such bitter factional animosity in the organization that we find it in 1913 divided into two hostile camps and threatened again with disruption. The issue is significantly comparable to the "states' rights" controversy in our political history. The I. W. W. administration and its supporters were, very naturally, "centralists." They favored a strong federal government for the I. W. W. and attacked the "decentralizers'" program for the emasculation of the general administration and the establishment of a loose confederation of sovereign local unions- the states' rights program in industry. The states' rights doctrine failed of acceptance in the I. W. W. as it has failed in American politics. Nevertheless, the decentralization crisis in the I. W. W. deserves more than passing notice. In the first place, the doctrine was not annihilated in 1913; it was merely smothered. The I. W. W. may yet be "unscrambled." In the second place, this issue is perhaps the most fundamental one ever given wide discussion by the I. W. W. membership. It involves directly the whole question of the structure of the organization, the proper distribution of functions and authority among the several parts of the organization and, indirectly, questions of efficiency in carrying on propaganda and organizing work and of the relative merits of authoritarian (state) socialism, and so-called voluntary socialism." As the two groups lined up at Chicago in 1913, we may say that the controversy between the administration's supporters and the defenders of the local unions was, on the whole, a struggle between the western membership, individualistic and tainted with anarchism, and the eastern membership, more schooled to subordination-infected with state socialism.

66

The attack of the decentralizers took the form of specific resolutions for the abolition of various features of the general administration and the restriction of the powers of

the Executive Board and general officers. The abolition of the office of president in 1906 was in part an expression of this revolt against centralized authority. But now, with the presidency eliminated, with very little organization at the best, with a degree of central power and authority. which the United Mine Workers of America would consider mild indeed, and with a constantly shifting membership of less than 15,000, we find that there is actually a little group of western locals which assumes that there is already a dangerous centralization of power and authority at "Headquarters.' Some five hundred resolutions were introduced at the convention and a large number of these were assorted decentralist proposals for giving the local union relatively greater power-demands, in other words, for readjustments which were expected to result in increased "local autonomy." This local autonomy was to be secured for the benefit of the "rank and file," i. e., the individual members, and particularly for the "rank and file" membership of the "mixed" locals so predominant in the western part of the country. From the standpoint of the mixed local, "the disease within the I. W. W. is . . . the gigantic machine formation attempted to be [sic] foisted upon it by the authoritarian socialists who presided at its birth.. "Decentralization deals essentially," we are told, "with the right of the locals to control themselves and through their combined wills to run the general organization." Following up the attack, the knights of the rank and file proposed to abolish, inter alia, the General Executive Board, the office of the General Organizer, and the national convention! One wonders that the Constitu

1

1 Covington Hall in The Voice of the People, Oct. 9, 1913, p. 2, col. 3. 2 Proceedings, p. 43. All of these resolutions were proposed by a delegate from Phoenix, Arizona. In connection with the resolutions it was "moved and seconded that a committee on style be called for,

tion itself was not put bodily on the index! Indeed, a year later, a leader in the movement in California did write an article to show that the I. W. W. Preamble is syndicalistic, and the Constitution state socialistic, and therefore that the latter should be abolished. For two weeks the delegates wrangled over propositions of this kind and the general subject of decentralization. Two and a half days were devoted to the proposal to abolish the General Executive Board. This action was desired by locals in southern California and other parts of the West, as well as by a few of the eastern locals. Concerning their demands, a supporter of the administration said:

They [the decentralizers] claim they will never submit to the rule of a minority of four or five men. . . . They do not want to submit to the rule of the G. E. B. composed of four or five, but they will submit to the authority of the General Secretary and the General Organizer whom they want to function in the place of the G. E. B. The authority of the minority of five or seven men is something terrible, but the authority and rule of the minority of two is not so terrible.

The locals of Calgary [Canada], Portland, Oregon, Seattle and Spokane, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, presented a resolution asking that "the function of the headquarters [i. e., the general administration] be reduced to a mere correspondence agency." No action was taken. “We . . . are working . . . to overthrow this [wages] system,” said

whose duties shall be to strike from the constitution all references to the powers of the General Executive Board, General Organizer, and General Secretary." Ibid.

1 Caroline Nelson, "Economic socialism or State capitalist socialism, Which?" The Voice of the People, July 30, 1914, p. 4, col. 3.

2 Proceedings, 8th I. W. W. convention, p. 81.

3 Delegate Schrager, ibid., p. 71, col. I.

4 Ibid., p. 84, col. 1.

2

a decentralist fellow-worker, "and we claim . . . that the rank and file of the proletariat will have to do this themselves." The General Executive Board members, according to this delegate, "place themselves in exactly the same position over these people [the workers] and put themselves in the same [position of] unique power over them as the capitalist class." 1 Said another: "The minority in this organization is . . . ruling . . . today, namely, the G. E. B. I am certainly in favor of abolishing the G. E. B. I don't see any use for it. I don't see what they can do for the rank and file." According to the majority report of the constitution committee (which was lost) all authority was, in the absence of the G. E. B., to be vested in the General Secretary-Treasurer and the General Organizer, both responsible to the rank and file. In line with the foregoing was a resolution providing for a reduction in the per-capita tax of "mixed" locals from fifteen to five cents per month. The proponents of this resolution insisted that the "mixed " locals bore more than their share of the financial burdenthat they practically supported the national organization.* The proposition was given extended debate and finally killed. Naturally it was opposed by the General Executive Board.5

This attack on the already weak central authority took the form of an attempt, first, to abolish the G. E. B.; second, to cut down the financial support of the general office; third, to abolish the convention and substitute for it the initiative and referendum; fourth, to place agitators under the direct control of the rank and file; and fifth, to make

1 Delegate Van Fleet, op. cit., p. 69.

2 Ibid., p. 69 (Fellow-worker McEvoy).

3 Ibid., p. 71.

4 Ibid., p. 112.

5 Ibid., p. 33. An unsuccessful effort had been made at the third convention in 1907 to abolish the initiation fee.

the general officers mere clerical assistants. The only real success achieved by the decentralizers in these efforts in 1913 was the introduction into the I. W. W. constitution of a provision for the initiative and referendum. The introduction of the referendum feature is another illustration of the unconscious tendency to follow the lines of our political development. Note, too, that the I. W. W. referendum advocates hailed from those very states which have recently attracted attention by introducing this feature into their political structure. The I. W. W. is now much more decentralized than it was in 1905 or even 1913, and it appears to be drifting toward further changes in that direction. So far, the movement away from what little centralized power it could boast may be seen in two phases: I, the abolition of the presidency; 2, the placing of the General Executive Board under the control of a general referendum which can be initiated at any time and upon any subject by request of not less than ten locals in not less than three different industries.

In discussing the proposed abolition of the convention, Delegate B. E. Nilsson asserted that only at the second and fourth conventions had anything worth while been done, and that in both these cases all that had been accomplished had been done against the constitution, and concluded with the statement that "this [eighth convention] has cost us over $3,000 and it isn't worth three cents." Delegate Elizabeth Gurley Flynn advocated the abolition of the convention. She said that it was not genuinely representative. inasmuch as all the locals could not afford to send delegates. The proposal was finally defeated. In general, the decentralizers-anarchistic advocates of the doctrine of

1 Preamble and Constitution (1914), article vii.

2.Proceedings, p. 117, col. 1.

3 Ibid., p. 118, col. I.

2