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
[Illustration]
New York
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS
LONDON: P. S. KING & SON, LTD.
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY
PAUL FREDERICK BRISSENDEN
TO
#R. O. L. B.#
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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Since this went to press the trial has come to an end. On August 17
the case went to the jury which, after being out fifty-five minutes,
returned a verdict of "guilty, as charged in the indictment." On August
30 Judge K. M. Landis imposed sentence. W. D. Haywood and fourteen
others were sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment and $20,000 fine
each. Thirty-three others were given six years and fined $5,000 each
on the first count; ten years and $5,000 each on the second count; two
years and $10,000 each on the third count; and ten years and $10,000
each on the fourth count. Thirty-three others were given five years
and fines of $5,000 apiece on each of counts 1 and 2 and $10,000 each
on counts 3 and 4. Twelve more were sentenced to one year and one day,
with fines of $5,000 each on the first and second counts and $10,000
each on the third and fourth counts. Two of the defendants were given
ten-day sentences. All sentences run concurrently. The fines imposed
aggregate $2,570,000 and costs. It is announced that the case will be
appealed. (U. S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern
Div., _Criminal Clerk's Minute Book 12_, pp. 61-62.)
[2] Report of the Commission, _Sixth Annual Report of the Secretary of
Labor_, p. 20.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 5
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 7
PART I
BEGINNINGS
CHAPTER I
FORERUNNERS OF THE "WOBBLIES"
Early revolutionary bodies 27
English prototypes 29
Early radical unions in the United States 29
The National Labor Union 30
The Knights of Labor 30
The Internationals 35
The Sovereigns of Industry 37
The United Brewery Workmen 38
The United Mine Workers of America 38
Haymarket 39
The American Railway Union 40
The Western Federation of Miners 40
W. F. M. strikes 40
The Western Labor Union 43
The American Labor Union 44
The Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Trade and Labor
Alliance 46
The French _Confédération Générale du Travail_ 53
CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF THE I. W. W.
Pre-convention conferences 57
The _rôle_ of the Western Federation of Miners 60
The January Conference 61
The Industrialist Manifesto 62
Attitude of the A. F. of L. 65
The Industrial Union Convention and the launching of the I. W. W. 67
Character of industries and unions represented 68
Numerical predominance of the Western Federation and the
American Labor Union 71
Daniel DeLeon and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance 75
Doctrinal elements represented in the convention: reformist,
direct-actionist and doctrinaire 76
The dominant personalities 79
CHAPTER III
THE I. W. W. _versus_ THE A. F. OF L.
Attitude of the revolutionary industrialists toward the
Federation. 83
Critique of craft unionism 84
"Union scabbery" and the aristocracy of labor 85
Emphasis on the unskilled and unorganized 87
The "pure and simple" union and the "labor lieutenant" 88
Repudiation of the policy of "boring from within" 89
Convention resolutions 91
The preamble and the clause on political action 92
The attitude of DeLeon and the S. L. P 93
The I. W. W. Constitution 96
Classification of industries 96
The structure of the organization 98
The local unions and other subordinate bodies 98
The General Executive Board and its powers 100
Other provisions 101
Influence of "DeLeonism" in the convention 103
The primary importance of the Western Federation of Miners 104
Samuel Gompers on the convention 106
Other comments 107
What the constitutional convention accomplished 108
Part II
THE FIRST PHASE
[The "original" I. W. W.]
CHAPTER IV
MAIDEN EFFORTS ON THE ECONOMIC FIELD
The situation at the close of the first convention 113
Progress during the first year 114
Activities among A. F. of L. locals 115
Friction with Federation unions 116
Practical compromises with the craft-union idea 118
Internal dissension 120
Breakdown of the Metals and Machinery Department 122
Defection of the Western Federation of Miners 122
Early strikes and strike activities 123
Strike policies 124
The New Jersey Socialist Unity Conference 125
The discussion on socialism and the trade unions 127
The Unity Conference resolutions 128
The second I. W. W. convention 129
Growth in membership 130
The Industrial Departments 131
CHAPTER V
THE _coup_ OF THE "PROLETARIAN RABBLE"
The "reactionaries" _vs._ the "wage slave delegates" at the second
convention 136
The DeLeon-St. John attack on President Sherman 137
Pre-convention conference of the "DeLeonite rabble" 137
The indictment of Sherman 139
Playing freeze-out with the "wage slave delegates" 142
The _per diem_ resolution and the defeat of the Shermanites 143
Abolition of the office of General President 143
The findings of the Master in Chancery 145
Contemporary comment on the quarrel 147
DeLeonism and the Socialist Labor Party at the second convention 147
The Western Federation of Miners 149
I. W. W. finances 153
CHAPTER VI
THE STRUCTURE OF A MILITANT UNION
An organization for farm laborers and city proletarians 155
The I. W. W. and the lumber workers 156
Provision for foreigners 158
Foreign language branches 160
The local union 160
Relation of locals to the General Administration 161
Centralization 161
District Industrial Councils 163
Industrial Departments 164
Further discussion of political action 168
The Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case 170
Defense activities of the I. W. W. 171
Proposal for a general strike 174
Effect of the Moyer-Haywood case on the I. W. W. 175
CHAPTER VII
THE FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE
The third convention 178
The condition of the organization 181
Membership strength 182
The I. W. W. at the Stuttgart Congress 183
Political parties and the trade unions 185
The political clause of the Preamble again under discussion.... 188
CHAPTER VIII
"JOB CONTROL" AT GOLDFIELD
The A. F. of L. and the I. W. W. in Goldfield, Nevada 191
Character of the Goldfield local of the I. W. W 192
The town unionists and the mine unionists 192
Proposed consolidation of the two groups 193
Attitude of the Mine Owners' Association 193
Federal military intervention and investigation 195
Report of the Commission 196
What the I. W. W. accomplished at Goldfield 200
The I. W. W. and the Western Federation in Nevada politics 201
I. W. W. strike activities in other parts of the country 203
General organizing activities 207
CHAPTER IX
DOCTRINAIRE _versus_ DIRECT-ACTIONIST
Condition of the organization on the eve of the schism of 1908 213
Effect of the financial panic of 1907 214
The widening breach between the I. W. W. and the Western Federation
of Miners 216
The line-up in the I. W. W. on political action 218
The personnel of the convention 220
Walsh's "Overalls Brigade". 221
The Socialist Labor Party Delegation and the unseating of Daniel
DeLeon 222
The issue between the DeLeonites and the Direct-actionists 223
"Straight industrialism" _versus_ parliamentarianism 225
The preamble purged of politics 226
Rump convention of the DeLeonites at Paterson, New Jersey 228
A bifurcated I. W. W 229
The issue between the Detroit I. W. W. and the Chicago I. W. W. 231
The Wobblies' criticism of parliamentary government 232
The doctrinaire state socialism of the Detroiters 234
The issue illustrated in the contrast between Daniel DeLeon and
Vincent St. John 235
I. W. W. constitution non-political rather than anti-political 236
Influence of DeLeon on the I. W. W. 238
DeLeonism and Bolshevism 241
CHAPTER X
THE I. W. W. ON THE "CIVILIZED PLANE"
The development of the Detroit I. W. W 243
Strike activities and friction with the "Bummery" or Direct-actionist
faction 246
The Anarcho-syndicalists _versus_ the parliamentarians 252
The Detroit I. W. W. on _sabotage_ 253
Eugene Debs' plea for a union of the two I. W. W.s. 253
The Detroit I. W. W. becomes The Workers International Industrial
Union 255
Part III
THE ANARCHO-SYNDICALISTS
[The Direct Actionists]
CHAPTER XI
FREE SPEECH AND _Sabotage_
Condition of the Direct-actionist faction after the split with the
Doctrinaires 260
The Wobblies establish the "free-speech fight" as an institution 262
