the General Secretary-Treasurer (now the national head of the organization), and Assistant General Secretary-Treasurer were reduced from one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, to one hundred dollars.[287] The committee making the recommendation felt that former salary was a sum of absurdly bourgeois magnitude!

The question of political action[288] was thoroughly ventilated once more. The more revolutionary group of industrialists renewed their fight to have the clause "until all the toilers come together on the political as well as the industrial field" cleansed from the taint of politics by the striking out of the words "political as well as." The motion involving this change was emphatically opposed by the spokesman of the Socialist Labor party faction. Daniel DeLeon and Hermann Richter both spoke against the motion. Mr. Richter, later the General Secretary-Treasurer of the Detroit (S. L. P.) faction of the Industrial Workers of the World, believed that "if a man takes the obligation as a member of this organization there is a duty upon that [Pg 169]member to be active at all times, and especially on election day, in behalf of his class and of himself as a member thereof."[289]

Neither side was wholly successful. By way of compromise it was finally agreed that the clause containing the rather distasteful word "political" should stand unaltered, but that an additional clause should be appended at the end of the Preamble. This new clause reads: "Therefore, without endorsing or desiring the endorsement of any political party, we unite under the following constitution."[290] Political action was still recognized and no less emphatically endorsed than before,[291] but all political activities would now be subject to very definite constitutional restrictions as to the relations between the Industrial Workers of the World and the political parties.

It would seem that, if politics was to be discounted in the preamble, the discussion of that subject in the local union should surely be subject to restriction if not absolute taboo. This was President Sherman's attitude. He thought

The convention did not agree with him. No doubt this was partly due to the fact that the majority of the delegates could not persuade themselves to tolerate any suggestion (be it ever so wise a one) made by President Sherman. Moreover, it must have been realized that such a prohibition of political literature or political discussion could really never be enforced; that on the contrary it would even stimulate such discussion. However this may be, the committee on good and welfare submitted under this head the recommendation that "in local unions at least ten minutes be given to the discussion of economic and political questions at each meeting." This resolution was endorsed by the convention.[293]

The famous Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case occupied much of the attention of the second convention. At the time of the convention these three men (of whom the two former were members and officers of the Western Federation of Miners—then the Mining Department of the I. W. W.) were imprisoned in the Ada County jail at Boise, Idaho, charged with the murder of ex-Governor Steunenberg of that state. This great labor case, culminating in 1907 in the trial and acquittal of the three men, makes up one of the most interesting and dramatic chapters in the annals of the labor movement. It was an event which deeply concerned the Industrial Workers of the World, and was a really potent factor in shaping the subsequent history of that organization. The story of the judicial deportation [Pg 171]of these three men had of course become known to the world long before the 1906 convention of the I. W. W., but none the less a brief recital of the event and the part taken by the I. W. W. therein was incorporated in President Sherman's report to the convention. Some excerpts from this report are here quoted. It should be remembered that, at the time of the deportation and trial of these officials of the Western Federation of Miners, that organization was a part of the Industrial Workers of the World, and that (with the exception of Pettibone) these men were, at least formally, I. W. W. men, though they were referred to almost constantly as officials of the Western Federation of Miners.

The Industrial Workers of the World was among the first to come to the defense of the indicted men. The General Office in Chicago immediately sent out thousands of circular letters throughout the country asking for contributions; large amounts were turned over to the Special Defense Fund from the General Defense Fund of the I. W.

[Pg 172]

W., and finally a total of $10,982.51 was raised. This, labor's common extremity, did actually, though but temporarily, achieve that miracle (to appear later in San Diego and Lawrence) of I. W. W.'s, Socialists, Socialist Laborites, Anarchists, and "Pure and Simplers,"[296] even, coöperating in a common activity. The I. W. W. was the first to organize protest meetings, and secured the services of Clarence S. Darrow for the legal defense. The slogan "Shall our brothers be murdered?" was reiterated on every hand and made the watchword of the defense.

The situation was still a desperate one at the time of the 1906 convention. The men were still held in jail awaiting trial. It seems to have been the general belief that they were to be "railroaded" to the penitentiary or the gallows, and the conduct of the prosecution as well as the postponement of the trial, all tended to strengthen that belief. The delegates at the convention decided to turn fifty per cent of the per-capita tax of the Mining Department into the Moyer-Haywood Defense Fund. Some of the delegates undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of the I. W. W. in the Moyer-Haywood affair. Thus William E. Trautmann asserted on the floor of the convention that

The jailing of Haywood, especially, one of the most aggressive and influential organizers of the I. W. W., deeply affected the members of that body and really subtracted much from their strength. It was generally felt among laboring men and women that Moyer and Haywood were jailed because they were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, or because they were Socialists. A letter written by Haywood in the Ada County jail on the day that the second convention opened in Chicago indicates the active interest he continued to take in the organization even during his imprisonment. It is here given in part:

Ada County Jail,

Boise, Idaho, Sept. 17, 1906.

Comrades and Fellow Workers:

The message was received with boundless enthusiasm. It stimulated all to more determined efforts in behalf of the accused. It doubtless had some share in influencing the minds of that group amongst the delegates, who were inclined to favor the general-strike idea. At any rate, they now urged that that idea be applied in the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case. They succeeded in having this resolution presented to the convention:

A resolution of this sort would, if it had been presented under similar circumstances, to, say, the 1914 convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, very probably be quite unanimously endorsed, but the I. W. W. of 1906 rejected the proposal. This does not mean that the general-strike principle had not taken root in the I. W. W. at all. It had. Witness the following excerpt from the recommendation of the Committee on the Reports of Officers:

Although the Moyer-Haywood trial and the final acquittal[302] of the accused men made the I. W. W. somewhat more commonly known and understood among the working class throughout the country, it was on the whole nothing less than a calamity for that organization. The I. W. W. did not even get publicity out of the Moyer-Haywood case. The Western Federation got all the advertising. It was a well-established labor organization with an eventful—almost a lurid—history. Its early activities were more or less related to the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone affair and the general public very naturally thought of the Western Federation when they thought of the Haywood deportation. The I. W. W. was not popularly associated with the Boise trial at all. The organization was obliged almost completely to suspend its vital work of organizing to raise funds for the defense. But this was not the most serious result. The Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone deportation was unquestionably one of the causes operating to split off the Western Federation of Miners. The imprisonment of Haywood certainty weakened that element in the Western Federation which backed the I. W. W. and strengthened the hands of those who were opposed to continued incorporation with it. This, combined with the deposition of President Sherman, which yet further weakened the forces of the Miners who supported the I. W. W., finally gave the I. W. W. knockers in the Western Federation the upper hand. The result was, first a decision by referendum vote of the [Pg 176]Western Federation of Miners not to pay dues to either the Shermanite or the anti-Shermanite factions in the I. W. W., and second, the formal withdrawal of the Mining Department and the reëstablishment of an independent Western Federation of Miners in the summer of 1907.[303]

Several other matters of relatively lesser import were given some attention. Even the difficulty of jurisdictional conflict, the bugbear of the craft union, was known and struggled with in a labor body supposed to be jurisdiction-controversy proof. It was so ideally, but the compromises it was obliged to make with the craft form of union naturally made trouble. Slight changes were made in the system of dues; the preamble and constitution were both somewhat improved in diction and altered in a few other minor details, but they both remained fundamentally as worked out in the first convention, except for the abolition of the presidential office. The following officers were elected for the succeeding year: William E. Trautmann (to succeed himself as) General Secretary-Treasurer, and Messrs. Vincent St. John, A. Maichele, T. J. Cole, C. E. Mahoney and E. Fischer, members of the General Executive Board, and Mr. A. S. Edwards, Editor of the Industrial Union Bulletin. It was decided that the conventions be held the third Monday in September instead of the first Monday in May, and in Chicago unless otherwise specified. The convention adjourned on Oct. 3, 1906.

The prevalent opinion at the time, and since, among the craft-unionists of the American Federation and among the party Socialists—in fact, among all those whose radicalism is comparatively conservative—was that this second convention [Pg 177]marked the beginning of the end of the I. W. W., or at least that the loss of the Mining Department (probably the organization's most conservative element) was an almost irreparable loss. "That the I. W. W. received its death blow at Chicago and will gradually disintegrate" is a fact, according to Max Hayes, "that no careful observer of labor affairs will attempt to dispute."[304] But the I. W. W. continued to exist, and finally to do more than exist, in spite of the upheaval of 1906. It is indeed doubtful if the losses of that year were unmixed calamities. Though they did deprive the organization of its most reputable, best financed, and most respectable elements, their loss tended to give sharp definition and emphatic impulse toward a more revolutionary policy. This policy was now to be applied and tested among those forming the lower stratum of the proletarian mass—the unskilled and migratory workers. This clear-cut definition of policy and its point of application might never have been possible if the complete working-class hierarchy—from lumberjack to locomotive engineer—had been preserved. The I. W. W. became after 1906, and still more after 1908, an organization of the unskilled and very conspicuously of the migratory and frequently jobless unskilled.

[Pg 178]

CHAPTER VII
The Fight for Existence

The third convention of the I. W. W. was in session in Chicago for eight days beginning September 16, 1907. This was a much less turbulent gathering than the one of the preceding year. DeLeon's chronicler says that: "At the third convention of the I. W. W.... almost complete harmony prevailed. The organization had so far recuperated from the blow it had received the year before that several organizers were being employed and many new locals had been formed."[305] He admits, however, that there was some friction, explaining that the anarchistic element "sounded the only note of discord." This, he says, was the "shadow cast before by the pure and simple physical force craze that came into full swing a year after."[306]

This, was a congress of the "proletarian rabble"—the DeLeon-St. John-Trautmann faction. The Sherman faction was no longer in existence. The DeLeonites looked upon the Shermanites as having been from the first nothing more than "a bunch of grafting politicians and labor fakirs." Leaders of the (Chicago) I. W. W. now speak of the 1906 and the 1908 conventions as marking the sloughing-off of the Socialist party politicians at the first, and the Socialist Labor party politicians at the second, respectively. St. John says that at this 1907 convention "a slight effort was made to relegate the politician to the rear."[307] The [Pg 179]Shermanites seem to have had no really substantial constituency at any time. However, it appears that this group did have a convention in July, 1907. No proceedings or other documentary records of this convention have been discovered by the writer. The Miners' Magazine remarked editorially that "The Sherman faction that held its convention in July (1907) was but a burlesque, while the Trautmann faction that held its convention in September was but a grim joke. The treasury was empty, and both factions are confronted with debts which cannot be met."[308] The Shermanite journal, The Industrial Worker, which had been held by the Sherman group and circulated from Joliet, Ill., appeared in July, 1907, and there seems to be no evidence that any subsequent numbers were issued. Both Shermanites and DeLeonites claimed control of the bulk of those I. W. W. local unions which remained after the breaking away of the Western Federation.[309] Sherman continued to present a brave and optimistic front at the time of the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation. On June 3, 1907, he wrote a letter to the convention urging the miners to re-affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World (i. e., the Shermanite faction). If they would only agree to that, he declared, it would "require not more than two months when the so-called revolutionary movement will die of its own weight, as it is only existing at this time under false pretenses...."[310]

[Pg 180]

Neither did the "proletarian rabble" have any very exalted notion of the power of the "reactionaries."

The Shermanites, however, claimed the Mining Department, and they seem on the whole to have been justified, for the pro-Sherman or "anti-proletarian" faction, so called, eventually dominated the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation of Miners and made what was already a virtual separation from the I. W. W. a formal and complete divorce. The Shermanite organ, the (old) Industrial Worker, in its issue for April, 1907, claimed that the "Mining Department of the Industrial Workers of the World gained nearly 3,000 members during the month of February" (p. 8). The Shermanites also claimed to have chartered ten locals (outside the W. F. M.) in January.[311]

There were present at the first day's session of the September 1907, convention fifty-one delegates representing sixty-five local unions, and before the close of the convention there were 74 local unions represented by 53 delegates having a total of 129 votes. Few delegates had more than two or three votes. The Paterson (N. J.) delegation had 28 votes; George Speed, representing two locals, had twelve; B. H. Williams, eleven and Daniel DeLeon, three. Contests were made on 26 of the delegates. Among the other delegates to this convention were Rudolph Katz. E. J. Foote, Vincent St. John, F. W. Heslewood, Wm. E. Trautmann, [Pg 181]M. P. Hagerty, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Mr. Katz was elected temporary chairman.[312]

The organization was not prosperous at this time. It was weakened and almost torn apart by the exhausting internal struggles it had gone though in its two short years of life. It had lost its strongest member—its main body, almost—the Western Federation of Miners, and with the Sherman contingent a considerable number of individual members in local unions even though the locals themselves retained their affiliation. The writer has not seen any definite statement as to the magnitude of the loss in locals and individuals due to the Shermanite defection. The "proletarian rabble," however, claimed that "139 of the local unions declared themselves in favor of all transactions of the convention."[313] At this time, on the same authority, there were 358 locals "carried on the books," but only 181 in good standing.[314] On a basis of locals in good standing the Shermanites took with them less than twenty-five per cent of the locals in the organization, but if we include all locals, the Shermanites must be allowed to have taken with them sixty per cent of the I. W. W. locals. Further evidence of serious decline is found in the very low proportion of I. W. W. local unions which were represented by delegates at the third convention. If we may accept Secretary Trautmann's statement[315] to the convention that there were at the time about 200 local unions in the organization, it appears that but slightly more than one-third of these locals were represented at the convention. The "Wobblies" had very little to say at this time about the membership of the organization. Indeed, there has [Pg 182]never at any time been much to say about it. In 1907 they were even less aware of their own numerical strength than they usually are. They knew, of course, that it was small and that it had dwindled much since 1905.

