1

fight of the middle class of California, in which they employ the labor faker to back it up." He added, however, that he considered it "practically useless. . . under present conditions for the Industrial Workers of the World to take any steps" to organize the Japanese. This primarily because he felt that the organization had more work on hand than it could well attend to." The North American Times, a daily paper published in the Japanese language in Seattle. printed in the spring of 1906 an editorial on the I. W. W., which ran in part as follows:

To promote the rights and happiness of the workers they have the intention to make . . . a grand success so that the I. W. W. will finally become the most powerful labor organization in the world. In the American history of labor there has never been such a union that may contain the laborers of every nationality in its membership.3

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

Resolved, that the convention instruct all our organizers to discourage strikes and strike talk, and to impress upon those whom they are organizing the necessity of realizing that the conquest by the workers of the power to retain and enjoy the full product of their labor should take precedence in their minds of all smaller ameliorations of our conditions.*

Resolved, that during this, the constructive period of the I. W. W., no portion thereof shall enter into any strike, unless

1 Proceedings of the Third Convention, Official Report No. 7, p. 1, col. 2.

2 Ibid.

3 Reprinted in English in the Weekly People, June 2, 1906, p. I.

4 Proceedings of Third Convention, Official Report No. 7, p. 2, col. 3.

conducted in an industrial plant which is thoroughly organized in the I. W. W. . . .1

In regard to the general organizing activity of the I. W. W., it was proposed in one of the resolutions adopted, that the organization confine its work for the time being to the smaller cities where the A. F. of L. is comparatively weak, and in connection with this that efforts in organization be concentrated for the present on certain selected industries.2 Fred Heslewood, member of the General Executive Board, in his report to the convention, said:

I believe it is an entire waste of money at the present time to keep said organizers in cities where the A. F. of L. has the workers divided and organized into crafts. We are not financially able to tear down this barrier of fakerism at present. I do not mean that we should not fight it. I mean that we should pay special attention to the lumber industry before they [sic.] are rent into fragments by the American Federation of Labor. It was urged that special attention be directed to the mining and lumber industries and that for the general organizing propaganda one-half of the income of the general administration be devoted to the payment of organizers and the printing of literature. The editor of the official organ of the I. W. W. declared that the third convention was

free from the sentimentalism and bourgeois reaction which characterized the gathering of 1905, and the pure-and-simple, destructive tactics of the [1906] assembly;. [that] it marked a distinct advance in an understanding of the philos

1 Ibid. Official Report No. 4, p. 5, col. 1.

Proceedings, Third Convention, Official Report No. 5, pp. 4-5.

3 Industrial Union Bulletin, Sept. 28, 1907, p. 2, col. 5.

4 A few weeks later the editor of the Industrial Union News wrote (in the issue of Nov. 9, 1907, p. 2, col. 1) that the I. W. W. accomplished the organization of a body of metalliferous miners, nearly 3,000 strong, in the far-off territory of Alaska since the third annual convention which adjourned September 24."

ophy and structure of the movement and was a gathering typically working-class and loyal . . . to the workers. . .

and that for these reasons there could be no possible doubt of the stability of the organization.1

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

3

1" Reflections on the Third Annual Convention," Industrial Union Bulletin, Oct. 5, 1907, p. 2.

2" The I. W. W., its Strength and Opportunity," by "The Commentator," Solidarity, Feb. 25, 1911.

3 Industrial Union Bulletin, Oct. 24, 1908.

Rudolph Katz, "With DeLeon Since '89," Weekly People, Dec. 4, 1915, p. 2, col. 4.

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

CHAPTER IX

DOCTRINAIRE VERSUS DIRECT-ACTIONIST

(1908)

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

The big majority of the locals that have disbanded can be traced to the inability of the general organization to finance the number of organizers needed to see that the membership of these locals have a thorough understanding of the aims and objects of the I. W. W. before leaving them to their own devices. There are several cases where the disbanding of locals. is the result of the combined opposition of the employers' associations and their zealous allies, the officials of "harmony of interests" organizations which call themselves labor organizations for no other purpose than to better accomplish their task of deluding the workers.1

It is probable also that there was during the same period a decline in membership, as indicated by the figures furnished

1 Industrial Union Bulletin, Nov. 7, 1908, p. 1. Cf. appendix vi.