order; such will be . . . the goal [and] aspiration of the Industrial Workers of the World.1

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

Resolved, That it is the sense of this convention that in the event of a new delay in the trial of our brothers, Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, or in the event of an unjust sentence in their case, the national headquarters of the I. W. W. shall immediately proceed to call a general strike and use every possible means and all the funds at its command in order to warrant the working class to resist and overcome the violence of the masters.2

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

We disagree with our President regarding the general strike and contend that a general lockout of the capitalist class is the method by which . . . to emancipate our class. We believe that the general strike can be employed temporarily, as a means

1

1 Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 41.

2 Ibid., p. 411.

to wring concessions from the capitalist class from time to time. The committee believes that a protracted general strike would be no less than an insane act on the part of the working class.1

Although the Moyer-Haywood trial and the final acquittal 2 of the accused men made the I. W. W. somewhat more commonly known and understood among the working class throughout the country, it was on the whole nothing less than a calamity for that organization. The I. W. W. did not even get publicity out of the Moyer-Haywood case. The Western Federation got all the advertising. It was a well-established labor organization with an eventful—almost a lurid history. Its earlier activities were more or less related to the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone affair and the general public very naturally thought of the Western Federation when they thought of the Haywood deportation. The I. W. W. was not popularly associated with the Boise trial at all. The organization was obliged almost completely to suspend its vital work of organizing to raise funds. for the defense. But this was not the most serious result. The Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone deportation was unquestionably one of the causes operating to split off the Western Federation of Miners. The imprisonment of Haywood certainly weakened that element in the Western Federation which backed the I. W. W. and strengthened the hands of those who were opposed to continued incorporation with it. This, combined with the deposition of President Sherman, which yet further weakened the forces of the Miners who supported the I. W. W., finally gave the I. W. W. knockers in the Western Federation the upper hand. The result was, first a decision by referendum vote of the

1 Proceedings, Second I. W. W. Convention (1906), p. 422. 2 Haywood was acquitted July 28, 1907.

Western Federation of Miners not to pay dues to either the Shermanite or the anti-Shermanite factions in the I. W. W., and second, the formal withdrawal of the Mining Department and the reëstablishment of an independent Western Federation of Miners in the summer of 1907.1

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

The prevalent opinion at the time, and since, among the craft-unionists of the American Federation and among the party Socialists-in fact, among all those whose radicalism is comparatively conservative-was that this second conven

'The Miners' Magazine continued to bear the I. W. W. label on its title page until August 1, 1907. As explained elsewhere, the two organizations were virtually divorced as early as January, 1907. Cf. supra, p. 151.

1

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

1" The World of Labor," International Socialist Review, vol. vii. pp. 31-2.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE

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

2

This was a congress of the "proletarian rabble" - the DeLeon-St. John-Trautmann faction. The Sherman faction was no longer in existence. The DeLeonites looked upon the Shermanites as having been from the first nothing more than "a bunch of grafting politicians and labor fakirs." Leaders of the (Chicago) I. W. W. now speak of the 1906 and the 1908 conventions as marking the sloughing-off of the Socialist party politicians at the first and the Socialist Labor party politicians at the second, respectively. St. John says that at this 1907 convention "a slight effort was made to relegate the politician to the rear.' The

13

1 Rudolph Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," Weckly People, Nov. 20, 1915, p. 2, col. 1.

2 Ibid. Cf. also infra, ch. ix.

3 The I. W. W., History, Structure and Methods (1917 ed.), p. 7.