The leaders of the Western Federation of Miners followed the proceedings with no friendly eye. J. M. O'Neil declared that "the Trautmann faction does not dare disclose its membership...."[316] He stated further that "a delegate upon the floor of the September convention asked to know the membership of the organization, but he was curtly told by the chairman of the convention to 'never mind counting noses but [to] go home and organize.'"[317]

Official reports to the fifteenth convention of the Western Federation of Miners held the preceding June, credited the I. W. W. with a membership of 32,000, of which number 8,000 were delinquent.[318] This estimate is presumably exclusive of the Western Federation. Delegate F. W. Heslewood (W. F. M. and I. W. W., later a member of the General Executive Board of the [Chicago] I. W. W.) who was one of the so-called "wage-slave delegates" at the second I. W. W. convention, tells the miners' convention that "in one local in the state of Oregon there are over 3,000 members that travel the streets with red flags and red neckties demanding the full product of their toil...."[319] Professor Barnett puts the membership for 1907 at 6,700.[320] General Secretary St. John places it at 5,931.[321] He estimated the membership for 1905-6 as 23,219. Barnett's [Pg 183]figures are: 1905, 14,300; 1906, 10,400.[322] These estimates vary widely, but this at least is evident: there was a marked and progressive decline in membership during the organization's first two years of existence.

During the twelve-month period ending September, 1907, one hundred and eighteen locals were organized.[323] Reports published from time to time in the Miner's Magazine[324] indicate that from the birth of the organization to September 17, 1906, three hundred and ninety-four locals had been organized. A total of 512 locals had, therefore, been organized up to the convening of the third convention in September, 1907. As already noted, there were in the organization at that time about 200 local unions. The necessary inference is that three out of every four locals organized so far in the history of the I. W. W. had either broken away from the organization or simply expired. This condition has been characteristic of the I. W. W. in greater or less degree throughout its brief career. The "turnover" of local unions as well as of individual members has been immense and very irregular. No continuous reports of the new locals chartered have appeared in the I. W. W. press. Weekly reports appeared quite regularly in The Industrial Union Bulletin through the spring of 1907 and showed that four or five new locals were being chartered each week during the three-months period. There is no record of locals disbanded.

In August, 1907, the International Socialist and Labor Congress met at Stuttgart. Both factors of the I. W. W. were represented: the Sherman faction by Hugo Pick and the DeLeon-St. John faction by Fred Heslewood. The [Pg 184]latter group in its suspiciously optimistic report claimed that, "... starting out with only 2,000 members in 1905, the Western Federation of Miners not included, the organization has now 362 industrial unions and branches organized in 37 States and 3 Provinces of Canada ... [and] embraces now 28,000 militant workers...."[325]

The Congress devoted considerable attention to the problem of labor organization. The discussion of this problem centered almost exclusively upon two topics: (1) the relations between the political party and the trade union, and (2) the defects of the craft union. The I. W. W., through its representatives, was actively interested in both of these matters. Its sustained opposition to the craft type of union is characteristically displayed in the report[326] which the Socialist Labor party presented to the Congress. It was evidently written by DeLeon and it may be taken fairly to represent the attitude of the I. W. W. One paragraph of this report, which puts very comprehensively the Industrialist's indictment of the old-line union, reads:

During the discussion of the relations between the political parties and the trade unions a heated argument took place between representatives of the I. W. W. (DeLeon faction) and of the Socialist party.[328] The Socialist party delegation made a long report in which the I. W. W. was referred to in no complimentary terms. F. W. Heslewood, representing the I. W. W.,[329] retorted that the report was "a [Pg 186]tissue of lies and misrepresentations concerning the Industrial Workers of the World in America."[330] He went on to indicate the I. W. W. conceptions of the Socialist party of America in these terms:

DeLeon and Heslewood endeavored to put through a resolution in condemnation of the general position of neutrality taken by Socialist parties in their relation with labor organizations. They believed that a Socialist party should definitely endorse radical or socialistic trade unions and officially frown upon all reactionary unions, and especially condemn and discourage reaction wherever it might appear among labor organizations. "Neutrality towards trade unions," reads their resolution, "is equivalent to neutrality toward the machinations of the capitalist class."[332]

The resolutions on this subject which were finally adopted by the congress were much less militant in tone than the I. W. W. statement. The prevailing resolution read in part as follows:

Further along in the same resolution the Congress declared that the unions could not fully perform their duty in the struggle for the emancipation of the workers unless "a thoroughly socialist spirit inspires their policy" and that it was the duty of the party and the unions to render each other "moral support."[334] The editor of the official organ, however, looked upon these resolutions as being very favorable to the I. W. W., which he declared had forced the Congress to "a recognition of the paramount importance of the economic organization, with the result that the Congress itself stands almost on I. W. W. ground."[335]

The 1907 convention was a gathering of the DeLeon-Trautmann-St. John faction. At the fourth convention the first hyphen was to be smashed, but in 1907 both links held firmly. The general tone was one of harmony. An attempt was made, however, to reëstablish the office of President. After a long debate on a resolution to this effect the proposition was defeated. It was decided, however, to establish the office of General Organizer, the incumbent of which was expected also to act as Assistant General Secretary.

The original preamble of 1905 had weathered the second convention without being modified. The first lines of the second paragraph read: "Between these two classes a [Pg 189]struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field...." A motion was made at the third convention to strike out the words italicized. It was defeated by vote of 113 to 15.[336]

The "political clause" of the preamble was the subject of extended discussion.[337] At this time all efforts to alter the preamble were unsuccessful. The debate was significant, however, in foreshadowing the much more serious struggle which was to take place a year later when the I. W. W. was literally split in two over the question of the retention or the elimination of the "political clause." Daniel DeLeon was a member of the Committee on Constitution and made a long speech in opposition to the motion to eliminate from the preamble all reference to the "political field," declaring that "the position of the I. W. W. is that when the day [der Tag of the socialists, the day of the Revolution] shall come it shall itself project its own political party."[338] DeLeon was supported in his position by George Speed, who later became a member of the General Executive Board of the so-called anti-political—or Chicago—faction and who has been prominent in the activities of the I. W. W. on the Pacific Coast.[339] Delegate E. J. Foote took the same stand and made a cogent argument for retaining the political clause.

The constitution committee presented a resolution declaring that "the I. W. W. seeks its political expression only in its own industrial administration." This is vague, and it may have been made designedly so. It might have been brought in to appease those who feared that the I. W. W. would be made the tail to some political party kite.[341]

[Pg 191]

CHAPTER VIII
"Job Control" at Goldfield

It was in a Nevada mining camp that the I. W. W. made the first notable application of its principles of revolutionary industrial unionism. During the years 1906 and 1907 Goldfield as the scene of bitter disputes between the mine operators on the one hand and the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W. on the other.[342] These disputes were caused, chiefly, by a more or less successful effort on the part of these two local organizations to supplant the traditional craft unionism in Goldfield by the "new unionism."

The Western Federation of Miners was quite strongly entrenched at Goldfield by the time the I. W. W. made its début in the labor world. Its local union at Goldfield, No. 220, was an industrial union, that is, its membership comprised, as provided for in the W. F. M. constitution, "all persons working in and around the mines, mills and smelters...."[343] Early in 1906 the I. W. W. had a flourishing local (No. 77) composed of the "town workers" of Goldfield. The American Federation of Labor had almost no foothold in Goldfield at the time, the only A. F. of L. locals in the camp being the carpenters' union and the typographical union. The I. W. W. local was a more comprehensive organization even than an industrial union. It was a mass [Pg 192]union which aimed to include all the wage-earners in the community. "We proceed," says an editorial in the I. W. W. official journal, "without force, without intimidation, without deportations and without murder, to organize all wage workers in the community.... In the organization were miners, engineers, clerks, stenographers, teamsters, dishwashers, waiters—all sorts of what are called common laborers."[344]

It was apparently this unconventional type of unionism along with the very radical socialistic leanings of both town unionists (I. W. W., No. 77) and the mine unionists (W. F. M., No. 220, affiliated with the I. W. W.) that brought trouble. The I. W. W. accused the A. F. of L. unions of beginning it,[345] but the controversy was primarily with the Mine Operators' Association. Vincent St. John, in a letter published in the same issue of the Industrial Union Bulletin, says that the carpenters and typos were used "by the Mine Owners' Association as a nucleus to colonize the camp against the Western Federation of Miners and the I. W. W." The dispute began in a "controversy which arose between the Tonopah Sun, supported by A. F. of L. locals in the camp the one side, and the locals of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners on the other."[346] The Sun attacked the I. W. W., whereupon the I. W. W. (including the W. F. M.) boycotted the newspaper, and the newsboys, who were organized in the I. W. W., refused to sell it. The Sun then, according to this W. F. M. version of the affair,[347] sought the services of strike-breakers to scab on the newsboys' [Pg 193]union, but were unsuccessful. The miners' union (No. 220. W. F. M.) now called a meeting at which they decided

St. John says that this merger was made at the instigation of the Mine Owners.

It was voted on and carried.[349]

At first the project was apparently favored by the employing interests of the district, but they faced about when they saw that the miners' union (No. 220) "practiced solidarity" and apparently used the carpenters' union as their [Pg 194]tool. At any rate the miners' union "passed a motion that all men working in and around the mines as carpenters must become members of the Miners' Union." This demand was ignored.[350] The Mine Owners now issued a statement setting forth that because of the "unreasonable agitation" by the I. W. W. "... we hereby pledge ourselves to absolutely refuse to employ any man in any capacity who is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, ..." and "that the Mine Owners will recognize any miners' union, that is independent of the Industrial Workers of the World...."[351]

Pressure from the Mine Owners' Association finally brought about a referendum on the question of unscrambling. A canvass taken on March 20, 1907, showed a large majority in favor of the miners and the town workers meeting separately but continuing in other respects as one union.[352] Nevertheless, the situation continued to grow more acute, and during the spring the I. W. W. and the W. F. M. were involved in a desperate struggle for their existence in Goldfield.[353] From March 10, 1907, according to St. John's account of it,

The American Federation of Labor locals in Goldfield during this period were more or less at the mercy of the I. W. W. and the Western Federation. It is admitted that A. F. of L. men who were obnoxious to the I. W. W.s were handled without gloves. Some A. F. of L. members were forced out of town by the more radical unionists who confessed that "they were probably not provided with all the luxuries of modern civilization."[355] This I. W. W. account of the situation continues:

In April it was reported that "seventy-five per cent of the business men of Goldfield have locked out the members of No. 220. They shut down their places of business and told their help they had to join the A. F. of L. or there would be no work...."[357] The situation steadily grew worse, and finally, in December, Governor Sparks telegraphed to [Pg 196]Washington for Federal troops and they were finally sent.[358] The Governor's second telegram to the President (dated Dec. 5. 1907) read in part:

Soon after the troops were sent President Roosevelt dispatched a special commission[360] to investigate the trouble at Goldfield. The salient facts of the situation are set forth by this commission as follows:

The commission reported that there was no adequate excuse for the request for Federal troops.