The procedure in free-speech fights 262
I. W. W. tactics 263
Community reactions 266
The conventions of 1910 and 1911 267
Growth in membership 268
The I. W. W. press 271
Local unions organized and disbanded 272
The I. W. W. and the French syndicalists 273
International labor politics 275
The Syndicalist League of North America 276
The I. W. W. and the MacNamara case 277
Franco-American _sabotage_ 278
Demonstration against _sabotage_ at the 1912 convention of the
Socialist party 280
Article II, section 6 280
CHAPTER XII
LAWRENCE AND THE CREST OF POWER
Strike activities in 1912 283
The Lawrence strike 284
The use of violence at Lawrence and the responsibility for it 286
Dynamite planting 288
The I. W. W. and the A. F. of L. at Lawrence 289
Results of the strike 290
I. W. W. patriotism and I. W. W. morals 293
The 1912 convention 295
The beginning of the conflict over decentralization 297
CHAPTER XIII
DUAL UNIONISM AND DECENTRALIZATION
The policy of "boring from within" 299
Dual unionism 299
An I. W. W. defense of "boring from within" 300
Tom Mann joins in the attack on dual unionism 303
Rejoinders from Ettor and Haywood 303
The 1913 convention 305
Centralization _versus_ decentralization 305
The proposals of the "decentralizers" 306
The relation of the locals to the general organization 307
The Pacific Coast District Organization 311
The East against the West in the decentralization debate 313
The western Wobbly and the eastern 314
Geographical differences in I. W. W. local unions 315
An anarchist's impressions of the 1913 convention 318
CHAPTER XIV
RECENT TENDENCIES
Continued hostility between the I. W. W. and the Western Federation
of Miners 320
The labor war in Butte, Montana 321
The United Mine Workers and the I. W. W 325
The 1914 convention 327
The I. W. W. and the unemployed 329
The resolution against war 331
Constitutional changes 331
Time agreements 332
Growth in membership 333
The slump in 1914-1915 335
Revival of activity 337
The Agricultural Workers Organization 337
The Everett free-speech fight 339
The 1916 (tenth) convention 340
Present strength of the I. W. W. 341
Character of the membership 341
The I. W. W. abroad 342
Anti-militarist campaign of the I. W. W. in Australasia 342
Australian "Unlawful Associations" Act 343
The Workers' Industrial Union of Australia 345
"Criminal Syndicalism" laws in the United States 346
The turnover of I. W. W. members and locals 349
Conclusion 350
APPENDICES
I. Father Hagerty's "Wheel of Fortune" 351
II. The I. W. W. Preamble: Chicago and Detroit versions 351
III. The structure of the organization in 1917. (Chart) 353
IV. Membership statistics:
Table A. Membership of Chicago and Detroit branches.
(1905-1916). 354
Table B. Membership of the I. W. W. compared with the
aggregate number of organized workers in the U. S., by
industries 356
Table C. Membership of the I. W. W. and of certain other
selected organizations and industrial groups. (1897-1914) 358
Table D. Membership of (1) the I. W. W. and (2) all
American trade unions 359
V. Geographical distribution of I. W. W. locals in 1914. (Chicago
and Detroit) 360
VI. Reasons assigned for locals disbanding. (1910-1911) 366
VII. Free-speech fights of the I. W. W. (1906-1916) 367
VIII. I. W. W. strikes. (1906-1917) 368
IX. Selections from the I. W. W. Song Book. 370
X. Copies of State "Criminal Syndicalism" statutes. 381
BIBLIOGRAPHY 387
INDEX 429
PART I
BEGINNINGS
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]
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.
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":
Under the system proposed by Owen [they say] the instruments
of production were to become the property, not of the whole
community, but of the particular set of workers who used
them. The trade unions were to be transformed into "national
companies" to carry on all the manufactures. The agricultural
union was to take possession of the land, the miners' union of
the mines, the textile unions of the factories. Each trade was
to be carried on by its particular trade union, centralized in
one "Grand Lodge."[6]
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]
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 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]
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:
The fundamental idea of the Knights of Labor is the unity
of all workers.... It regards this unity of interest as
necessitating unity of policy and control; it conceives that
unity of control can be effected only by concentrating all
responsibility ... in the hands of the men who may be chosen to
stand at the head of affairs. The control of the organization
rests wholly in the general assembly, and ... the orders of
the executive officers, elected by the general assembly, are
required to be obeyed by all members. The several trades are
separately organized within the order.... The Knights desired
to include all productive workers, whether or not they received
their compensation in the form of wages.[14]
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 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:
The rival factions of the Knights of Labor will each hold a
congress at Albany this week beginning Tuesday. Each congress
claims to represent the Knights of Labor in this State....
The Hayes faction has at present the books, property and
paraphernalia of the Knights of Labor which were awarded to it
by the courts some time ago.[19]
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 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 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 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 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."
The day has gone by for the efforts of isolated trades [wrote
H. M. Hyndman]. Nothing is to be gained for the workers as a
class without the complete organization of labourers of all
grades, skilled and unskilled.... We appeal ... to the skilled
artisans of all trades ... to make common cause with their
unskilled brethren and with us Social Democrats so that the
workers may themselves take hold of the means of production and
organize a coöperative commonwealth....[34]
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
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, 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 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 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
there is a class struggle in society and that this struggle
is caused by economic conditions; ... the producer ... is
exploited of the wealth which he produces, being allowed to
retain barely sufficient for his elementary necessities; ...
that the class struggle will continue until the producer is
recognized as the sole master of his product; ... that the
working class, and it alone, can and must achieve its own
emancipation; ... [and] finally, that an industrial union and
the concerted political action of all wage workers is the only
method of attaining this end.
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 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.
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 of Labor and its desire to build up a revolutionary labor
movement.
The economic organization of the proletariat [declares the
official organ of the A. L. U.] is the heart and soul of the
socialist movement, of which the political party is simply the
public expression at the ballot box. The purpose of industrial
unionism is to organize the working class in approximately
the same departments of production as those which will obtain
in the coöperative commonwealth, so that, if the workers
should lose their franchise, they would still possess an
economic organization intelligently trained to take over and
collectively administer the tools of industry and the sources
of wealth for themselves.[56]
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 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
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 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
the methods and spirit of labor organization are absolutely
impotent to resist the aggressions of concentrated capital
...; that the economic power of the capitalist class ... rests
upon institutions, essentially political, which ... cannot be
radically changed ... except through the _direct action of the
working people themselves_, economically and politically united
as a class.
