2

Social Democratic party (which became the Socialist party three years later) was organized in Chicago. The Western Labor Union in 1902 moved its headquarters from Butte, Montana, to Chicago, and changed its name to the American Labor Union, which in turn, and inclusive of the W. F. M., merged in 1905 with certain other radical unions to form the Industrial Workers of the World. The American Labor Union was in 1905 apparently on the verge of disruption-practically dead. The Federation of Miners was always the Western (or American) Labor Union's largest and strongest component. It repudiated the Americal Federation of Labor. The bulk of its membership was unskilled labor and it soon had enrolled, in addition to the mine laborers, large numbers of the cooks, waiters, teamsters, and lumbermen of the western states. It was apparently the first labor organization seriously to attempt the organization of the lumber workers. The Western Labor Union proposed to bring into an industrial organization western wage-workers of all crafts and no crafts; it aimed to include all kinds and degrees of labor, but until 1901 its activities were mostly confined to the mining camps of the West.* Indeed, Katz says that "the American Labor Union was practically only another name for the Western Federation of Miners: [being] called into existence to give the miners' union a national character." 5

1

3

The American Labor Union was very decidedly an indus

1 Cf. appendix i.

2 Proceedings Sixteenth Convention W. F. M., p. 17 (Report of President C. H. Moyer).

3 Cf. Haywood, "The timber worker and the timber wolves," International Socialist Review, vol. xiii, p. 110 (August, 1912).

* Proceedings Sixteenth Convention, W. F. M., p. 17.

5 Rudolph Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," Weekly People, September 4, 1915, p. 4.

trial union more, however, by anticipation than realization. It resembled our modern I. W. W. in some important particulars. "It believes," says one of the members, "that all employees working for one company, engaged in any one industry, should be managed through . . . one authoritative head; that all men employed by one employer, in any one industry [should] be answerable to the employer through one and the same organization . . .” 1 The approval of its general Executive Board is required before any member local can call a strike. An interchangeable or universal transfer system is provided, as it was later by the I. W. W.3 The American Labor Union was an industrial organization of more decided political character and sympathies than is the I. W. W. It was, however, decidedly socialistic in its ultimate aim. It seemed to mark the climax of development of industrial unionism of that (politicalsocialist) type. It will be evident in the following pages that in 1905 began a sharp swing under the I. W. W. banner from socialist industrial unionism to anarcho-syndicalist industrial unionism.

A good many of the leaders of the American Labor Union were members of the Socialist party. "Believing that the time has come," runs the A. L. U. Preamble," for undivided, independent, working-class political action, we hereby declare in favor of international Socialism and adopt the platform of the Socialist Party of America as the political platform and program of the American Labor Union." Although it endorsed socialism, the A. L. U., unlike the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, admitted workingmen of any political views whatsoever, but resembled the latter

1" Industrial Union Epigrams," Voice of Labor, March, 1905. 2 Preamble, Constitution and Laws of the A. L. U., p. 20.

8 Ibid., art. ix, sec. II and sec. 12.

* Preamble, Constitution and Laws, pp. 4-5.

organization in its opposition to the American Federation of Labor and its desire to build up a revolutionary labor

movement.

The economic organization of the proletariat [declares the official organ of the A. L. U.] is the heart and soul of the socialist movement, of which the political party is simply the public expression at the ballot box. The purpose of industrial unionism is to organize the working class in approximately the same departments of production as those which will obtain in the coöperative commonwealth, so that, if the workers should lose their franchise, they would still possess an economic organization intelligently trained to take over and collectively administer the tools of industry and the sources of wealth for themselves.1

The roots of I.W.W.-ism reached out most vigorously and numerously in the western part of the United States, and the greater part of its strength today is derived from its western membership. The way was prepared for it most largely by western organizations-the Western Federation of Miners being the forerunner par excellence of modern I.W.W.-ism. Two organizations in the East, that is, having their chief strength in the East, played a highly important rôle during the decade preceding the launching of the I. W. W. These organizations were the Socialist Labor party and its trade-union "brain child," the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. Adequately to fill in this sketch of origins, it is necessary to refer briefly to these two organizations, especially to the S. T. & L. A., the Socialist Labor party's bright ideal of all that a labor union ought to be.

The Socialist Labor party was organized in 1877. It was a merger of the National Labor Union, the North American Federation of the International Workingmen's Asso

1 American Labor Union Journal, Dec., 1904. Quoted by Ebert, American Industrial Evolution, p. 82.

ciation and the Social Democratic Workmen's Party. It was first known as the Workmen's Party of the United States. The German socialist trade-union element predominated in it. The Socialist Labor party has always been emphatically Marxian and its leaders have been so decidedly doctrinaire in their interpretation of Marxian socialism and in their application of it to the practical work of socialist campaigning and propaganda that they have been not unjustly called impossibilists. Since the organization of the Socialist party in 1901 these two political parties of the socialist faith have been in open and bitter opposition to each other. The Socialist party adopted an opportunist policy, endorsed and often leagued itself with the conservative trade unions, refrained from any attempt to form or coöperate in the formation of socialist unions, and contented itself with the endeavor to make the existing unions socialistic by converting their individual members to socialism-a policy which came to be known as "boring from within." The Socialist Labor party, on the other hand, embraced a doctrinaire, "impossibilist" policy, violently attacked the trade unions, made its slogan no compromise and no political trading," and insisted that new unions, industrial in structure and socialist in purpose and principle should be created in opposition to the craft unions, whose structure and spirit it despaired of changing by "boring from within.” The Socialist party has waxed strong and powerful. Its rival has languished and is today too small a group to be called a party.

66

The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was organized in 1895, the same year which witnessed the birth of the organized syndicalist movement in France in the form of the Confédération Générale du Travail. On December 6th of that year a delegation from District Assembly 49 of the

1 Ebert, American Industrial Evolution, p. 61.

Knights of Labor met in conjunction with the Central Labor Federation of New York City and launched the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. The idea of this organization seems to have originated with Daniel DeLeon, whom his enemies called "the Pope of the S. L. P." and who was undoubtedly the leading student of Marxian socialism in this country. He was convinced that, as one of his followers expressed it," without the organization of the workers into a class-conscious revolutionary body on the industrial field, socialism would remain but an aspiration." "The S. T. & L. A.," declares N. I. Stone," was the most unique example of a socialist trade-union, anti-pure-and-simple organization in the annals of labor history "It came down upon us," he said, "full fledged from top to bottom as the masterpiece of our Master Workman' [DeLeon] and took us by surprise; but take it did. . ." 2

1

In 1896 at the first convention of the Socialist Labor party after the organization of the S. T. & L. A. the party formally endorsed the latter organization. Mr. Hugo Vogt addressed the convention in behalf of the S. T. & L. A. "The whole of this labor movement," he said, "must become saturated with socialism, must be placed under socialist control, if we mean to bring together the whole working class into that army of emancipation which we need to accomplish our purpose.' ." He went on to explain that "in order to make it impossible for any masked swindlers to obtain influence in the Alliance, and to swing it back to the conservative side, we have provided that every officer shall take a pledge that he will not be affiliated with any 1 Katz, "With DeLeon since '89," Weekly People, April 24, 1915, p. 3. 2 Stone, N. I., Attitude of the Socialists to the Trade Unions (pamphlet, New York, 1900, Volkszeitung Library, vol. ii, Apr., 1900),

P. 6.

3 Quoted by Robt. Hunter, "The trade unions and the Socialist Party," Miners' Magazine, March 7, 1912, p. 11.