Although at the time the I. W. W. and the W. F. M. made common cause, after the final separation of the two national [Pg 199]bodies the Federation was not only critical but bitterly denunciatory. The editor of the official organ of the W. F. M.—J. M. O'Neill—was derisive in his comments on the rôle of the I. W. W. at Goldfield. "The I. W. W. took root at Goldfield, Nevada," he says, "and a vast number of the miners became the victims of the sophistry and fell for the propaganda of the spouting hoodlums.... Other mining camps of Nevada became infected with I. W. W.-ism...." But he comes thankfully to the conclusion that "the labor movement of Nevada is slowly recovering from the pestilence of I. W. W.-ism...."[364]

Charges of a very different character were hurled at the I. W. W. and its Goldfield activities from financial circles in Chicago. It was stated that "detectives have substantiated allegations of a conspiracy to commit ten murders, a conspiracy formed and fostered within the hierarchy of the I. W. W...." And that "leaders of the I. W. W.... have been using this labor trouble as a lever for stockmarket jobbery...."[365] This last charge was reiterated in another issue of the same paper, in which it was suggested that "certain stock brokers were working hand in glove with the leaders and agitators at the head of the I. W. W. to break the market...."[366]

A member of the I. W. W. now living in Goldfield, and who took part in the industrial struggles of 1906 and 1907, sends the following brief comment:

The I. W. W. and the W. F. M. did win important concessions from the Mine Operators in Goldfield and that, according to officials of the I. W. W., was the reason why they were so roundly abused. "The chief crime of the I. W. W. in Goldfield," said St. John, "was that they had secured the eight-hour day with wages from $3.00 to $5.00 and board for all restaurant and hotel employees; a ten-hour day with $5.00 wages for clerks, and an eight-hour day with $6.00 per day for bartenders."[368] Most I. W. W. leaders point to the Goldfield situation in those early days as a conspicuous illustration not only of improvements gained in wage and hours, but also of the possibilities of job control by the workers. An I. W. W. who was an active participant in the Goldfield achievements of the I. W. W. and is now a district organizer on the Pacific Coast, writes:

St. John also looks back to the Goldfield period as a kind of an I. W. W. Golden Age. In his historical sketch of the I. W. W., he writes:

The I. W. W. member quoted above does not agree with St. John as to the cause of the downfall of the I. W. W. in Goldfield. The latter attributes it to the occurrence of a strike during the financial panic of 1907.[371]

Oddly enough, these anti-political, direct actionist I. W. W.s figured rather prominently in Nevada state politics at this time. Among the candidates on the Socialist party ticket in 1906 were the following:

[Pg 202]

• For Governor, Thos. B. Casey, miner, W. F. M.
• For State Treasurer, J. W. Smith, waiter, I. W. W.
• For Register, General Land Office. T. Chambers, laundry worker, I. W. W.
• For Regent, State University, Frank Myrtle, shoemaker, I. W. W.[372]

Despite the success which mass organization met with in Goldfield, the I. W. W. was not at that time at all partial to the idea of mass organization. F. W. Heslewood declared that he was opposed to taking into one local union every worker around a town, believing as he did that the Goldfield practice was contrary to "the very fundamental principles of industrial unionism...."[373] Another member said:

The reality of the sentiment in favor of some modification of the original structural form of the I. W. W. in the direction of a more simple or mass form of organization is evidenced by the long discussion on the floor of the convention of a proposal to abolish the departments. Since 1908 the I. W. W. has had a precarious foothold in Goldfield. The [Pg 203]combined effects of the exhausting struggles which have been described and the financial panic of 1907 were overwhelming for an organization which at the best had little in the way of reserve resources. "The strike of the W. F. M. in October, 1907," says St. John, "took place during a panic and destroyed the organization's [i. e., the I. W. W.'s] control in that district."[375]

There is at this time (1916) a struggling local in Goldfield—Metal Mine Workers' Union No. 353, organized in August, 1914. The author recently wrote to the secretary of this local, making inquiries in regard to the present labor situation in Goldfield and the condition of the local union. He replied: "The economic conditions of this camp forbid the answer of the question you ask.... I trust ... it will not be long before 353 can meet openly and above board."[376]

The organization continued to over-indulge in strikes. It was more or less involved in the strike of the Electrical Workers of Schenectady in December, 1906. In 1907 it was involved in the following strikes among others: textile workers, Skowhegan, Maine, February to April; silk workers of Paterson. N. J., March; silk workers of Lancaster, Pa., fall of 1907; piano workers of Paterson, N. J., April; the loggers in Eureka, Cal., May, 1907; the saw-mill workers of Portland, Ore.; the sheet steel workers in Youngstown; the tube-mill workers in Bridgeport, Conn.; the miners in Tonopah, Nevada; the foundry workers in Detroit; and the smeltermen in Tacoma, Wash., in the summer of 1907. Goldfield, of course, was the scene of an almost continuous epidemic of strikes during the years 1906 and 1907.

In his report to the third convention the General Secretary-Treasurer says that

[Pg 204]

The strikers at Schenectady made use of syndicalistic tactics which have been strongly advocated in the I. W. W. literature. "At two o'clock Monday," [December 10] it was reported, "about 3,000 men struck. They did not walk out, but remained at their places, simply stopping production."[378] Reports of this strike from I. W. W. sources give the impression that the American Federation of Labor bodies in Schenectady did much to block the efforts of the I. W. W. It was said that on December 12 the local Trades Assembly of the A. F. of L. sent a statement to the press repudiating the I. W. W. and declaring that the A. F. of L. was not concerned in the strike and that "as to any individual organization affiliated with the American Federation of Labor going out on a sympathetic strike, such action would result in the forfeiture of its charter."[379] In both the Bridgeport and Youngstown strikes, according to St. John, failure [Pg 205]resulted from the alleged obstructive tactics of the American Federation. In both cases the loss of the strike is attributed to "the scabbing tactics of the A. F. of L."[380] The strike of the Portland (Ore.) saw-mill workers in March and April is worthy of more than passing notice. On the first of March 3,000 men walked out on strike, for a nine-hour day and an increase in wages from $1.75 to $2.50 per day. It is not probable that any great proportion of these men were members of the I. W. W. at the time they went on strike. However, I. W. W. leaders soon came upon the scene and most of the strikers very soon joined the organization.[381] The strike lasted forty days.

During this strike the I. W. W. opened an employment office and a restaurant for the benefit of the strikers.[383] The I. W. W. reports of the duration of the strike and the number of men out may be exaggerated. John Kenneth Turner, in his "Story of a New Labor Union," says "that more than 2,000 were out for over three weeks."[384] The Portland saw-mill strike really marked the début of the I. W. W. before the public of the Pacific Northwest, and it was something [Pg 206]of a surprise to the community. The I. W. W. was promptly written up as a feature story for the Oregon Sunday Journal by John Kenneth Turner. The opening paragraphs of his article read:

[Pg 207]

In September, 1907, there were undoubtedly not less than 200 locals in the I. W. W.[386] Between September, 1906, and September, 1907, one hundred and eighteen charters were issued to local unions,[387] making the total number of locals chartered since the launching of the organization not less than nine hundred and twenty-eight. It is evident that in this period also the "turnover" of I. W. W. locals was very heavy. There is apparently one report showing the number of locals disbanded during this period. The average membership for 1907 was considerably lower than it was for 1906 and was probably about six thousand.[388] The financial condition of the I. W. W. at this time was indicated by the report of the Secretary-Treasurer to the third convention. For the period from October, 1906, to August, 1907, receipts were given as $30,550.75 and disbursements as $31,578.76.[389]

Considerable progress had been made in organizing the coal miners. Secretary Trautmann reported to the third convention that "fourteen unions of coal miners were organized in Illinois, four big organizations in Pennsylvania, three in Texas, two in Kansas, one in Colorado—a total of twenty-four unions with an approximate membership of 2,000 ...," and he went on to the optimistic conclusion [Pg 208]that "the wedge has been driven into the unholy alliance between operators and the United Mine Workers."[390] Later on, when the convention was discussing the United Mine Workers and the conditions in the Illinois coal mines, Trautmann commented on the remarks made by a delegate of a United Mine Workers' local (No. 1475) which had apparently swung to the I. W. W. He (Trautmann) said:

A few of the problems of policy and internal organization which were discussed at the third convention deserve consideration. Not least important of these was the problem of the Japanese in California. From the very first the I. W. W. had taken a definite stand against any and all discriminations based upon race, color or nationality. Among the first words uttered by Wm. D. Haywood in calling the first I. W. W. convention to order were words of criticism of the American Federation of Labor for its discriminations against Negroes and foreigners. From that day to this the organization has been unique in the constancy and strength of its appeal to and attraction for foreigners. This particular phase of the I. W. W.'s activities has been given endless publicity in connection with the Lawrence and Paterson strikes. At the third convention, George Speed, a delegate from California, quite accurately expressed the sentiment of the organization in regard to the Japanese question. "The whole fight against the Japanese," he said, "is the [Pg 209]fight of the middle class of California, in which they employ the labor faker to back it up."[392] He added, however, that he considered it "practically useless ... under present conditions for the Industrial Workers of the World to take any steps" to organize the Japanese. This primarily because he felt that the organization had more work on hand than it could well attend to.[393] The North American Times, a daily paper published in the Japanese language in Seattle, printed in the spring of 1906 an editorial on the I. W. W., which ran in part as follows:

A reaction from an excessive indulgence in strikes, or at least a sign of the consciousness of this excess, is evident from two resolutions adopted by the third convention:

In regard to the general organizing activity of the I. W. W., it was proposed in one of the resolutions adopted, that the organization confine its work for the time being to the smaller cities where the A. F. of L. was comparatively weak, and in connection with this that efforts in organization be concentrated for the present on certain selected industries.[397] Fred Heslewood, member of the General Executive Board, in his report to the convention, said:

It was urged that special attention be directed to the mining and lumber industries and that for the general organizing propaganda one-half of the income of the general administration be devoted to the payment of organizers and the printing of literature.[399] The editor of the official organ of the I. W. W. declared that the third convention was

and that for these reasons there could be no possible doubt of the stability of the organization.[400]

A few weeks after the third convention had adjourned the panic of 1907 struck the country. The I. W. W. was nearly wiped out of existence. Its only organ, The Industrial Union Bulletin, was obliged first to appear fortnightly instead of weekly and finally to suspend publication. "Its locals dissolved by the dozens and the general headquarters at Chicago was only maintained by terrific sacrifice and determination...."[401] The report of the General Secretary to the fourth convention explained that when the third convention closed, General Headquarters expected to collect the moneys due from the local unions, but before collections could be arranged "the industrial panic struck the country with all its force, and the misery following in the wake of that collapse was mostly felt in places where the Industrial Workers of the World had established a stronghold." The Secretary went on to say that the revenue for December, 1907, was not more than half what it had been the year before.[402] To aggravate the situation still more were rumors of internal friction between a group of Socialist Labor party followers of Daniel DeLeon and the rest of the organization. Indeed, very soon after the convention, charges were made that the Weekly People, the official organ of the Socialist Labor party, was being used against the I. W. W.[403]

[Pg 212]

This was the beginning of the most serious internal fight in the career of the I. W. W. It was to turn on that same vexed question that seems eternally to plague those who want to construct labor organizations along radical lines—namely, the relationship that should exist between the union and the political parties, especially the Progressive, Labor and Socialist parties. The second clause of the Preamble (spoken of among the "Wobblies" as "the political clause") held the seeds of discord in its apparently harmless assertion that the class struggle "must go an until all the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field." Here we have the phrase which, at the 1908 convention, was to make the revolutionary syndicalists see red and which was finally to result in a bifurcated I. W. W.

[Pg 213]

CHAPTER IX
Doctrinaire versus Direct-Actionist
(1908)

For a period of nearly two years following the financial panic of 1907, the I. W. W. had a precarious and for the most part uneventful existence. The organization made practically no headway with its recruiting and propaganda work. Indeed, it probably lost ground. There was a falling off in the number of locals in the organization and, at least for 1909, in the number of local union charters issued. Vincent St. John, at that time General Organizer, said in his report to the fourth convention:

It is probable also that there was during the same period a decline in membership, as indicated by the figures furnished [Pg 214]by the Secretary-Treasurer.[405] But even during these lean years there was some activity in the textile industry. From first to last, so far as the eastern part of the United States is concerned, it has been among the textile operatives that the I. W. W. has been most active and most successful. In this industry the I. W. W. has a much larger proportion of the total number of organized workers than it has in any other. In the West, of course, the I. W. W. is most strongly entrenched in the unorganized extractive industries—lumber, agriculture, and construction work.[406] In April, 1908, the General Executive Board issued an official call (printed in English, French, German and Italian) for that "First Convention of Textile Workers" to be held May 1, 1908, in Paterson, N. J. In his document the claim is made that "over 5,000 textile workers have already been organized into the Industrial Workers of the World...."[407] During the eighteen months' period following the financial crisis of 1907 the I. W. W. almost entirely gave up its strike activities.[408] Furthermore, the organization seemed to have secured no permanent foothold in those communities where it had been particularly militant and aggressive during the preceding year. Secretary Trautmann admitted this in his report to the Fourth Convention. "There is nothing left in Bridgeport," he said, "nothing in Skowhegan, but in the [Pg 215]Portland [Oregon] district the name of the I. W. W. is cheered and gloried...."[409]

One of the leaders of the Detroit I. W. W. (now the Workers' International Industrial Union) says that at this time "the whole organization was in a state of unrest."[410] In reference to such a distractingly unrestful organization as the I. W. W. has always been, this comment is significant. He attributes this unrest to two causes, internal dissension and the financial panic.