This Declaration concludes with the following statement of the chief
object of the Alliance:
The summary ending of that barbarous [class] struggle at
the earliest possible time by the abolition of classes, the
restoration of the land and of all the means of production,
transportation and distribution to the people as a collective
body, and the substitution of the coöperative commonwealth for
the present state of planless production, industrial war and
social disorder; a commonwealth in which every worker shall
have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties,
multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization.[65]
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
by bodies of organized labor which are still governed ... by
the tenets or traditions of the "Old Unionism Pure and Simple";
to organize into local and district alliances all the wage
workers, skilled or unskilled; ... to further the political
movement of the working class and its development on the lines
of international socialism as represented on this continent by
the Socialist Labor party.[66]
The Socialist Labor party naturally greeted the Alliance with
enthusiasm. After officially endorsing the Alliance, the 1896
convention passed a resolution of welcome.
We hail with unqualified joy [it declared] the formation of
the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as a great stride
toward throwing off the yoke of wage slavery.... We call upon
the socialists of the land to carry the revolutionary spirit
of the S. T. and L. A. into all the organizations of the
workers and thus consolidate ... the proletariat of America
in an irresistible class conscious army, equipped both with
the shield of the economic organization and the sword of the
Socialist Labor party ballot.[67]
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 S. T. and L. A. [says Fraina] was largely a weapon to
fight conservative A. F. of L. politics. The friends of the
A. F. of L. roared in protest and ... split the Socialist
movement to save the A. F. of L.... DeLeon's revolutionary
unionism was largely a means to prevent the socialist political
movement [from] being controlled by the Aristocracy of Labor
and the Middle Class--two social groups which ... have
certain interests in common and against the revolutionary
proletariat.[68]
The composition and membership of the S. T. and L. A. in July, 1898,
were as follows:
German Waiters 260
Ale and Porter Union 200
United Engineers 60
Marquette Workers 70
Carl Sahm Club 80
Piano Makers 520
Bohemian Butchers 150
Bartenders 90
Furriers 250
Silver Workers 40
Empire City Lodge 35
New York Cooks 55
German Coppersmiths 80
Macaroni Workers 65
Progressive Cigarette Makers 970
Bohemian Typographia 32
Swedish Machinists 98
Progressive Typographia 15
Pressmen and Feeders 18
Independent Bakers No. 33 60
Independent Bakers No. 25 45
Liberty Waiters 65
-----
3,258[69]
Far from being superior to the old [craft] organization(s),
[says Stone] it is very much inferior.... With an insignificant
membership, without controlling as much as a large factory,
not to speak of a trade, at war not only with the bosses,
... but with every trade union which does not come under its
mighty wing--it was unable to undertake any step of importance,
in order to improve the condition of its members. The only
strike of significance which it had, that at Slatersville
[Rhode Island] was a failure after it had cost the Party about
$1,500....[70]
The Alliance was scarcely more than a phantom organization on the eve
of the launching of the I. W. W. in 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 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 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 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]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] _Cf._ Brooks, _American Syndicalism_ (New York, 1913), ch. vi and
Tridon, _The New Unionism_, 4th printing (New York, 1917), p. 67.
[4] _Cf._ C. Osborne Ward, _A history of the ancient working people,
from the earliest known period to the adoption of Christianity by
Constantine_ (_The Ancient Lowly_), Washington, D. C., Press of the
Craftsman, 1889, p. 140.
[5] "Stellen wir also vor allem fest, das die syndikalistische
Bewegung ... in ihren Tendenzen and ihrer Taktik als eine
Volksbewegung, eine Bewegung in den Arbeiterkreisen selbst, entstanden
ist, deren geschichtlichen Ursprung man ... bis in den Anfang der
neunziger Jahre, ja selbst in die Zeit der alten Internationale
zurück verlegen muss." (Ch. Cornélissen, "Ueber den internationalen
Syndikalismus"--_Archiv für Sozial Wissenschaft und Sozial-Politik_,
vol. xxx (1910), p. 151.)
[6] Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_ (London, 1902), new ed., pp.
144-5.
[7] _Ibid._, p. 404. In ch. iii, the Webbs give an interesting
description of this "revolutionary period" in English unionism.
[8] Commons (Ed.), _Documentary History of American Industrial Society_
(Cleveland, O., A. H. Clark Co., 1910-11), vol. vi, pp. 211-16.
Reprinted from The Man (New York), September 6, 1834.
[9] Ely, _Labor Movement in America_ (New York, 1890), p. 69. Tridon
(_The New Unionism_, p. 92), claims that by 1868 it had a membership
of 640,000. It was apparently represented at the Basle convention of
the International in 1869. _Cf._ also Hillquit, Morris, _History of
Socialism in the United States_ (5th ed., New York, 1910), p. 193.
[10] One of the Knights stated to the U. S. Industrial Commission
(_Report_, vol. vii [1900], p. 420), that in 1888 the Knights of Labor
had 1,200,000 members. In 1886 the organization contained nearly 9,000
local unions.
[11] Testimony before U. S. Industrial Commission, Washington, D. C.,
Dec. 15, 1898. _Report of the Industrial Commission_, vol. vii, p. 94.
[12] _Constitution, Knights of Labor_, pp. 3-6.
[13] T. V. Powderly, _Thirty Years of Labor_ (Columbus, O., 1889), p.
151.
[14] Vol. xix (1902), p. 798.
[15] New York _Sun_, March 29, 1886, p. 1, col. 5. (Interview.)
[16] J. G. Schonfarber, testimony before U. S. Industrial Commission,
Washington, D. C., Dec. 5, 1899. _Report_, vol. vii (1901), p. 423.
[17] Quoted by McNeill (Ed.), _The Labor Movement: The Problem of
To-day_ (New York, 1887), p. 410.
[18] Perlman, S., "Plan of an Investigation of the I. W. W." (MS.
report to U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations), p. 1.
[19] "Labor Knights Dispute," _The New York Times_, Jan. 12, 1902, p.
24. For an excellent short historical sketch of the Knights of Labor,
see _Report of the Industrial Commission_ (1901), vol. xvii, pp. 3-24.
[20] Commons, _Documentary History of American Industrial Society_,
vol. ix, p. 358.
[21] Tridon, _op. cit._, pp. 93-94.
[22] _Ibid._
[23] Cf. Ebert, Justus, _American Industrial Evolution_ (New York: New
York Labor News Co., 1907), p. 64.
[24] Tridon, _op. cit._, p. 93.
[25] _Cf. Compte-rendu officiel du sixième congrès générale de
l'association internationale des travailleurs_.... Geneva, 1873 (Locle,
1874).
[26] June 18, 1910, p. 2.
[27] _L'Internationale: documents et souvenirs 1864-78_ (Paris,
Cornély, 1905-10), vol. iv, p. vii.
[28] James Guillaume, _op. cit._, vol. i, pp. 132-133.
