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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. Some of these prototypes are charted in Appendix I. 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.'

1 Cf. Brooks, American Syndicalism (New York, 1913), ch. vi and Tridon, The New Unionism, 4th printing (New York, 1917), p. 67.

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 actionthe 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." 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.

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1 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.

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