The outlook was certainly not encouraging for those who had pinned their faith to the idea of industrial unionism. The prospect for the new unionism was not bright. In 1908 the United Brewery Workmen, another large and important industrial union, patched up their differences with the American Federation of Labor and went back into the craft-union fold. The Western Federation of Miners—the most militant and one of the two or three really powerful unions organized on the industrial plan—had withdrawn, and finally, in May, 1911, joined the American Federation. At the sixteenth convention of the Western Federation, held in the summer of 1908, President Moyer said:

The breach between the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners continued to grow wider. Until April, 1908, William D. Haywood was a member of both organizations. Even after the complete and formal separation had been accomplished, Haywood had been, since his acquittal at Boise, serving in the capacity of lecturer and organizer for the Federation. His views must have been profoundly intensified in a more radical direction than ever during his incarceration and trial for murder. That his speeches became too rabid even for such a decidedly militant organization as the Western Federation of Miners seems unlikely, although the Federation was gradually growing more conservative. The determining and, in the eyes of the W. F. M., incriminating fact about Haywood now was that he remained an I. W. W. after the administration and presumably the majority of the W. F. M. had renounced and "cast off" the "larger" organization of which it had been a part. So it is not surprising that the following should have appeared on the first page of the Miners' Magazine for April 23, 1908:

[Pg 217]

NOTICE.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

E. Mahoney, Vice-Pres., W. F. M.

A writer in the Evening Post (New York) thinks that but for this official ousting of Haywood by the W. F. M., the I. W. W. might never have survived the trouble, dissension and "hard times" of 1908. "It is doubtful," he says, "if either faction of the Industrial Workers of the World [Detroit or Chicago] would have survived but for a change in the attitude of the Western Miners' Federation ... which left Haywood free to devote all his energies to the Industrial Workers of the World."[413] If we can credit the evidence presented at the 1912 convention of the W. F. M., the I. W. W. had at least sufficient vitality to be plotting, through its officials, to regain control of the Western Federation. In the published proceedings of its twentieth convention is printed a letter, dated August 4, 1908, from Vincent St. John to Albert Ryan, a member of the Western Federation. This letter reads in part:

President Moyer said that this letter was found among Ryan's effects "after he had received a sentence of life imprisonment in San Quentin penitentiary for having applied direct action in Los Angeles, which resulted in the death of two men."[415] These or similar charges had evidently been made at about the time this letter was supposed to have been written. St. John, in his report to the fourth I. W. W. Convention as General Organizer, denied certain "insinuations of a serious nature" which had been made against him.[416]

The question of "political action" and the bitter and disruptive controversy which waged on that subject at the fourth convention had now become the overshadowing [Pg 219]issue. The "Wobblies" use the expression "political action" in referring to almost every conceivable form of political activity, voting, elections, legislation, etc., and also, more vaguely, in regard to the relationship which does or should obtain between labor organizations and political parties, particularly between radical labor bodies and radical political parties. For some time before this gathering it was evident that the administration was becoming fatally divided against itself. The DeLeon-St. John-Trautmann faction had survived in 1906, to be the administration—the I. W. W.—but in less than two years the sentiment in the organization had developed two sub-factions, so to speak. The I. W. W. appears to develop by fission. The organization originally was a compound of adherents of

The Socialists were "abandoned" in 1906, leaving the field to the "proletarian rabble":

DeLeon ... St. John ... Trautmann.

The "Socialist Laborites" were sloughed off (or they "ditched the Anarchists," as they themselves would put it) in 1908, and we had

Later Trautmann abandoned the "Bummery" and joined the DeLeonites. We now have in 1917:

[Pg 220]

which is the present setting, primed for further hyphen-smashing!

One of the two factions is thus seen to consist, for the most part, of members of the Socialist Labor party—supporters of the revolutionary Marxian tradition and believers in political action—the doctrinaire group. Their prophet was Daniel DeLeon. The other group was composed more largely of Westerners—intellectually more nearly philosophical Anarchists than orthodox Socialists—inclined to scoff at political action and emphatically opposed to allowing the I. W. W. to have any connection with any political body—or to hold any political policy—disbelievers in the state and in both the Socialist parties because they accept the state—"industrialists with their working clothes on"—the essence of the "proletarian rabble." The first group was ultimately to constitute a socialistic I. W. W. with headquarters at Detroit—the doctrinaire wing; the second group an anarchistic I. W. W. with headquarters at Chicago—the direct-action wing, referred to by the Detroiters as "the Bummery."[417]

Rudolph Katz, a member of the Socialist Labor party, writes that after the third convention

When the convention was called to order by Mr. St. John on September 21, 1908, there were twenty-six delegates in attendance, controlling an aggregate of seventy votes. Two delegates were debarred from seats in the convention—Max Ledermann of Chicago and Daniel DeLeon of New York—and St. John was made permanent chairman.[419]

The West—especially the Pacific Coast—was well represented for the first time. There were delegates in attendance from Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Spokane. The West was spoken of as furnishing the "genuine rebels—the red-blooded working stiffs," and this was said to be the first revolutionary convention ever held in Chicago composed of "purely wage-workers."[420] The largest and most important delegation from the West was popularly known as the "Overalls Brigade," brought together in Portland and Spokane by one J. H. Walsh, a national organizer of the I. W. W. The "Brigade" numbered about twenty men who "beat their way" from Portland to Chicago, holding propaganda meetings en route. A member of the delegation reported this propaganda trip:

In the Industrial Union Bulletin for September 19 was published a long letter from Organizer Walsh giving a detailed record of the trip. It was given such heads as these "I. W. W. Red-Special! Overall Brigade,"—"On its way through the continent—Thousands listen to the speakers—Gompers and his satellites furious with rage!" "The Overall Brigade," according to Rudolph Katz, "consisted of that element that traveled on freight trains from one western town to another, holding street meetings that were opened with the song, 'Hallelujah, I'm a Bum,' and closing with passing the hat in regular Salvation Army fashion."[422]

The Socialist Labor party group take the position that DeLeon was denied a seat in the convention in order to further the designs of the St. John-Trautmann faction. In their "nefarious plot" they had the full coöperation of the "Overall Brigade" which "sat in judgment upon Daniel DeLeon." Katz goes on to say that "St. John was the prosecuting attorney."[423] The pretext for unseating DeLeon (and others) was membership in the wrong local union. DeLeon was present as a delegate of the Office Workers' Local Union. His opponents insisted that he should, as an editor, be enrolled in the Printing Workers' Local. On such technicalities enough delegates were refused seats to give the Overall Brigade all the powers of a steam-roller.[424] "It was a 'machine' of the capitalist political design," said the Weekly People, "organized ... among the boys [Pg 223]from the West."[425] "In the case of Fellow Worker DeLeon representing 'Store & Office Workers' Union' No. 58, the committee recommended that the protest be sustained and the delegate not seated because he is not a member of the local of the industry in which [he is] working, such a local being in existence."[426]

"The very same fellows," writes Katz, "who dared DeLeon to come to the Fourth Convention, closed the doors to him when he arrived ... and his credentials were rejected on flimsy pretenses."

"Such remarks as 'I would like to get a punch at the pope' (meaning DeLeon) were overheard in the hall among the 'Overall Brigaders'." "DeLeon told them whither they were drifting—to Shermanism, to Anarchy, to the movement's destruction."[428] DeLeon's speech in defense of his right to a seat in the convention was published in the Industrial Union Bulletin (October 10, 1908) under the title, "The Intellectual against the Worker." Extracts from St. John's reply and his arguments for refusing DeLeon a seat are published in the same issue of the Bulletin under the [Pg 224]title, "The Worker against the Intellectual." Katz says that this published version of DeLeon's speech was full of "the basest kind of misrepresentation." He further declares that the reports of the convention published in the Bulletin were "doctored."[429]

DeLeon expressed his opinion of the "Overall Brigade" very soon after the convention:

For four days the convention did practically nothing but protest credentials and debate the question whether or not the Socialist Labor party, through Daniel DeLeon, was trying to control the I. W. W. All this was a prelude to the contest over the retention of the political clause of the preamble which was fought out on a personal issue—the admission of DeLeon as a delegate. The DeLeonites accused the St. John-Trautmann group of trying to make the I. W. W. what they called a "purely physical force body."[431] The DeLeonites in turn were charged with attempting to subordinate the interests of the I. W. W. to those of the Socialist Labor party.

Justus Ebert, himself a member of the Socialist Labor [Pg 225]party, believed that this charge was well founded. For this reason, in 1908, and some time before the fourth convention met, he resigned from the Socialist Labor party. Since that time he has been a member of the ("Anarcho-Syndicalist") I. W. W. His letter of resignation, addressed to the members of Section Kings County, S. L. P., runs in part as follows:

Now DeLeon was at once the leader of the S. L. P. and of the political element in the I. W. W., and the anti-parliamentarians perhaps felt that the only way to get rid of what they called the "political incubus of the S. L. P." was to eliminate DeLeon and enough of his supporters to make it possible for the Wobblies from the West to carry the resolution to eliminate that fearsome political clause. They were somehow vaguely apprehensive that that phrase in the preamble which declared that the toilers must "come together on the political field" would make possible the subjugation [Pg 226]of the I. W. W. by the Socialist Labor party. This despite the fact that the paragraph in question closes with the words: "without affiliation with any political party."

The report of the General Secretary-Treasurer expresses the position of the simon-pure industrialists of the St. John-Trautmann faction.

One member of the anti-parliamentarian group—F. W. Heslewood—expressed his opposition to any change in the preamble, saying that he did not want to be called a dynamiter. He insisted that "the changing of the preamble by taking out the word 'political' will inevitably give somebody a chance to denounce the I. W. W. as an anarchist organization."[434] The I. W. W. was precisely so denounced soon after the convention: "The political clause has been stricken out and with that all semblance of the I. W. W. has been wiped out. The clause was considered 'confusing.' Fact is the clause was so clear that it was a thorn in the side of veiled dynamiters."[435]

The proposition to strike out the seductive and dangerous [Pg 227]words about the "political field" was adopted and the second paragraph of the new preamble now reads: "Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system."[436]

The "straight industrialists" had now accomplished their coup. By "killing" the political clause they had, presumably, saved the organization from the insidious peril of Socialist Labor party domination; briefly, they had exorcised the demon of DeLeonism. This was the sentiment of the Trautmann-St. John faction. The sentiments of the DeLeonites are officially expressed in a leaflet issued later on by the new but "only genuine and original I. W. W." organization which they proceeded to establish at Detroit:

[Pg 228]

The fourth convention did very little of importance except to split the organization very decisively, if discursively, on the rock of "politics." A few unimportant constitutional changes were made[438] and the following officers elected: General Secretary-Treasurer, Vincent St. John; General Organizer, Wm. E. Trautmann; General Executive Board, Fellow Workers Cole, Miller, Ettor, Whitehead and Gains.[439] The records and property of the organization remained with the St. John-Trautmann faction,[440] which will be referred to in the following pages as the Industrial Workers of the World, or simply by the three letters, "I. W. W."