[29] _Loc. cit._, pp. 132-133.
[30] F. T. Carlton, "Ephemeral labor movements," _Popular Science
Monthly_, vol. lxxxv, p. 494 (November, 1914).
[31] _Vide_ reprint of its General Rules, published in 1874, Commons,
_Documentary History of American Industrial Society_, vol. ix, pp.
376-8.
[32] _Report of the Industrial Commission_, vol. xvii, p. 3, and
Powderly, T. V., _Thirty Years of Labor_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1889), p. 126.
[33] Now the International Union of United Brewery, Flour, Cereal and
Soft Drink Workers of America.
[34] "The decay of trade unions," _Justice_, June, 1887, quoted by
Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 396.
[35] Webb, _op. cit._, pp. 396-397.
[36] "The General Strike"; iii, In America and France, _Oakland_
(Calif.) _World_, Dec. 28, 1912.
[37] Justus Ebert, _American Industrial Evolution_, p. 63.
[38] _Op. cit._, Oakland _World_, Dec. 28, 1912.
[39] Now the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
[40] _Vide_, Federal Report on "Labor disturbances in Colorado:
1880-1904," (58th Cong., 3d Sess., no. 122, 1905), pp. 107, 149.
[41] _Ibid._, pp. 152-155.
[42] Federal Report on "Labor Disturbances in Colorado," p. 42.
[43] _Ibid._
[44] _Proceedings Tenth W. F. M. Convention_, Denver, 1902, p. 161.
[45] _Proceedings Tenth W. F. M. Convention_, pp. 163-165. Vincent St.
John was also interested as a proponent of this plan.
[46] _Proceedings Eleventh W. F. M. Convention_ (1903), pp. 33-34.
[47] Constitution and By-Laws of the Western Federation of Miners
(1910), p. 3.
[48] _Proceedings Sixteenth Convention W. F. M._, p. 17 (Report of
President C. H. Moyer).
[49] Cf. Haywood, "The timber worker and the timber wolves,"
_International Socialist Review_, vol. xiii, p. 110 (August, 1912).
[50] _Proceedings Sixteenth Convention W. F. M._, p. 17.
[51] Rudolph Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," _Weekly People_, September
4, 1915, p. 4.
[52] "Industrial Union Epigrams," _Voice of Labor_, March, 1905.
[53] _Preamble, Constitution and Laws of the A. L. U._, p. 20.
[54] Ibid., art. ix, sec. 11 and sec. 12.
[55] _Preamble, Constitution and Laws_, pp. 4-5.
[56] _American Labor Union Journal_, Dec., 1904. Quoted by Ebert,
_American Industrial Evolution_, p. 82.
[57] Ebert, _American Industrial Evolution_, p. 61.
[58] Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," _Weekly People_, April 24, 1915, p.
3.
[59] Stone, N. I., _Attitude of the Socialists to the Trade Unions_
(pamphlet, New York, 1900, Volkszeitung Library, vol. ii, Apr., 1900),
p. 6.
[60] Quoted by Robt. Hunter, "The trade unions and the Socialist
Party," _Miners' Magazine_, March 7, 1912, p. 11.
[61] Hunter, _loc. cit._
[62] _Voice of Labor_, May, 1905.
[63] _Ibid._
[64] Delegate Hickey, _Proceedings Tenth S. L. P. Convention_, p. 220.
[65] Constitution of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance of the
United States and Canada (1902), pp. 3-4. (Italics mine.)
[66] _Ibid._, p. 5.
[67] _Proceedings, Ninth S. L. P. Convention_, 1896, p. 30.
[68] Louis Fraina, "DeLeon," _The New Review_, July, 1914, vol. ii. p.
393.
[69] Stone, _op. cit._, p. 13. "At the most liberal estimate, the total
strength of the Alliance did not exceed 15,000 at that time (1898)."
_Ibid._, p. 14.
[70] _Ibid._, p. 15.
[71] Letter of Wm. E. Trautmann, _Voice of Labor_, May, 1905.
[72] Robt. Hunter, "The Trade Unions and the Socialist party," _Miners'
Magazine_, March 7, 1912, p. 11.
[73] _Vide_, Cornélissen, "Ueber den internationalen Syndikalismus,"
_Archiv für Sozial Wissenschaft und Sozial-Politik_, xxx (1910), p.
150. _Cf._ also _Industrial Worker_, June 18, 1910, p. 2.
[74] "Industrialism or revolutionary unionism," _The New Review_, Jan.
11, 1913, vol. i, p. 47.
[75] _Proceedings, Sixteenth W. F. M. Convention_ (Report of President
Moyer), pp. 17-18.
[76] _Cf._ Louis Levine, "The Development of Syndicalism in America,"
_Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xxviii, pp. 460-462 (Sept., 1913).
_Cf._ also Selig Perlman, "From Socialism to Anarchism and Syndicalism"
(1876-1884), pp. 269-300 (vol. ii, chap. 6), in Commons and others,
_History of Labor in the United States_.
[77] There is an excellent description of the older industrial unions,
particularly the Western Federation of Miners and the United Brewery
Workmen, in William Kirk's monograph, _National Labor Federations in
the United States_, pt. iii, "Industrial Unions," pp. 117-150, _Johns
Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science_, ser.
xxiv, nos. 9 and 10.
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 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.
This conviction of ineffectiveness in the face of opportunities
for effective work was strengthened [he said] at the general
convention of the International Union of United Brewery Workmen
last September. It seemed clear that a united, harmonious and
consistent request from all unions and organizations of the
American Labor Union, backed by an administration in whom the
rank and file of the brewery workers had confidence, would
have brought the Brewery Workmen into the American Labor Union
at that time. And what would have been true of the Brewery
Workmen would have been true also of other organizations of an
industrial character. It therefore seemed the first duty of
conscientious union men, regardless of affiliation, prejudice
or personal interest, to lay the foundation upon which all
the working people, many of whom are now organized, might
unite upon a common ground to build a labor organization that
would correspond to modern industrial conditions, and through
which they might finally secure complete emancipation from
wage-slavery for all wage-workers.[81]
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:
Asserting our confidence in the ability of the working class,
if correctly organized on both political and industrial
lines, to take possession of and operate successfully ... the
industries of the country;
Believing that working-class political expression, through the
Socialist ballot, in order to be sound, must have its economic
counterpart in a labor organization builded as the structure of
socialist society, embracing within itself the working-class
in approximately the same groups and departments and
industries that the workers would assume in the working-class
administration of the Co-operative Commonwealth ...;
We invite you to meet us at Chicago, Monday, January 2, 1905,
in secret conference to discuss ways and means of uniting the
working people of America on correct revolutionary principles,
regardless of any general labor organization of past or
present, and only restricted by such basic principles as will
insure its integrity as a real protector of the interests of
the workers.[82]
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:
This sounds to me as though we were to have another Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance experiment again; that we, who are in
the trade-unions as at present constituted, are to cut loose
and flock by ourselves. If I am correct in my surmises it means
another running fight between Socialists on the one side and
all other partisans on the other.... If there is any fighting
to be done I intend ... to _agitate on the inside_ of the
organizations now in existence....[83]
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:
The Twelfth Annual Convention instructed your Executive
Board to take such action as might be necessary in order
that the representatives of organized labor might be brought
together and plans outlined for the amalgamation of the entire
wage-working class into one general organization. Following
out these instructions at a meeting held in the month of
December it was decided to send a committee to meet with the
officers of the American Labor Union. This conference took
place January 4.... The result ... was the Manifesto....
