by the Secretary-Treasurer. But even during these lean years there was some activity in the textile industry. From first to last, so far as the eastern part of the United States is concerned, it has been among the textile operatives that the I. W. W. has been most active and most successful. In this industry the I. W. W. has a much larger proportion of the total number of organized workers than it has in any other. In the West, of course, the I. W. W. is most strongly entrenched in the unorganized extractive industries—lumber, agriculture, and construction work. In April, 1908,

the General Executive Board issued an official call (printed in English, French, German and Italian) for the "First Convention of Textile Workers" to be held May 1, 1908, in Paterson, N. J. In this document the claim is made that "over 5,000 textile workers have already been organized into the Industrial Workers of the World. . . .”3

During the eighteen months' period following the financial crisis of 1907 the I. W. W. almost entirely gave up its strike activities. Furthermore, the organization seemed to have secured no permanent foothold in those communities where it had been particularly militant and aggressive during the preceding year. Secretary Trautmann admitted this in his report to the Fourth Convention. "There is nothing left. in Bridgeport," he said, “nothing in Skowhegan, but in the

1 See Appendix iv, Table A. Professor Barnett's returns, however, indicate a net gain in membership from 1907 to 1909. (Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1916.) His figures, too, were secured from the I. W. W. general headquarters. The writer is not able to reconcile the two sets of figures.

2 Cf. appendix iv, Table B.

3 Industrial Union Bulletin, April 11, 1908, col. 1.

In April, 1908, there was a strike of [presumably] I. W. W. quarry workers at Marble, Colo. The I. W. W. papers reported that it was successful. There is also reported in August, a strike against reductions in wages by the French branch of the textile workers' local at Lawrence, Mass.

Portland [Oregon] district the name of the I. W. W. is cheered and gloried. .

2

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

The membership, upon discovering that the officials were acting in a manner that foreshadowed . . . conflict within the organization, withdrew in large numbers. The financial and industrial panic which was then on had also a very bad effect upon the newly founded local unions of the I. W. W., and many of these lost members.

3

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

I believe it is a well-established fact that industrial unionism

1 Industrial Union Bulletin, Oct. 24, 1908.

2 Rudolph Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," Weekly People, Dec. 18, 1915, p. 3, col. I.

is by no means popular, and I feel safe in saying that it is not wanted by the working class of the United States. The Knights of Labor, the American Railway Union, the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, the Western Labor Union, the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, the American Labor Union, and last, the Industrial Workers of the World [went down] because they failed to receive the support of the working class. .

1

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

1 Proceedings, Sixteenth Convention, W. F. M., p. 18. This report of the death of the I. W. W. was, to say the least, premature.

NOTICE.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This is to inform you that the Executive Board of the Western Federation of Miners has decided to terminate the services of William D. Haywood as a representative of the Western Federation of Miners in the field, the same to take effect on the 8th day of April, 1908.

C. E. MAHONEY, Vice-Pres., W. F. M.

A writer in the Evening Post (New York) thinks that but for this official ousting of Haywood by the W. F. M., the I. W. W. might never have survived the trouble, dissension and "hard times" of 1908. " of 1908. "It is doubtful," he says, "if either faction of the Industrial Workers of the World [Detroit or Chicago] would have survived but for a change in the attitude of the Western Miners' Federation

which left Haywood free to devote all his energies to the Industrial Workers of the World." If we can credit the evidence presented at the 1912 convention of the W. F. M., the I. W. W. had at least sufficient vitality to be plotting, through its officials, to regain control of the Federation. In the published proceedings of its twentieth convention is printed a letter, dated August 4, 1908, from Vincent St. John to Albert Ryan, a member of the Western Federation. This letter reads in part:

I believe we could turn in now and lay the wires to defeat the machine at the next W. F. M. convention, and it can be done in this way: by picking out good reliable men with abil

1 64

The Industrial Workers of the World," Evening Post (N. Y.) Saturday Supplement, Nov. 9, 1912, p. 3, col. 5. This article is one of a series of three published under the above title in the Evening Post's Saturday Supplements beginning November 2, 1912. The reader is referred to them for an excellent short historical sketch and general estimate of the I. W. W.

ity, and getting them to place themselves in local unions of the Federation for the purpose of getting to be delegates to the next convention. To do this they should cultivate the sentiment of the membership in the local to which they go. If the local is a Moyer local, let them be Moyer men. Let them outdo the best of them in worship at his shrine. If the local is indifferent, let them be likewise, but let them be elected as delegates. . . . Once we can control the officers of the W. F. M. for the I. W. W. the big bulk of the membership will go with them, and the prestige of the W. F. M. . . . is worth something to the revolutionary movement, and we should make an attempt to get it with us, . . . take up the matter with Bechtel and Oppman and have them work with you to control Arizona for the next convention. Pick out a man or two for every local in the state, let them get into them and do the work. I will try to handle Michigan and Minnesota from here. If you are shy [of] men, or have any to spare, we can trade with the different districts. . . . 1

President Moyer said that this letter was found among Ryan's effects" after he had received a sentence of life imprisonment in San Quentin penitentiary for having applied direct action in Los Angeles, which resulted in the death of two men." These or similar charges had evidently been made at about the time this letter was supposed to have been written. St. John, in his report to the Fourth I. W. W. Convention as General Organizer, denied certain "insinuations of a serious nature" which had been made against him.3

The question of "political action" and the bitter and disruptive controversy which was waged on that subject at the fourth convention had now become the overshadowing

1

1 Proceedings, Twentieth Convention, W. F. M., pp. 283-4.

2 Ibid., p. 283.

3 Industrial Union Bulletin, Nov. 7, 1908, p. 1, col. 6.