Whether or not the St. John contingent was now legitimately entitled to be recognized as the Industrial Workers of the World is a question which will be discussed in another place. Whether they were usurpers or not, they held and retained control of the offices and property of the organization. The Socialist Labor or DeLeon contingent faced the situation as best they could. These "bona fide industrial unionists rallied," says one of their number, "and held a convention in Paterson, N. J., and elected a new set of general officers and a new General Executive Board."[441]

At this rump convention, "credentials were read for twenty-one delegates from locals of Philadelphia, Boston, Bridgeport, Brooklyn, and Paterson, of which [number] eighteen were present...."[443] This Paterson conference was virtually a meeting of the two District Councils of New York City and Paterson and a handful of Eastern locals. The delegates declared the proceedings of the Chicago convention illegal and naïvely read the "anarchist usurpers" out of the organization. "The pirates in Chicago," says Rudolph Katz in his later reminiscences, "were repudiated by the I. W. W. organizations generally." He adds that only three issues of the Industrial Union Bulletin (official organ of the St. John faction) appeared "after that packed 'convention' had done its deadly work."[444]

The most important action of the convention was to reduce the monthly per-capita to five cents for locals and three cents to National Industrial Departments and National Industrial Unions, the idea being that the money should be controlled locally for organization purposes.[445] Steps were taken toward the publication of an official journal, temporary officials were elected to form a kind of ad interim administration, and New York City was decided upon for the location of General Headquarters.[446] Within a few months, [Pg 230]however, the location of national headquarters was changed to Detroit, Michigan. The Daily and Weekly People served as official journal for the Detroit organization until January, 1912, when the first number of the (monthly) Industrial Union News made its appearance. C. H. Chase (New York) was General Secretary-Treasurer. The Executive Board consisted of C. H. Chase, A. J. Francis (New York), Wm. Glanz (Paterson), R. McClure (Philadelphia), C. E. Trainor (Denver), and H. Richter (Detroit). Richter is at present General Secretary-Treasurer. He was a delegate to the 1905 convention from one of the local unions of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.

It is exceedingly doubtful whether the "pirates in Chicago" were really "repudiated by the I. W. W. organizations generally." The figures presented in Appendix IV, (Table A) indicated that a large proportion of the 200 locals (to take the lowest estimate) in the I. W. W. in 1907 had in some way vanished. The Chicago faction admitted that 17 locals went over to Detroit,[447] and Secretary Richter writes that when the Detroit faction was reorganized at Paterson twenty-two locals reported to headquarters.[448] During the months of November and December, 1908, the Weekly People published in its correspondence columns about a dozen letters from locals—chiefly Eastern locals—which expressly repudiated the "Chicago pirates." Both organizations sent out official referendum sheets for the votes of the rank and file of the membership on the resolutions, etc., adopted by the Chicago and Paterson conventions.[449] The writer has not learned of any definite reports [Pg 231]concerning the returns from these referendums. It is quite certain that the Chicago group lost many locals which did not go over to Detroit, inasmuch as only 100 locals are reported for 1909.[450] Secretary Richter reports that in 1909 the Detroit I. W. W. had twenty-three locals.[451]

Now, as to the merits of the controversy. The I. W. W. set out in 1905, somewhat on the order of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, proposing to wage war on the capitalist, primarily on the "economic field," viz., in the shop, "on the job"; by strikes and boycotts, etc., but expecting to go forward, as DeLeon put it, "under the protecting guns of a labor political party." No particular party was endorsed, however, and any desire for the endorsement of any political party was specifically disclaimed. The words, "without endorsing or desiring the endorsement of any political party," were inserted at the close of the preamble in 1906, but stricken out in 1908 (or possibly 1907). The Detroit I. W. W. at first carried in its preamble the words, "without endorsing any political party," but later struck them out.[452] The western membership was especially bitter in its hostility to the Socialist party as well as the Socialist Labor party, and felt convinced that the I. W. W. was mortgaging its future in allowing itself to get into any entangling political alliances, formal or informal. The western I. W. W.s had not borrowed any theoretical criticism of the state from the French syndicalists, but the actual concrete experiences of the lower grades of workers in the western states had developed in their minds a conception of the political party (reactionary or socialistic) very similar to that of the revolutionary syndicalists of France.

[Pg 232]

Félicien Challaye, one of the intellectuals among the French syndicalists, expresses this common idea very concisely. He says that, "... le parti politique est un agrégat d'éléments hétérogènes, réunis par le lieu artificiel d'une opinion analogue: des hommes venus de toutes les couches sociales s'y condoient, échangent leurs obscurs et stériles bavardages, cherchent à associer par de louches compromis leurs intérêts antagonistes."[453]

Indeed, the Western American Wobblies looked upon the whole modern system of congressional or parliamentary government in much the same way. Parliaments, they say, are little more than clearing-houses for the exchange of "vague and sterile platitudes." In so far as they do more than this, they merely further the designs of the big business groups whom they serve as retainers. In this regard the I. W. W.s are sufficiently Marxian and they would accent with italics Marx's strictures on the "disease of parliamentarism." The Industrial Workers' feeling toward parliamentary government cannot be better described that in the words of the great Socialist. In a letter written to the New York Tribune in 1852 Karl Marx describes

The I. W. W. makes the bald accusation that the political groups which make up national congresses are simply (though perhaps indirectly and adroitly) managing public affairs in behalf of the dominant economic and commercial interests of the country. To whatever degree this is true the I. W. W. is sure of its ground in declaring that parliaments are corrupt. But this no more demonstrates the inherent folly of parliamentary government than the admitted corruption—perhaps even industrial crétinism—of the industrial union proves the inherent folly of industrial unionism. There is a lamentable amount of inherited idiocy in both labor and legislative organizations. Anything in the constitution, and more particularly anything in the preamble (which I. W. W.s looked upon as a Magna Carta of the proletariat), that seemed to commit the organization to any particular political policy was a source of great uneasiness. This uneasiness was much intensified by the constantly increasing sentiment of opposition to the (political) state as it exists today, and to all forms of authority, especially centralized authority.[455] The "Overall Brigade" was the group which was most conspicuously saturated with this anarchistic feeling. These men from the West were suspicious of all parties; thought voting and legislating pleasant forms of ritual for deluding the workers; actively antagonized the craft unions, which also they considered industrial anomalies of use only as "coffin societies"; and were very doubtful about the necessity for leaders of any kind—even leaders of the Wobblies!

[Pg 234]

The eastern membership, on the other hand, more nearly approximated the State Socialist type of radicalism. They were inspired by a group of Socialist Labor party men at whose head was Daniel DeLeon. They abjured anarchy, believed in authority (and in its instruments: leaders), were disillusioned about State Socialism and spared no bitterness and pettiness in criticizing the Socialist party and its program of State Socialism and reform in general. Reform in general was to them anathema. They were revolutionary Marxists—doctrinaire to the bone—saturated with the dialectic.

This doctrinaire faction claimed to be the custodian of the original I. W. W. idea. It felt itself to be the keeper of the original tradition of the founders. This original tradition was expressed in the first preamble if it was expressed anywhere. The DeLeonites held to that original preamble, and the fact that they did so lends weight to their claim that they, and they alone, are the true exponents of the spirit and purpose which animated the first convention. They probably do represent the spirit of the fathers—the men of 1905—more exactly than does the "Bummery outfit" at Chicago. The Direct-Actionists might just as well concede this much to the "Impossibilists." The latter represent revolutionary unionism in the original bottle; the former represent the changed form of militant unionism toward which most of the I. W. W.s had drifted between 1905 and 1908—new red wine under the old label. The Direct-Actionists kept the old label to designate the Western American brand of "industrial unionism," invented (or blundered upon) by the proletarian from the provincial side of the Mississippi, simply because they had the power to keep it. And the whole philosophy of the so-called "Bummery outfit" is the philosophy of power—economic power.

A further reason for conceding to the Direct-Actionists[Pg 235] the original name and label (as indeed the Detroiters wisely did when in 1915 they rechristened themselves "The Workers' International Industrial Union") is that the Direct-Actionists are the ones who, since 1908, have done by far the most extensive organizing and propaganda work. It was the "Bummery" which aroused hope and apprehension at Little Falls, at Lawrence, at Wheatland, and on the Minnesota iron range, and baffled the authorities in its dramatic "free speech fights" at Spokane, Fresno, Paterson, San Diego, Seattle, and Everett. Their membership, though small, is three times that of the Detroit organization.

Some more definite points of difference between the two organizations should be noted. They may be set down here as representing the contrasting viewpoints of Daniel DeLeon and Vincent St. John. The attitude of these two men can be tentatively accepted as representing the opinions of most of those in their respective followings. There is good reason, then, for saying that the lifting of the hyphen between DeLeon and St. John was largely due to their conflicting opinions about (1) industrial union structure—the arrangement of industrial groups; (2) sabotage and direct action; and (3) political action.

(1) DeLeon believed that the workers should be grouped in the local industrial union according to the product turned out but that within the local union the lines of demarcation for segregating trade or shop branches must be drawn with reference to the particular tool used.[456] St. John believed that production should be the criterion throughout, with all workers whose activities contribute toward the output of a given product enrolled in the same union. The driver of a brewery wagon contributes his labor power to the production of beer (as also does the stenographer in the office of [Pg 236]the brewery!) and he should be in the Brewery Workers' Union, as indeed he actually is in this particular case.

(2) Direct action and sabotage were condemned by DeLeon and approved by St. John. DeLeon's opposition was not based upon moral grounds. He simply had no confidence in the efficacy of these methods. He was firmly convinced that the habitual indulgence in sabotage and in destructive tactics in general was a poor preparation for a working class which expected some day to manage and control the industries of the world. It was a poor educational policy.

(3) St. John was unconditionally opposed to political action. DeLeon advocated it as a temporary aid in the struggle for emancipation. He appears to have looked forward to the ultimate abolition of political or representative government and the establishment of a literal industrial democracy.[457]

The constitution of the I. W. W. is not anti-political. It is merely non-political. Any wage-earner is admitted regardless of creed, race or political opinion. But it is also true that in actual practice, as Levine remarks, "the Industrial Workers have played and are playing the game of antipolitics."

[Pg 237]

"Their spokesmen," he says, "ridicule the 'politicians'; severely criticized the Socialist party and insult its most prominent leaders. The non-political portion of the I. W. W. is therefore practically anti-political."[458]

The bitterness of feeling engendered in this controversy over politics can well be imagined. The two factions of the I. W. W. hate one another with a hearty fervor that is only equaled by their united opposition to the American Federation of Labor. Both claim to be the simon-pure revolutionary article. If any "malefactor of great wealth" thinks that he is being scandalously abused by the I. W. W.s, he should read some of the things the "red I. W. W.s" have to say about the "yellow I. W. W.s" and, a fortiori, the "yellows" about the "reds," or attend a debate between any kind of an I. W. W. and what he (the I. W. W.) calls a "coffin society" man of the American Federation of Labor.

The Secretary of the Detroit I. W. W. (now W. I. I. U.) says that

[Pg 238]

"We hold," says this official, "that our organization is The I. W. W. Chicago headquarters, and those who follow that organization, became a different body since 1908."[460]

At the International Socialist Congress at Vienna in 1914 the Socialist Labor party made a report in which it was declared that

Such a characterization of the Chicago faction is hardly to be wondered at in view of some of the statements made by organs representing the direct-actionists. Thus we are told that what "the now famous 'Hobo Convention' ... actually did was to restore the preamble to its pristine syndicalist purity...."[462]

The break was not, however, entirely caused by disagreement over political and economic principles. It was partly a matter of personal temperament—and primarily the personal temperament of Daniel DeLeon. We have seen that, rightly or wrongly, DeLeon has been, time after time charged with being the instigator of trouble and dissension. It's difficult to say just why his presence so often seemed to bring friction and revolt. It was partly due, no doubt, to the really heroic and rigidly uncompromising way in which he adhered to his beliefs. It must be attributed in part, the writer believes, to defects of temper. "The strain of love [Pg 239]and hate aroused by DeLeon's peculiar personality," writes one who knew him, "colors all judgments of his career."[463] The same writer says that DeLeon was temperamentally a Jesuit, and that his personal attacks were Jesuitical.[464] This fact surely should be kept in mind when considering the controversies in the socialist movement which have been laid at his door. The present Socialist party broke away from DeLeon's leadership nearly twenty years ago,[465] and has since thrived, while the Socialist Labor party has been reduced to a negligible quantity. In the same way, in 1908, the followers of DeLeon seceded and their fate has been about the same.