The question for you to decide is not one of changing the
principles, policy or plan of your organization, but as to
whether or not the Western Federation of Miners shall become a
working part of such a movement as set forth in the Manifesto,
which shall consist of one great industrial union embracing all
industries.[84]
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
if this convention goes on record giving its unanimous sanction
to the movement that is contemplated in Chicago, such action
will be heralded from the Atlantic to the Pacific, ... and
will create a sentiment that will keep on crystallizing until
capitalism will feel that it is threatened in the citadel of
its entrenched power.[85]
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 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 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
a movement to fulfil these conditions must consist of one
great industrial union embracing all industries, providing for
craft autonomy locally, industrial autonomy internationally,
and working-class unity generally. It must be founded on the
class struggle ... and established as the economic organization
of the working class, without affiliation with any political
party.[87]
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; (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
As a matter of record and fairness it should be stated that,
first, not a single signer to the above call is officially
identified with the Socialist Party; secondly, that not one of
the signers has been seen or heard or known on the floor of
the American Federation of Labor conventions as an advocate of
socialism in recent years; and thirdly, it is doubtful whether
any American Federation of Labor delegate, with possibly an
exception or two, had the slightest knowledge that the Chicago
[January] conference was to be held.[90]
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.
The Socialists have called another convention to smash the
American trade-union movement [said President Gompers].
Scanning the list of twenty-six signers of this call, one
will look in vain to find the name of one man who has not for
years been engaged in the delectable work of trying to divert,
pervert, and disrupt the labor movement of the country....
We feel sure that the endorsement of the latest accession
to this new movement of Mr. Daniel Loeb, alias DeLeon, will
bring unction to the souls of these promoters of the latest
trade-union smashing scheme. So the trade-union smashers and
rammers from without and the "borers from within" are again
joining hands; a pleasant sight of the "pirates" and the
"kangaroos" hugging each other in glee over their prospective
prey.[91]
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.
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 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 of the different organizations represented at the convention
reveals at least forty distinct trades or occupations:
Bakers and Confectioners Union No. 48, Montreal.[A]
United Mine Workers No. 171.[A]
United Mine Workers, Pittsburg, Kans.[A]
Western Federation of Miners.
United Brotherhood of Railway Employees.
Journeymen Tailors Union of America No. 102, Pueblo.[A]
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.[A]
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:
Metal Polishers, Buffers and Platers No. 6, Chicago.[A]
Carpenters and Joiners No. 181, Chicago.[96]
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.[A]
Bohemian Musicians Union.
Hotel and Restaurant Workers.[A]
Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees, Division
No. 288, Chicago.[A]
Barbers Union No. 225, Sharon, Pa.[A]
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.[A]
International Protective Laborers Union, Dayton, Ohio.
Typographical Union No. 49, Denver.[A]
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 "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.
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 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:
Representation in the convention shall be based upon the
number of workers whom the delegate represents. No delegate,
however, shall be given representation in the convention on the
numerical basis of an organization, unless he has credentials
... authorizing him to install his union as a working part of
the proposed economic organization in the industrial department
to which it logically belongs.... Lacking this authority, the
delegate shall represent himself as an individual.[105]
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:
_Dele- _Organi- _Members_ _Voting_
gates_ zations_ _Repre- _strength_
_Repre- sented_
sented_
With power to install 70 23 51,430 51,430
Without power to install 72 20 91,500 72
Other "individual" delegates 61 -- 61 61
--- --- ------- ------
Total 203 43 142,991 51,563[106]
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:
_No. of_
_Organization_ _Membership_ _Delegates_
Western Federation of Miners 27,000 5
American Labor Union 16,750 29
United Metal Workers 3,000 2
United Brotherhood of Railway Employees 2,087 19
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance 1,450 14
------ --
Total 50,287[107] 69
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 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 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
"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 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 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_.
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.
I believe it is possible [he said] for such an organization as
the Western Federation of Miners to be brought into harmonious
relation with the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance ... and
I believe it is possible for these elements ... to combine
here ... and begin the work of forming a great economic or
revolutionary organization of the working class so sorely
needed in the struggle for their emancipation.[114]
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 and
Labor Alliance. He, too, believed that harmony was possible.
During this process of pounding one another we have both
learned [he said], both sides have learned, and I hope and
believe that this convention will bring together those who will
plant themselves squarely upon the class struggle and will
recognize the fact that the political expression of labor is
but the shadow of the economic organization.[116]
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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] The substance of chs. ii and iii was originally published in the
form of a monograph: _The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the
World_ (University of California Publications in Economics, vol. iv,
no. 1, Berkeley, 1913).
[79] The three letters, I. W. W., have lent themselves to various
picturesque and derisive translations: "I Won't Work," "I Want
Whiskey," "International Wonder Workers," "Irresponsible Wholesale
Wreckers," _etc._ "The Wobblies" is a nickname by which they are quite
commonly known, especially in the West. It is said that the I. W.
W.'s were so christened by Harrison Grey Otis, the editor of the _Los
Angeles Times_. And now, in 1917, Senator H. F. Ashurst, of Arizona,
declares that "I. W. W. means simply, solely and only, Imperial
Wilhelm's Warriors." (_Congr. Record_, Aug. 17, 1917, vol. lv, p. 6104).
[80] St. John, _The I. W. W., History, Structure and Methods_ (revised
edition, 1917), p. 2. Ernest Untermann, a writer prominently identified
with the Socialist party, was also present at this conference, although
he is not mentioned by St. John.
[81] "The Origin of the Manifesto," _Proceedings, First I. W. W.
Convention_, p. 82.
[82] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 82-3. The letter was
signed by W. E. Trautmann, George Estes, W. L. Hall, Eugene V. Debs,
Clarence Smith and Charles O. Sherman. A list of those invited is given
in the _Proceedings_, p. 89. "Mother" Mary Jones seems to have been the
only woman invited to the conference.
[83] _Ibid._, pp. 99-100.
[84] _Proceedings, Thirteenth W. F. M. Convention_, p. 21. At the same
time and place it was definitely recommended that the Federation take
part in the convention.
[85] Letter dated May 26, 1905, published in _Proceedings, Thirteenth
W. F. M. Convention_, pp. 230-1.
[86] The Manifesto is reproduced in the writer's _Launching of the
Industrial Workers of the World_, pp. 46-49. The committee's report is
given in the _Proceedings_, p. 88.
[87] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 5-6.
[88] _International Socialist Review_, February, 1905, vol. v, p. 499.
(Editorial.)
[89] _Vide infra_, ch. ix.
[90] _International Socialist Review_, vol. v, p. 501 (March, 1905).