Eugene Debs thought that DeLeon's critics made too little allowance for his peculiar temper. He insists that whatever "opposition to the Industrial Workers [is] inspired by hatred for Daniel DeLeon and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, is puerile, to say the least.... DeLeon is sound on the question of trade unionism," Debs continues, "and to that extent, whether I like him or not personally, I am with him."[466] In another place Debs writes:

[Pg 240]

It may be [he continues] that DeLeon has designs upon the Socialist party and expects to use the I. W. W. as a means of disrupting it in the interest of the Socialist Labor party, and if he succeeds it will be because his enemies in the Socialist party, in their bitter personal hostility to him, are led to oppose ... the revolutionary I. W. W. and support the reactionary A. F. of L....[467]

DeLeon's personal character and intellectual leanings were curiously reflected in the party to which he so unselfishly gave the best years of his life. The Socialist Labor party is doctrinaire, unyielding, Jesuitical as was its leader. It has always seemed to be suspended after a fashion in an atmosphere charged with a kind of a pedantic essence of the Marxian dialectic. It is so impressed with the importance [Pg 241]of its own "mutterings in the Marxian law," that when, for example, one of Fellow Worker Walsh's "blanket stiffs" asks what the western lumberjack is to do when he is "fleeced" for a three-day job, the party, metaphorically speaking, simply loses its temper and rails at him and all the rest of the "Overalls Brigade." The Socialist Labor party has been pretty accurately summed up by Fraina:

Since the first edition of this book was published some references to DeLeon have appeared in the dispatches from Russia. Robert Minor, in an interview with Nikolai Lenin, quotes him as declaring that "the American Daniel DeLeon, first formulated the idea of a soviet government, which grew up in Russia on his, DeLeon's idea." In the same interview Lenin is further quoted as saying: "Future society will be organized along soviet lines. There will be soviet [occupational] rather than geographical boundaries for nations. Industrial unionism is the basic state...."[471]

Additional light on the relation between Bolshevism and I.W.W-ism as conceived by Lenin appears from the following account given by Arthur Ransome:

Lenin said he had read in an English socialist paper a comparison of his own theories with those of ... DeLeon. He

[Pg 242]

Finally, mention should be made of the fact that the National Labor Committee of the Socialist Labor party has just published a memorial volume on DeLeon. It is written by a group of his friends and co-workers in the Socialist Labor party.[473]

[Pg 243]

CHAPTER X
The I. W. W. on the "Civilized Plane"
(1908-1915)

The Detroit faction of the I. W. W. which in 1915 changed its name to the Workers' International Industrial Union, never attained a strength at all comparable to that of the direct-actionist group. In Appendix IV are given what membership figures are available for both locals and individual members. For the total membership, the figures in columns 3 and 4 (Table A) are probably the most accurate. They show that the Detroiters had in 1910, two years after the schism of 1908, about 3,500 members. The following year their membership was about the same, but in 1912 it very nearly reached 11,000. That was the year of maximum membership, as it was also, except possibly for the year 1916, for the Chicago faction. In every year the figures show a very much smaller membership for the Detroit than for the Chicago faction. The difference in favor of the direct-actionists is still more marked in regard to the number of local unions. The Secretary-Treasurer of the Detroit faction says that only one new local was organized in 1909—the year following the split.[474] The following table shows the growth of local union membership:[475]

[Pg 244]

Detroit I. W. W.—Membership Figures

The reports of membership from the Detroit office are probably generous, to say the least. The Secretary wrote on October 23, 1911: "Our membership at present is about 10,000. Locals ... in nearly all states as well as Canada. Organizations identical with ours ... in principle and method are active in England, Australia and Africa."[477] On March 30, 1912, he wrote that the membership had "passed the 20,000 mark." When the Detroiters held their national convention in 1913—it was called by them the Sixth I. W. W. Convention—there were 17 locals represented by delegates and the Secretary reported a membership of 11,584. Twenty-two new locals had been organized, he said, during the year ending September, 1913.[478] "The principal reverse," says the correspondent of the Weekly People, "was the lapsing of 14 locals, an unfortunate occurrence caused solely by the financial inability of headquarters to send out organizers...." The local unions represented at the convention included the silk workers of Paterson, N. J.; car [Pg 245]and foundry, carpenters', and a "mixed" union in Detroit; a metal and machinery, and a "mixed" local in Chicago; metal workers of Erie, Pa.; hotel and restaurant, "public service" and lumber workers in Seattle; mattress makers in Columbus, Ohio; and "mixed" locals in Lynn, Mass., San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Los Angeles, and New York City. The convention voted down a resolution to change the name of the organization and alter the "political clause" of the Preamble—the vital part of it which kept the I. W. W. high and dry on the civilized plane.[479] The Secretary reports that while the membership of the Detroit faction includes workers from nearly all industries the chief industries represented are the following: textile, garment making, metal and machinery, tobacco, food stuffs, furniture, transportation, automobile, building, lumber, printing, shoe making, and public service.[480]

The DeLeonites probably held a convention in 1914, but the writer has not come across any report of it. In September, 1915, they held an "Eighth I. W. W. Convention" in Detroit. A brief report of the proceedings in their official organ indicates that, in addition to three officers, there were present seven accredited delegates from the following cities: Hartford, Conn., St. Louis, Columbus, Detroit and Cristobal, Panama.[481]

Not only were DeLeonite locals fewer in number than the direct-actionist locals, but their average length of life was undoubtedly shorter. The General Secretary-Treasurer says that the more important reasons for the disbanding of locals were opposition by employers after strikes, [Pg 246]the removal of members to other cities in search of work, and the lack of men and women for the work of organizing.[482] In reply to a letter addressed to the secretary of a certain local in New York, the writer was informed that "there is now no such local union."

Another typical case is that of a cigarmakers' local in Baltimore, which, according to its former secretary, started in November, 1913, with 22 members and "increased the wages of all the cigarmakers in the city from 50 cents to $1.00 per thousand." In January, 1914, the local had 350 members. Then came evil days. "The strike forced on us by the Royal Havana ... demoralized the membership [and] the S[ocialist] P[arty] members added to the confusion by creating dissensions. In the year 1915 the organization was non-existent," and remains so, probably.[484]

The Detroit faction being much less exclusively reliant on the more strictly economic methods of carrying on the labor struggle, was naturally much less addicted to strikes. Nevertheless they did conduct a number of them. In May, 1910, the laborers of the Michigan Malleable Iron Company of Detroit, after being on strike two weeks, were given an increase in wages. In April, 1911, the DeLeonites conducted a strike of structural-iron painters in New York, [Pg 247]in which 200 men were involved. The following month they called out 40 machinists in Canton, Ohio. Their most important strike efforts were made in 1911 and 1912 in the silk mills of Paterson and Passaic, N. J., and Easton, Pa. In these strikes the two I. W. W.s very often clashed. Rudolph Katz, of the Detroiters, reports that during the silk strike of 1911-12 "the silk workers of Paterson ... joined the Detroit I. W. W. en masse" but that "in the midst of the strike Wm. D. Haywood was brought to Paterson and Passaic ... and the apple of discord was thrown among the strikers."[485] The Socialist Labor party reported the Paterson-Passaic situation to the Socialist Congress at Vienna in 1914: "In the big textile strike in Passaic, N. J.," their report says, "this organization [i. e., the S. L. P. or Detroit I. W. W.] was fought by both the Socialist party and the Chicago I. W. W.-ites, with Haywood leading this opposition and the capitalist press ably supporting their flank.... That strike of 4,000 men, women and children was lost through such treachery." The report adds that a few months earlier in 1912 "the Detroit I. W. W. won a great strike of 6,000 silk weavers."[486] On December 20, 1913, one of the Paterson members of the DeLeonite faction sent the following dispatch to the Weekly People: "Local 152, Bummery Bunch, did their best to pack last night's meeting [of the Paterson silk workers] but only partly succeeded. Many legitimate delegates raised their voices against anarchy expressed through sabotage and direct action...."[487] Contrary to the foregoing evidence, the testimony of Adolph Lessig before the United States [Pg 248]Commission on Industrial Relations seems to indicate that there were no serious differences between the two I. W. W.s during the Paterson strike. Lessig says that there was no attempt to either quarrel or get together.[488]

In 1913 the Detroiters were also concerned in several smaller strikes. They report a successful strike of textile workers at Mystic, Conn., in January; a successful strike involving 50 Philadelphia mechanics in August, and one involving 16 cigarmakers in Baltimore, who won the wage increase demanded. In 1914 and 1915 a few San Francisco ladies' tailors were on strike against the piecework system and alleged bad treatment. They were both reported as successful.

The two I. W. W.s continued to hate each other quite as much as they hated the capitalists, reformers, progressives, and Socialists. St. John has a paragraph in his historical sketch of the (Chicago) I. W. W. which may very well stand as the official expression of the direct-actionists' opinion of the doctrinaires. He says:

In May, 1914, St. John testified as the official representative of the I. W. W. before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. The Detroit I. W. W.s, he said, "have no information—do not give out any information; have no organization except on paper, and are committed to the program of capturing plates at the political pie-counter ... and trading ... on the name of the I. W. W. That is the way they keep alive."[490] At the Seattle hearings of the Commission in August, 1914, James P. Thompson, at one time the General Organizer of the Chicago I. W. W., expressed himself on the subject of the other I. W. W. He said that the Detroiters were "quite different from the I. W. W."

What the doctrinaires thought of the direct-actionists—or at least what their leaders wanted workingmen in general to think of them—is of equal importance. In a leaflet published [Pg 250]by the Detroit faction we are told that "the anarchist element that still calls itself the I. W. W. proceeded from the close of the 1908 convention to reveal its true nature by its actions. The western official organ of this element 'The Industrial Worker,' of Spokane, Wash., began to advocate theft, petty larceny, chicken-stealing, breaking up small employment agencies, and also advised the workers to 'strike at the ballot-box with an ax.'"[492]

When the doctrinaires held their 1915 convention (the "Eighth I. W. W. Convention") General Secretary Richter, in his report, took pains to pay his compliments to the direct-actionists.

A few months before this, Richter remarked: "Many of the followers of the Saint [St. John] and 'Big Bill' [Haywood] are a sadder but wiser lot. Hundreds have already joined the Socialist [meaning the Detroit] I. W. W., and more are on the way."[494]

The Chicago I. W. W. was bracketed with the American Federation of Labor as being equally with it a snare and a delusion to the working class.

A sober explanation of the DeLeonites' position as compared with the American Federation of Labor and the "Bummery" was made by Rudolph Katz to the Commission on Industrial Relation. He said that the Chicago I. W.W.s look upon the ballot as a gift from the capitalist class. The Detroit I. W. W.s consider the ballot "a conquest of civilization, and," continued Katz,

The DeLeonites cite the recent strike of the clothing workers in Baltimore in support of their strictures on the Federation and the Chicago I. W. W. They call it "a desperate attempt" by the "Bummery" I. W. W. and the American Federation of Labor to crush out the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. The strike was directed, they say, by leaders of the United Garment Workers, the American Federation of Labor, and the Chicago I. W. W.[497]

[Pg 252]

The Detroiters and the Socialist Labor party fight the anarcho-syndicalist faction of the I. W. W., according to the report of the party to the International Socialist Congress at Brussels in 1911, because the direct-actionists "advocate physical force exclusively; at the same time it [the Socialist Labor party] gives all possible support to the workers who, even under the otherwise baneful leadership of anarchy, are trying to throw off the yoke of the capitalist masters and the reactionary trade-union lieutenants of those masters."[499]

The doctrinaires consider the Chicago I. W. W.s anarchists and themselves socialists—but socialists of a simon-pure Marxian stripe as opposed to the opportunist socialism of the Socialist party. In one of their propaganda leaflets they declare that "the only labor organization in the United States today which is wholly dominated by anarchists is the so-called Industrial Workers of the World, with headquarters, [Pg 253]in Chicago, Ill."[500] A propaganda leaflet already quoted sums up in very characteristic fashion the theoretical position of the DeLeonites:

Eugene Debs, who was one of the leading spirits in the organization of the I. W. W. in 1905, and who thought that the elimination of the political clause by the Chicago faction in 1908 was a monstrous blunder, endorsed the position of the DeLeonites on political action. "This faction," said Debs, "is corner-stoned in the true principles of unionism in reference to political action."[502] He thought that there was "no essential difference between the Chicago and Detroit [Pg 254]factions of the I. W. W." "If I am right in believing that a majority of the rank and file of the Chicago faction favor political action," he said, "then there is no reason why this majority should not consolidate with the Detroit faction, and thus put an end to the division of these forces."[503] Debs was of the opinion that, if the I. W. W. had continued as it began, "a revolutionary industrial union, recognizing the need of political as well as industrial action, instead of being hamstrung by its own leaders and converted ... into an anti-political machine, it would today be the most formidable labor organization in America, if not the world."