For typical press reports of the conference _vide infra_, p. 107.
[91] Editorial, "The Trade Unions to be Smashed Again," _American
Federationist_, March, 1905.
[92] _Private Correspondence_, March 26, 1912.
[93] Feb., 1905, article entitled, "The Chicago Conference for
Industrial Unionism." For a different interpretation of the Manifesto,
_vide_ Frank Bohn's article in the same journal for April, 1905.
[94] DeLeon-Harriman Debate. _The S. T. & L. A. vs. The Pure and Simple
Trade Union_, p. 43.
[95] Among these dissenters were Max Hayes, Victor Berger and A.
M. Simons. _Cf._ letter written by Mr. Hayes to W. L. Hall in
_Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 99-100.
[96] Affiliated with American Federation of Labor at the time.
[97] Affiliated with American Federation of Labor at the time.
[98] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 70.
[99] Now called The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter
Workers.
[100] Among these were the Bakers and Confectioners, and the Carpenters
and Joiners.
[101] The Journeymen Tailors and the Switchmen each had delegates from
two locals.
[102] The United Metal Workers International Union was at least
nominally affiliated with the A. F. of L. at the time of the January
conference, but Secretary St. John writes "that the United Metal
Workers ... as a matter of fact was out of existence before the I. W.
W. convention, but existed on paper for the purpose of giving its old
officials a standing in the new organization."
[103] _Supra_, pp. 68-69. _Cf._ also _Proceedings, First I. W. W.
Convention_, p. 80.
[104] _Vide infra_, p. 74.
[105] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 6. According to St.
John this provision was drawn up on account of the fact that "all who
were present as delegates were not there in good faith. Knowledge of
this fact caused the signers of the Manifesto to constitute themselves
a temporary committee on credentials."--_I. W. W., History, Structure
and Methods_, revised 1917 edition, p. 3.
[106] The figures here given are those cited by William D. Haywood
(_Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 204), but _cf._ St. John
(_The I. W. W., History, etc._, pp. 3, 4), whose figures are somewhat
lower. Among the "individual" delegates were "Mother" Mary Jones, A.
M. Simons, Eugene V. Debs, and Robert Rives LaMonte. It was assumed
that individual delegates were in duty bound to become a part of the
revolutionary organization. (_Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_,
p. 54.)
[107] The United Brotherhood of Railway Employees was at that time an
integral part of the A. L. U., so that its membership must be deducted
from the total. This represents nominal membership only. Hillquit
(_History of Socialism in the United States_, rev. ed., p. 336),
reports the A. L. U. as having only seven delegates, whereas there were
ten besides the nineteen of the U. B. R. E., which are of course not
included in his estimate. _Cf. Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_,
pp. 610-611.
[108] According to its opponents, 600. _Cf._ Hillquit, _History of
Socialism in the United States_, rev. ed., p. 337.
[109] _Cf. supra_, p. 71, note 3. The installment vote at the
first convention records twelve organizations as voting in the
affirmative (for list see _Proceedings, First Convention_, p. 614,
and Brissenden, _Launching of the I. W. W._, p. 43). St. John (_I.
W. W. History, etc._, p. 4) mentions but seven. H. Richter says that
eleven organizations were installed by their delegates: "The I. W. W.:
Retrospect and Prospects," _Industrial Union News_, January, 1912. p.
1, col. 3.
[110] "Coffin society," a term used in derision of a common tendency of
trade-unions to place the emphasis on sick and death benefits, _etc._
[111] _I. W. W. History, etc._, p. 5. St. John says (letter of January
5, 1914) that "there were so few anarchists in the first convention
that there was very little need to classify them."
[112] _I. W. W., History, etc._, p. 3.
[113] Reproduced in Appendix i. It also appears in _The Miners
Magazine_, vol. vi, p. 15 (Apr. 20, 1905), and in Carl Legien,
_Aus Amerikas Arbieterbewegung_ (Berlin, 1914), p. 176. A less
unsophisticated draft by Wm. E. Trautmann is published in his pamphlet,
_One Big Union_ (I. W. W. Publishing Bureau).
[114] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 144.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 154.
[116] Speech before the first convention. _Proceedings_, p. 148.
[117] _History of Socialism in the United States_ (rev. ed.), p. 337.
[118] Editorial, _International Socialist Review_, April, 1905 (vol. v,
p. 626).
[119] DeLeon-Harriman Debate. _S. T. & L. A. vs. The "Pure and Simple"
Trade Union_, p. 7.
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:
This is the Continental Congress of the working class.... There
is no organization ... that has for its purpose the same object
as that for which ... you are called together today.... The
American Federation of Labor, which presumes to be the labor
movement of this country, is not a working-class movement....
You are going to be confronted with the so-called labor
leader--the man who will tell you ... that the interests of the
capitalist and the workingman are identical.... There is no
man who has an ounce of honesty in his make-up but recognizes
the fact that there is a continuous struggle between the two
classes, and this organization will be formed, based and
founded on the class struggle, having in view no compromise and
no surrender....[120]
"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 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 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:
For instance, [he said] in the packing plants, the butchers'
organization was one of the best in the country, reputed to
be 50,000 strong. They were well disciplined, which is shown
from the fact that when they were called on strike they quit
to a man. That is, the butchers quit; but did the engineers
quit, did the firemen quit, did the men who were running the
ice-plants quit? They were not in the union, not in that
particular union. They had agreements with their employers
which forbade them quitting. The result was that the Butchers'
Union was practically totally disrupted, entirely wiped
out.[124]
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.
It is a fact [said DeLeon] ... that it is not the unorganized
scab who breaks the strikes, but the organized craft that
really does the dirty work; and thus they, each of whom,
when itself (_sic_) involved in a strike, fights like a
hero, when not themselves involved, demean themselves like
arrant scabs; betray their class--all in fatuous reverence to
"contracts."[125]
Debs pointed to these same contracts as the cause of defeat. He cited
the strike on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1888:
Some 2,000 engineers and firemen [he said] went out on one of
the most bitterly contested railroad strikes in the history of
the country. When they were out, the rest of the employees,
especially the conductors, who were organized in craft unions
of their own, remained at their posts, and the union conductors
piloted the scab engineers over the line.[126]
"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."
We are going down in the gutter [said Haywood] to get at the
mass of the workers and bring them up to a decent plane of
living. I do not care a snap of my finger whether or not the
skilled workers join this industrial movement at the present
time. When we get the unorganized and the unskilled laborer
into this organization the skilled worker will of necessity
come here for his own protection. As strange as it may seem to
you, the skilled worker today is exploiting the laborer beneath
him, the unskilled man, just as much as the capitalist is.[127]
But ultimately, according to Sherman, all workers--not merely the
groups connoted by the term "working-class"--must be grouped in the
proposed organization.