The end of the bifurcated era of I. W. W. history came in September, 1915, when the DeLeonites at their national convention (called the "Eighth I. W. W. Convention") changed their name to the Workers' International Industrial Union, and the Weekly People[504] announced: "The Industrial Workers of the World as founded at Chicago in 1905 is no more." The reason given by the Detroiters for the change was virtually that the "Bummery" had disgraced the letters "I. W. W." "The name I. W. W.," declared Fellow Worker Crawford, "has come to be associated with petty larceny and other slum tactics. It is up to us to choose a new name so as to escape the odium attached to the one we now bear."[505] Their attitude was more fully explained in an announcement by the General Secretary-Treasurer in their official journal.

The name Socialist Labor Union, originally proposed in 1908, was again discussed and considered very seriously because their desire was appropriately to label an organization which claimed to stand for "socialist class unionism." Finally, however, the name, Workers' International Industrial Union, was decided upon "as most appropriate for the designation of the economic wing of the Socialist movement."[507]

The W. I. I. U. soon issued a "Manifesto of Socialist Industrial Unionism" which explained the principles of the newly-christened organization. The W. I. I. U., declares the Manifesto,

[Pg 256]
[Pg 257]

PART III
THE DIRECT-ACTIONISTS

[Pg 258]
[Pg 259]

CHAPTER XI
Free Speech and Sabotage

The existence between 1908 and 1915 of two national labor organizations bearing the name, Industrial Workers of the World (or "I. W. W."), with labels of identical design—bodies closely paralleling each other in scope and structure despite their disparity in doctrine and tactics—makes it very difficult to discuss either group, or I. W. W.-ism in general, without ambiguity. The I. W. W. which has been most advertised in the United States is the Chicago, or "Direct-Actionist," or "Anarcho-Syndicalist," or "Anti-Political," or "Bummery" or "red" I. W. W. This is the I. W. W. which was actively interested in the strikes at Lawrence, Massachusetts, Wheatland, California, and many other places, and in "free speech" fights at Spokane, Fresno, and San Diego. They are the "Wobblies" of the West. In this present work they are considered, entirely without prejudice to the admittedly more "correct" and consistent position of the doctrinaires of the Detroit wing, to be the I. W. W. The doctrinaires are the socialistic, pro-political, "yellow" I. W. W.

It is proposed in these chapters to sketch the main lines of development of the Chicago organization from 1908 to the present time, as well as to indicate the general character of its activities from year to year. The important and bitterly fought struggle at the seventh and eighth conventions in 1912 and 1913 over the question of decentralization is described as faithfully as possible. The relations between the I. W. W. and the Socialist party are set forth,[Pg 260] especially in connection with the adoption of the famous sabotage clause by the Socialist party at its Indianapolis convention in 1912. The newer phases of the organizing and propaganda work of the I. W. W., the free-speech fights, and its increased activity among the unskilled and floating laborers are described. No attempt is made here to go into the various strikes and free-speech controversies in more than a very cursory manner. This is not because their importance is underestimated. The writer feels that the field work of the "Wobblies" is really the most significant part of their history, if for no other reason than that the I. W. W. expends perhaps more energy in proportion to its strength and resources in propaganda, organizing and advertising work afield than does almost any other labor organization in the country. The more striking episodes in the career of the I. W. W., like the Lawrence strike and the Wheatland hop riots, have, however, been extensively written up in the magazines and recorded as well in scientific journals and government reports. On the contrary, the vicissitudes of the career of the I. W. W. as an organized body of workers have never even been recited.

The split of 1908 left the direct-actionists in almost as weak a condition as the doctrinaires. The weakness of the latter has been chronic. The former were able to develop great strength because they had modified their theories to the extent necessary to make some appreciable application of them to the actual conditions of economic life. They were confronted by conditions and met them at the cost of doctrinal consistency. They were unconscious pragmatists and the result is that they have made themselves felt to a much greater extent than the doctrinaires. They have been strikingly successful as gadflies—stinging and shocking the bourgeoisie into the initiation of reforms. If the "anarcho-syndicalist" I. W. W. may not properly be called a success[Pg 261]ful organization, there is at least this much to be said for it: it has been a far less unsuccessful organization than has the doctrinaire faction.

For some time after the split in 1908 the Industrial Workers of the World scarcely more than kept alive. The membership dwindled and locals expired by the score. Between September, 1908, and May 1, 1910, only sixty-six new local unions were chartered.[509] Only in 1911 did their number begin to increase, and even then it was a halting and fitful progress. Levine writes that the I. W. W. had "shrunk to a mere handful of leaders, revolutionary in spirit and ideals, and persevering in action, with a small, scattered and shifting following and an unsatisfactory administrative machinery."[510]

During the year 1909 the organization was actively interested in a number of strikes. The most important of these was the McKees Rocks (Pennsylvania) strike in which 6,000 employees of the Pressed Steel Car Company were out for two months. Other strikes of the year involved the lumbermen at Somers and Kalispell, Montana; Eureka, California, and Prince Rupert, B. C.; the sheet and tin plate workers at New Castle and Shenango, Pennsylvania; and the farm laborers at Waterville, Washington. Secretary [Pg 262]Trautmann believed that these "constant irritative strikes" were more than all else responsible for the fact that less than one-third the gross membership was active (dues-paying) membership. These strikes, he said, involved half the membership in the course of one year.[511]

It was in this same year that the I. W. W. made its bow to the American public as the militant jail and soap-box belligerent in the free-speech fight. As early as April, 1906, there was a minor clash between the police and the "Wobblies," but it was not until nearly three years later that the I. W. W. free-speech epidemic assumed national proportions. Since 1909 the I. W. W.s have attracted quite as much attention by their dramatic free-speech controversies with municipal authorities here and there as they have by the time-honored resort to the strike. During the next few years after the schism of 1908 these free-speech struggles became rather frequent. The Pacific slope is the most fruitful soil for these conflicts. Labor is more mobile there, and when the organizers in any particular town are arrested for preaching revolution a more effective call to "foot-loose Wobblies" for an "invasion" is possible. On the Pacific slope the "Wobblies" almost literally broke into the jails by hundreds. They came to speak, but with the nearly certain foreknowledge that they would be collared by the police before they said many words. They simply crowded the jails, and in this way, as they intended, clogged the machinery of municipal administration by making themselves the guests of the city in such numbers as to be no inconsiderable burden to their real hosts, the taxpayers. Vincent St. John, then Secretary-Treasurer of the I. W. W., recently told the United States Commission on Industrial Relations [Pg 263]that "wherever any local union becomes involved in a free-speech fight they notify the general office and that information is sent to all the local unions, ... with the request that if they have any members that are foot-loose to send them along." Mr. St. John stated, however, that the general (i. e., the national) organization does not in any way finance or manage these free-speech fights except to contribute, so far as possible, at the call of the locals. The management of the struggle is in the hands, of the local union or unions most interested.[512] The same tactics are pursued in nearly every instance—a policy of sullen non-resistance on the part of the I. W. W. and of wholesale jailing by the authorities. The trouble always seems to begin because local authorities are revolted by—or at least nervously apprehensive about—either the substance of the I. W. W. speeches or the language in which their ideas are conveyed, or both. The remarks are alleged to be seditious, incendiary, unpatriotic, immoral, etc., or, whether they are any or all these or none of them, they are alleged to be profane or vulgar beyond the limits of forbearance. In the judgment of the writer the latter charge can be laid at the door of the I. W. W. with far greater justification than can the former. Refinement is not the Wobblies' long suit. How could it be? Our town fathers ought to be somewhat more tolerant of a want of refinement which is more or less inevitable under the conditions—for which conditions, moreover, they are in part responsible.

As to the first charge, it can only be remarked that suppression of what authorities think is subversive and seditious almost invariable has the same effect as would an effort to smother an active volcano. The ideas get expressed anyhow—and more bitterly, with the added circumstance that [Pg 264]those who try to do the smothering are burnt. Of course, it is not easy to determine at just what point language becomes directly provocative to violence. This limit of possible official tolerance is far less often reached than would be indicated by the actual conduct of local officials in these circumstances. "It cannot be considered as provocative of immediate disorder," says Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, of New York, "if speakers criticize, no matter how vehemently, the existing order of things, or if they recommend, no matter how enthusiastically, a change which they believe would improve things."[513] When George Creel was police commissioner in Denver he took a similar position and worked on the theory that all ideas could be safely given a hearing. He is reported to have given the following answer to an I. W. W. committee which applied to him for a "soap-box permit": "Go ahead, boys; speak as much as you like; only there's just one favor I'm going to ask. I wish you wouldn't spout directly under the army headquarters. They're not important, but they're childish, and they'll make me lots of bother if you do."[514] The result: nothing more happened than happens when the mine operators say that the leaders of the United Mine Workers ought to be taken out and shot. There was free speech but no fight.

After the experience of Spokane, Fresno, and San Diego some members of the organization at least recognized that no matter how absolute their right to pitch into established institutions from every angle, the sober necessities of a successful propaganda for revolutionary industrial unionism demanded more concentration upon that subject. In September, [Pg 265]1913, Ewald Koetgen, a member of the General Executive Board, made this suggestion to the delegates at the eighth convention:

In the fall of 1909 there were no less than three important free-speech campaigns conducted by the I. W. W. These were staged at Missoula, Montana; Spokane, Washington; and New Castle, Pennsylvania. In 1910 small "fights" were conducted in the spring and summer in Wenatchee and Walla Walla, Washington, and during the fall a much more important one at Fresno, California. This latter struggle continued until March, 1911. From this time until the end of the year 1913 hardly a mouth elapsed that did not witness a more or less important free-speech controversy between the Wobblies and the municipal authorities in some part of the United States. In the five-year period, 1909-1913, there were at least twenty free-speech campaigns of importance, continuing under definite I. W. W. direction for periods ranging from a few days to more than six months. The most important of these disturbances was that at San Diego, which broke out about February 1, 1912, and continued until late the following summer. Since 1913 free speech has been a less important issue with the I. W. W., and there have been comparatively few such disturbances.

[Pg 266]

Paterson, New Jersey, Aberdeen, South Dakota, Old Forge, Pennsylvania, and Everett, Washington, are almost the only cases of any great importance. The most serious of these was the Everett free-speech controversy which culminated in the fatal tragedy of November 6, 1916.

The attitude of the residents of the cities where free-speech fights have been staged was naturally bitterly hostile. This was most strikingly noticeable in business and commercial circles and was of course reflected in the daily press. In San Diego during the free-speech fight the local papers, almost without exception, kept up a running fire of editorial abuse of the I. W. W.s. "Hanging is none too good for them," said the Tribune; "they would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement."[516] In the face of such a tirade it is interesting to read the report of the Special Commissioner sent by Governor Hiram Johnson to investigate the disturbances in San Diego. Commissioner Weinstock took pains to follow up the stories of the brutality and cruelty of the self-constituted citizens' committee of Vigilantes not only to the I. W. W.s but also to any who were outspoken enough to defend them or who were alleged to have aided and abetted them. Mr. Weinstock says that he "is frank to confess that when he became satisfied of the truth of the stories ... it was hard for him to believe that he was not sojourning in Russia, conducting his investigation there instead of in this alleged 'land of the free and home of the brave.'"[517]

[Pg 267]

The organization made no attempt to hold a convention in 1909, but in May, 1910, the fifth convention met in Chicago. On the first day there were twenty-two delegates present, representing forty-two local unions in the following states: California, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Indiana, and in British Columbia. Judging from the very fragmentary records available there was little business of any importance transacted at this meeting. The delegates adopted a resolution to "reaffirm the original [Industrial Union] Manifesto of 1905,..."[518] and dispersed.

In September, 1911, fifteen months later, a somewhat more successful convention was held. This sixth annual meeting of the I. W. W. was in point of size almost as insignificant as the preceding one, thirty-one delegates from eleven states being present. In addition to the regular delegates there were present three "fraternal delegates" from the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Twenty-one locals were represented in addition to the locals included in the Textile Workers National Industrial Union of the I. W. W.—the only "national industrial union at that time included in the organization."[519] The convention was harmonious, and there is, therefore, the less to chronicle. "Most of the delegates were young men full of the fire and enthusiasm of youth. 'Intellectuals' were conspicuous by their absence."[520] We are told that very few changes were made in the organic law of the organization. Proposals were made, however, by the score. In the appendix to the Minutes is a list containing seventy resolutions which were presented on [Pg 268]the floor of the convention.[521] The question of politics was scarcely touched upon. An anti-parliamentary resolution was voted down without discussion. The bulk of the delegates were undoubtedly non-parliamentarians, that is to say, indifferent about politics and legislative action. An official report of the convention in the Industrial Worker says that the report of General Organizer Trautmann, which it declared would be published later in Solidarity,

Mr. Trautmann later transfered his allegiance to the Socialist Labor party faction. The Weekly People (the official S. L. P. organ) of July 26, 1913, published (on page 2) a letter from Trautmann to Eugene V. Debs in which he says:

Official reports of the convention claimed that there had been "a gradual increase in the moral, financial and numerical strength of the I. W. W." This claim is not entirely justified by available figures. The number of locals in the [Pg 269]organization was but slightly, if any, greater. Fewer charters were issued and more locals disbanded in 1911 than in 1910. The membership figures are conflicting, those furnished by the Secretary-Treasurer making a less favorable showing than those of Professor Barnett.[523] Mr. St. John says that the membership of the organization in good standing in October, 1911, was about 10,000.

There was at this time a very considerable gain in particular industries, such as metal working and railroad and building construction. This development is indicated in Table 1, which shows the average membership of the I. W. W. in the specified industries during the period 1910-1913:

[Pg 270]

TABLE 1[525]

Average Membership (Chicago) I. W. W.—1910-1913, by Industries

If figures are ever misleading, they are so in reference to the "Wobblies." They are presented, however, in the belief that they have some significance. The organization was now unquestionably picking up. In 1910 there had been a number of I. W. W. strikes—nine at any rate in which the organization was actively interested. In April, the farm hands of North Yamhill, Oregon, who "had been handing out the principles of revolutionary unionism in huge, raw [Pg 271]chunks,"[526] walked out on account of the discharge of some of their number. In August, the Gas Works' laborers in southern California, chiefly Mexicans, were out for about two weeks for higher wages. The settlement as reported fixed wages at $2.25 and provided that only I. W. W.s were to be employed in the future. A strike of the window cleaners in Providence for a wage increase and the closed shop was reported won. These instances will give an idea of the character of the strikes and the workers involved. In 1910 there appear to have been very few strikes in which the I. W. W. was interested. Such meager data as are available about I. W. W. strikes have been gathered together in Appendix VIII.

Although 1911 was an inactive year as regards strikes, the condition of the organization was not nearly so hopeless as it had been.

Another indication of growth was the expansion of the I. W. W. press. At the close of the fourth convention the I. W. W. had only one paper, the Industrial Union Bulletin, which suspended publication early in 1909 and whose place was filled by the Industrial Worker (II.) (Spokane), which [Pg 272]in turn passed out in September, 1913. The Industrial Worker (I.) was published from January, 1906, until the summer of 1907. The Industrial Worker (III.) (Seattle) began publication in April, 1916, and continues to appear.[528] It is stated in Solidarity, July 2, 1910, that in that year the I. W. W. had seven papers in as many different languages.

During the twelve months preceding the sixth convention (September, 1911) seventy locals were organized and forty-eight disbanded. They were distributed among specified industries, as shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2[529]

Secretary-Treasurer St. John presented an interesting classification of the reasons given for the disbanding of these forty-eight local unions. He distributes them as follows:

[Pg 273]

It was at this meeting that the question of the authority of the general administration over the rank and file was first seriously considered in the I. W. W. A number of constitutional changes were proposed and most of them were brought forward with the more or less definite idea of minimizing, or at least modifying in some way, the authority of the national officers and the other members or the General Executive Board. These amendments originated chiefly from local unions in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific States. The debates lasted several days and involved a rather thorough discussion of the relations between the different parts of the organization. All of these proposed amendments were lost, the delegates being of the opinion probably that few constitutional changes were necessary.[531]

At this (1911) convention, W. Z. Foster presented his report as representative of the I. W. W. at the seventh conference of the International Labor Secretariat which met at Budapest in August. He was unable to make a very favorable report. The international conference, after giving an entire day to a discussion of the question of the admission of the I. W. W., refused it unanimously despite the fact [Pg 274]that his claims were backed by the representatives of the Confédération Générale du Travail of France.[532] At about this time the French syndicalists were facing a serious crisis, which threatened them as well with complete division. They escaped then, but there have since developed two groups in the C. G. T.: the "red" (revolutionary) syndicalists, and the "yellow" (conservative) syndicalists.[533]

Karl Kautsky quotes M. Lagardelle as having admitted in 1911 that "the present crisis compels a general revision of the facts and the ideas of syndicalism. After a glorious beginning we find ourselves faced with that which is generally the result of forced marches in complete exhaustion."[534]

The I. W. W. had had no direct contact with French syndicalism previous to 1908. Moreover, its relations with the French movement have not at any time been as close or as definite as is generally imagined. The I. W. W. organization is an indigenous American product, if there ever was such a thing. The tactics used have come in part through the reading by I. W. W.s of the writings of Pouget, Sorel, Lagardelle, and others of the French syndicalist school. This contagion of ideas has also spread through personal contacts. In 1908 William D. Haywood went to Europe and there met some of the leaders of the C. G. T. Again in 1910 he was present at the International Labor and Socialist Congress at Copenhagen. He nominally represented the Socialist party of America, but he also, in an unofficial way, championed the cause of American syndicalism as it had been developed by the Industrial Workers of the World.[535]

[Pg 275]

The biennial conference of the International (Labor) Secretariat met at Budapest, Hungary, August 10-12, 1911. The entire first day's session was taken up with a lengthy argument over the admission of W. Z. Foster, the I. W. W. delegate. His credentials were finally rejected since he had only the support of the French Confédération Générale du Travail.[536] President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, in his report to its convention held later on in the same year, refers to "the repudiation of the so-called Industrial Workers of the World" at the Budapest conference. "Inasmuch," he said, "as the would-be delegate for the corporal's guard that composes the Industrial Workers of the World professed to support the policies and program of the Confédération Générale du Travail of France, his pretensions were supported by the latter organization."[537] James Duncan, the A. F. of L. delegate at Budapest, reported that "a misguided man, named Foster, from Chicago, claiming to represent an alleged organization of labor in America, called the International [sic] Workers of the World, had been for some time in Paris ..." and had apparently convinced the C. G. T. that he should be recognized at the Budapest conference instead of the A. F of L. representatives. "During the discussion Foster lost control of his temper," said Duncan; "he even threatened assault ...—ocular demonstration of what an I. W. W. really is(!) ... [But] the Frenchmen were not dismayed at their tricolor being smudged with I. W. W. mire."[538]

French syndicalism, then, has entered the I. W. W. to give it certain characteristic strike tactics and a set of foggy [Pg 276]philosophical concepts about the General Strike, the "militant minority," etc. To this extent the I. W. W. is a syndicalist union. In structure it is a decentralized body (to the extent that it has any body to be decentralized), whereas the C. G. T. is decidedly centralized. In its organization and in its attitude toward compatriot labor bodies it is at variance with the French Confédération. The French idea has taken more definite form in the United States in the shape of the Syndicalist League of North America.

The Syndicalist League is a propaganda body rather than a labor organization. It is directed largely against the I. W. W.—opposing syndicalism to the industrialism of the American organization. It believes in the possibility of reforming the American Federation of Labor from within and condemns the dual-unionism of the I. W. W. It is optimistic regarding the craft union. "It is aware," says William English Walling, "that it will be impossible to secure a revolutionary majority in these organizations, whether of a socialistic or of an anarchistic character, and it has imported for this contingency the French syndicalistic theory of the power of the 'militant minority.'"[539] A number of the anarchists were inclined to favor the Syndicalist League because they feared the "centralized government" of the I. W. W.[540]

In this connection it may be well to note here the organization in New York City in October, 1912, of the Syndicalist Educational League with Hippolyte Havel, secretary, [Pg 277]and Harry Kelly, treasurer. This, we are informed, "is an organization of active propagandists formed for the purpose of spreading the idea of syndicalism, direct-action and the general-strike among the organized and unorganized workers of America."[541]

In 1911 the trial of the MacNamara brothers for the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building was stirring the country. The I. W. W. so vigorously championed the cause of the indicted men that the San Francisco Chronicle was moved to say:

A few days later the Industrial Worker carried in capitals on the front page the following

OFFICIAL I. W. W. PROCLAMATION!

"Arouse! Prepare to Defend Your Class!"

When the seventh convention met in 1912 the General Executive Board declared that the MacNamara case "demonstrated [Pg 278]beyond doubt that no legal safeguard can be invoked to protect any member of the working class who incurs the enmity of the employers by standing between them and unlimited exploitation of the workers." Furthermore, it charged that the A. F. of L. "did not come to their assistance as it should have done ... [because] the moral support guaranteed these members of the working class was practically nil so far as the American Federation of Labor was concerned."[544]

These militant utterances of the I. W. W. served to increase a growing hostility to that organization in the Socialist party. This increasing opposition was directed against the methods and tactics of I. W. W.-ism rather than against its criticism of capitalist society, its form or organization or its idea of the character of the society of the future. The Socialists objected in general to the whole philosophy of direct action, and more particularly to certain phases of direct action—viz., the use of sabotage and violence in general.

One I. W. W. official defines direct action as the "withdrawal of labor power or efficiency from the place or object of production."[545] Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist, describes it as the "conscious individual or collective effort to protest against or remedy social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers."[546] Professor Hubert Lagardelle, one of the intellectuels of the French syndicalist movement, explains that "Direct Action is opposed to the indirect and legalized action of democracy, of Parliament and of parties. It means that instead of delegating to others the function of action (following [Pg 279]the habit of democracy), the working class is determined to work for itself."[547] Sabotage has been defined by the leading English Syndicalist, Tom Mann, as "the taking of advantage for personal or class gain."[548] Pouget says that "le sabotage est la mise en pratique da la maxime: à mauvaise paye, mauvais travail."[549] In its mildest form sabotage is simply the time-honored trade-union practice—restriction of output. Gustav Hervé, the editor of La Guerre Sociale, advocates its use as a kind of gymnastique révolutionnaire or training for the revolution which many socialists believe may be precipitated by the violence of the capitalists, in the guise, perhaps, of martial law. It may be convenient to think of direct action as the inclusive term. Thus it may take the form of concerted abstention from work and be simply a strike, or it may take the form of working "in a way detrimental to the boss" and be one kind of sabotage.

An interesting example of the I. W. W.'s press campaign for the methods of sabotage and direct action was furnished when in the summer of 1913 the I. W. W. locals of Los Angeles began the publication of a semi-official weekly paper called The Wooden Shoe. This name was selected on the strength of the legend that the word sabotage was coined in France when a workman with a grievance threw his sabot or wooden shoe into the machinery and so clogged it and stopped production. This kind of direct action is picturesquely advocated on the front page of each issue of this paper. Grouped around the title heading—The Wooden Shoe—are the following boxed mottoes and slogans:

[Pg 280]

These tactics had been more and more talked about if not practised by the I. W. W. for several years past. Indeed, it is safe to say that the practical application of those forms of direct action which the "Wobblies" consider expedient was becoming constantly more general. When the Socialists met in convention at Indianapolis in May, 1912, the problem of the proper attitude for the Socialist party to take toward the I. W. W., and more especially toward the "direct action" propaganda, was made the occasion of a violent controversy. The discussion centered on a motion to insert a new clause in the constitution of the Socialist party providing (in Article II, Sec. 6) that "any member of the party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled from membership in the party...."[550] After a long debate the amendment was adopted by a vote of 191 to 90, and the now famous Article II., Sec. 6, became a party law.[551] During the discussion there were some quite violent criticisms made of direct action and violence. Delegate W. R. Gaylord said: "We do not want any of it. None of it! We don't want the touch of it on us. We do not want the hint [Pg 281]of it connected with us. We repudiate it in every fibre of us."[552] Victor Berger expressed himself very emphatically on the "sabotage clause."

It was not alone the advocacy of "direct action" which incurred for the I. W. W. the enmity of the Socialists. The latter felt that when the I. W. W. in 1908 "repudiated political action," it really declared war on the Socialist party. That party obviously could not consistently approve of the Detroit I. W. W. because that faction was really the ward of a rival political organization, the Socialist Labor party. Ernest Untermann, who was one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, said at a previous convention of the Socialist party: "When we organized the I. W. W., we hoped that it would be both a political and an economic organization.... Instead of that, from the very outside there crept in an element that made for disintegration, and today the I. W. W. has drifted back toward syndicalism."[554] He declared, moreover, that the I. W. W. [Pg 282]deeply in debt to the Socialist party, as he intimated, had ungratefully obstructed the work of the party:

Finally the last tie that connected the I. W. W. with the Socialist party was broken when, in February, 1913, William D. Haywood was recalled from the National Executive Committee of the party.[556]

[Pg 283]