We don't propose [he said] to organize only the common man with
the callous hands, but we want the clerical force; we want the
soft hands that only get $40 a month--those fellows with No. 10
cuffs and collars. We want them all, so that when a strike is
called we can strike the whole business at once.[128]
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 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:
If any member of the Socialist Labor party accepts office in
a pure and simple trade or labor organization, he shall be
considered antagonistically inclined towards the Socialist
Labor party and shall be expelled. If any officer of a pure and
simple trade or labor organization applies for membership in
the Socialist Labor party, he shall be rejected.[130]
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]
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,
That boring from within, with the labor fakir in possession,
is a waste of time, and that the only way to do is to stand by
the workingmen always; to organize them, to enlighten them,
and whenever a conflict breaks out in which their brothers are
being fooled and used as food for cannon, to have the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance throw itself in the midst of the fray,
and sound the note of sense.[132]
"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 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 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]
1. To provide for the establishment and maintenance of an
Educational Bureau comprising a Literature Bureau and a Lecture
Bureau.
3. Resolved, that it be the sense of this convention that
the labor of each individual unit of society is necessary to
the welfare of society, and that all are entitled to equal
compensation.
4. Resolved, that the first day of May of each year ... be
designated as the Labor Day of this organization.
6. Resolved, that the seceding workers and seceding
organizations in the A. F. of L. be required to make a public
statement of the reason for their secession....
8. Resolved, that we recommend as a final solution of the class
struggle the Social General Strike....
9. Resolved, that it is the sense of this convention to endorse
and provide a perfect system of commercial coöperation.
13. Resolved, that it be the sense of this convention that only
those who are wage-workers be eligible to membership in this
organization.
16. Whereas, there is already established an International
Bureau of those industrial unions which are based upon the
class struggle, with headquarters at Berlin, therefore be it
Resolved, that this new organization enter into immediate
relations therewith.
20. Resolved, that we condemn militarism in all its forms and
functions, which are jeopardizing our constitutional rights and
privileges in the struggle between capital and labor. Be it
further
Resolved, that any members accepting salaried positions to
defend capitalism, directly or indirectly, should be denied the
privilege of membership in this organization.
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 working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are
found among the millions of working people, and the few, who
make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the
toilers come together on the political, as well as on the
industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by
their labor, through an economic organization of the working
class, without affiliation with any political party.
The reference to the "political field" in the second 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.
We are here [he said] to effect an economic organization. There
are two elements in this convention. One element proposes to
do away with political action entirely. Another element is
inclined toward political action. All that this paragraph is
in essence is this: It first of all states very clearly and
plainly that this is primarily an economic organization based
upon the conflict of classes. Secondly, it says in essence
this: That as individuals you are perfectly free to take such
political action as you see fit. As an organization, you
cannot.... Thirdly, it says this: You shall not as an economic
organization stand committed to any political party at present
in existence.[140]
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 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:
Genuine trade-unionism not only must fight in the shop ... but
must especially, uncompromisingly, at all costs and hazards
fight the political parties of capitalism on election day. Its
chief motto must be--"No union card will justify the political
scab. Here is a traitor to his class."... We recognize in
the S. T. & L. A. the economic arm of the S. L. P. and its
indispensable adjunct in its conflict between the working class
and the capitalist class.[145]
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
the visionary politician, the man who imagines that by going
to the ballot box and taking a piece of paper--and throwing it
in and then rubbing his hands and jollying himself with the
expectation that through that process, through some mystic
alchemy, the ballot will terminate capitalism and the socialist
commonwealth will rise like a fairy out of the ballot-box.[147]
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.
Every industrial unionist [he declared] who thoroughly
understands the deeper mission of his organization will reach
class-conscious political action. An industrial union cannot
increase the average wage. In some cases it may be less likely
than the craft unions to prevent the decrease in wages....
Socialist to the core must the new economic organization
be--and when the June convention has painted the skull and
cross-bones on the door of "pure and simpledom," that last
working-class compromise with capitalism, there will probably
issue a political organization strong in numbers, but stronger
in principle, because raised by the revolutionary spirit high
above "mere vote-getting subterfuge."[148]
In reply to this, A. M. Simons, the editor, declares that,
if it is true that the new union is to be less powerful on the
economic field than the pure and simple unions, and is simply
to constitute a new political party jabbering a lot of jargon
about general strikes and installing its officers as rulers of
the coöperative commonwealth, then it is doomed to a short and
sickening life.[149]
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 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:
Division 1 shall be composed of all persons working in the
following industries: Clerks, salesmen, tobacco, packing
houses, flour mills, sugar refineries, dairies, bakeries, and
kindred industries.
Division 2: Brewery, wine and distillery workers.
Division 3: Floriculture, stock and general farming.
Division 4: Mining, milling, smelting and refining coal, ores,
metals, salt and iron.
Division 5: Steam railway, electric railway, marine, shipping,
and teaming.
Division 6: All building employees.
Division 7: All textile industrial employees.
Division 8: All leather industrial employees.
Division 9: All wood-working employees excepting those engaged
in building departments.
Division 10: All metal industrial employees.
Division 11: All glass and pottery employees.
Division 12: All paper mills, chemical, rubber, broom, brush
and jewelry industries.
Division 13: Parks, highways, municipal, postal service,
telegraph, telephone, schools and educational institutions,
amusements, sanitary, printing, hotel, restaurant and laundry
employees.[151]
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.
Any of these industries [said Delegate Goodwin] are subsidiary
and supporting the whole organization.... The tendency of
capitalist development is concentration. We are going from
industrial production to departmental production. It won't
be many years ... till we have departmental production. The
tendency in development in the early stages of capital is to
go into industries, and the later tendency is to divide into
departments, and these departments are international....[154]
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:
Art. I., Sec. 2.--And shall be composed of thirteen
international industrial divisions subdivided into industrial
unions of closely related industries in the appropriate
organizations for representation in the departmental
administration. The subdivisions, international and national
industrial unions, shall have complete industrial autonomy
in their respective internal affairs; provided, the General
Executive Board shall have power to control these industrial
unions in matters concerning the interests of the general
welfare.[155]
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 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
that this convention elect a provisional Board of seven to
conduct affairs of this organization until the next national
convention. The said provisional Board shall consist of the
National President, National Secretary-Treasurer and five other
members, two of these five to be elected at large, one to be
elected from the W. F. of M., one from the United Metal Workers
and one from the U. B. of R. E.... The provisional Board shall
also have the duty of a committee on style to revise the
constitution and submit a draft to the next convention.[159]
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:
In case the members of a subordinate organization of the
Industrial Workers of the World are involved in strike,
regularly ordered by the organization, or General Executive
Board, or involved in a lockout, if in the opinion of the
President and General Executive Board it becomes necessary to
call out any other union or unions, or organization, they shall
have full power to do so.
Any agreement entered into between the members of any local
union or organization, and their employers, as a final
settlement of any difficulty or trouble between them, shall
not be considered valid or binding until the same shall have
the approval of the General Executive Board of the Industrial
Workers of the World.[160]
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 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 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 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 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]
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":
After an effort of more than six months ... the distribution
of tons upon tons of circulars and "literature" throughout
America and every other country throughout the globe ... what
was the result? The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse,
and a very silly little mouse at that.... And out of this
material [the S. T. and L. A. and the A. L. U.] they proclaim
themselves the "Industrial Workers of the World." Their nerve
is so colossal that it is positively ludicrous. Of course the
two and a half million ... workmen in the trade-union movement
are entirely oblivious that they are included.... The wheel
of fortune, otherwise known as ex-Father Hagerty's chart, was
adopted as a "plan" of organization. This plan is so unique
and so fantastic that we accord it space in our columns and
thus give it historic importance.... [And finally he prophesies
that] as time goes on the active participants in the labor
movement of the future, students, thinkers, historians, will
record the Chicago meeting as the most vapid and ridiculous in
the annals of those who presume to speak in the name of labor,
and the participants in the gathering as the most stupendous
impossibles the world has yet seen.[171]
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 Socialists are still earnestly advocating the formation of
a new national organization in the hope of downing the American
Federation of Labor, as the Federation is opposed to making the
labor union a political organization.[172]
The _Advance Advocate_, a labor organ, had this to say:
And now a new industrial union is to be launched in Chicago. It
is going to revolutionize the whole labor movement according to
the manifesto of its promoters. It is going into politics. We
predict that it will fail.[173]
The Iowa State Federation of Labor issued the following statement:
A few disgruntled office-seekers and would-be politicians
have seen fit to criticize the present methods of our trade
organizations, and these same people have issued a call for a
convention to be held in the city of Chicago, June 27, 1905, to
form an organization, ... the avowed purpose of which is the
complete annihilation of the present trade-union movement by
political methods.[174]
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 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 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]
FOOTNOTES:
[120] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 1-2.
[121] _Ibid._, p. 153.
[122] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 1.
[123] Report of Committee on Press and Literature, _Proceedings, First
I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 4-5.
[124] Speech at the ratification meeting, _Proceedings, First I. W. W.
Convention_, p. 577.
[125] Speech at Minneapolis, July 10, 1905, on "The Preamble of the
Industrial Workers of the World." Published in pamphlet form under this
title by N. Y. Labor News Co., 1905, pp. 26-27.
[126] Address on "Revolutionary Unionism," Chicago, Nov., 1905.
(Published in pamphlet form under this title by C. H. Kerr Company.
Chicago.)
[127] Speech at ratification meeting, _Proceedings, First I. W. W.
Convention_, pp. 575-576.
[128] _Ibid._, p. 586. The idea of the general strike was not at all
prominent at this convention, but was expressed in one resolution.
_Infra_, p. 91.
[129] Trautmann on the reasons for the manifesto, _Proceedings, First
I. W. W. Convention_, p. 118.
[130] _Proceedings, Tenth Annual Convention S. L. P._, p. 211.
[131] _Ibid._, p. 211.
[132] _DeLeon-Harriman Debate_ (New York: N. Y. Labor News Co., 1900),
p. 14.
[133] Delegate Dalton, _Tenth Annual Convention Proceedings, Socialist
Labor Party_, p. 217.
[134] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 143.
[135] _Cf. infra_, ch. ix.
[136] _American Federationist_, vol. xii, p. 214 (April, 1905).
[137] _International Socialist Review_, vol. vi, p. 75, Aug., 1905.
[138] For full text of the report _vide Proceedings, First I. W. W.
Convention_, pp. 180, _et seq._, 193, and 213 _et seq._
[139] For the preamble _vide_ Appendix ii. For the constitution as
originally presented by the committee and discussions of the same,
_vide Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 295-512. The amended
but unrevised constitution, as adopted at this constituent meeting, is
reprinted in condensed form in the author's _Launching of the I. W.
W._, pp. 49-53.
[140] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 231-232.
[141] _Ibid._, p. 224.
[142] _Ibid._, p. 225.
[143] _Ibid._, p. 227.
[144] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 231.
[145] _Proceedings, Tenth Annual Convention S. L. P._, pp. 198-199.
[146] "Father" Hagerty, _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p.
152.
[147] _Ibid._, p. 228.
[148] "Concerning the Chicago Manifesto," _International Socialist
Review_, vol. v, pp. 588-9, April, 1905.
[149] _Ibid._, p. 591, April, 1905.
[150] In 1915 the DeLeonite wing changed its name to "The Workers
International Industrial Union." _Vide infra_, p. 253.
[151] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, pp. 299-300. This
classification was amended and re-arranged at the Second Convention.
_Proceedings_, p. 207.
[152] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 300, _et seq._
[153] This objection was, in part, the cause of the refusal of the
delegate of the Longshoremen's Union to install his local. _Cf. infra_,
p. 102.
[154] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 427.
[155] _Ibid._, p. 496.
[156] _Vide I. W. W. Constitution_, 1911, art. i, sec. 4, and
Trautmann, _One Great Union_, Detroit, I. W. W. Literary Bureau, n. d.
(Chart insert).
[157] Art. vii, sec. 4, Constitution (1905), "So soon as there are ten
locals with not less than 3,000 members in one industry, the General
Executive Board shall immediately proceed to call a convention of that
industry and proceed to organize it as an international industrial
division of the Industrial Workers of the World."
[158] The office of general president was abolished at the second
convention. _Vide infra_, p. 143.
[159] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 504.
[160] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 455.
[161] 42,719 to 6,998. _Proceedings, First I. W. W Convention_, pp.
609-614.
[162] The six locals were the United Mine Workers local union of
Pittsburg, Kans. (A. F. of L.); Punch Press Operators of Schenectady,
N. Y.; Journeymen Tailors Benevolent and Protective Union of San
Francisco (A. F. of L.); Industrial Workers Club of Chicago; Industrial
Workers Club of Cincinnati; Workers Industrial and Educational Union of
Pueblo, Colo. (_Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 614). For
detailed vote on installation, vide Brissenden, _Launching of the I. W.
W._, p. 43.
[163] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 527.
[164] _International Socialist Review_, vol. v, p. 563 (March, 1905).
[165] _Private Correspondence_, March, 1912.
[166] _International Socialist Review_, vol. vi, p. 66 (Aug., 1905).
[167] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 447.
[168] "The Industrial Convention," _International Socialist Review_,
vol. vi, p. 86.
[169] _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 147.
[170] "The I. W. W., Retrospects and Prospects," _Industrial Union
News_, vol. i, no. 1 (Jan., 1912).
[171] _American Federationist_, vol. xii, pp. 514-516.
[172] Quoted in _Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention_, p. 252.
[173] _Ibid._
[174] _Ibid._
[175] _International Socialist Review_, vol. vi, p. 66 (Aug., 1905).
[176] _Private Correspondence_, October 5, 1911.
[177] F. T. Carlton, _History and Problems of Organized Labor_ (New
York, 1911), p. 82.
[178] This clause was inserted in the preamble at the 1906 convention.
_Cf. Constitution I. W. W._ as amended to 1908.
[179] "C'était la première préparation pratique en Amérique à la
révolution qui doit conduire la société de la tempête économique au
port de la république coopérative." _L'Internationale ouvrière et
socialiste_ (_ed. française_), vol. i, p. 63, Stuttgart, 1907 (Report
of the Socialist Labor Party of America to the Congress).
PART II
THE "ORIGINAL" I. W. W.