to be a fairly adequate "harmony plank" in the platform of these disaffected workingmen. The stress of opposition to the Federation was, of course, directed chiefly to its craft formation, but it also featured prominently the reaction against (1) its assumption of identity of interest between the employer and employee, and (2) its absolute denial of the necessity of united political action on the part of the working class.

To these industrialists the American Federation of Labor was simply the symbol of the craft type of trade union. It was made the object of the most merciless criticism throughout the convention. One of its committees drew up a comprehensive indictment of "old line trade-unionism." "The A. F. of L., which is the fine consummate flower of craft unionism," it declares, "is neither American, nor a federation, nor of labor." This, they contend, because (1) it is only adapted to such conditions as existed in England sixty years ago; (2) it is divided into 116 warring factions; (3) it discriminates against workingmen because of their race and poverty; (4) its members are allowed to join the militia and shoot down other union men in time of strike; and (5) it inevitably creates a certain aloofness among the skilled workmen the "aristocrats of labor "-toward those not skilled. "There are organizations which are affiliated," Haywood asserts, "with the A. F. of L. which . . . prohibit the initiation of, or conferring the obligation on, a colored man; that prohibit the conferring of the obligation on foreigners.'

From the opening of the convention it was quite evident that an ideal labor union was conceived to be something more than an institution for improving the immediate conditions of labor. Through it immediate interests must be

'Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention, p. I.

advanced, of course, but its primary object must be to make an end of labor as a slave function and to establish in place of the wage or capitalistic system an industrial commonwealth of co-operators. The convention was convinced that the craft union was not only comparatively helpless in the matter of advancing immediate interests, but was absolutely useless as a fulcrum for removing the capitalistic system. "The battles of the past," declared the manifesto, emphasize this lesson. The textile workers of Lowell, Philadelphia, and Fall River; the butchers of Chicago; the long-struggling miners of Colorado, hampered by lack of unity and solidarity upon the industrial battlefield, all bear witness to the helplessness and impotency of labor as at present organized." 1

66

1

The craft form of organization creates three types very obnoxious to the industrial unionist, viz., the "aristocrat of labor, the "union" scab, and the "labor lieutenant." The "union" scab-the man who continues at work at his particular trade when the men of an allied trade in the same industry are on strike-is a scab in the sense that he is often -through this indirect scabbing-a fatal, perhaps the only obstacle, to the success of the strike. Haywood gave an illustration of this in the butchers' strike in Chicago:

For instance, [he said] in the packing plants, the butchers' organization was one of the best in the country, reputed to be 50,000 strong. They were well disciplined, which is shown from the fact that when they were called on strike they quit to a man. That is, the butchers quit; but did the engineers quit, did the firemen quit, did the men who were running the iceplants quit? They were not in the union, not in that particular union. They had agreements with their employers which

1 Report of Committee on Press and Literature, Proceedings First I. W. W. Convention, pp. 4-5.

forbade them quitting. The result was that the Butchers' Union was practically totally disrupted, entirely wiped out.1

It was quite evident that these men who laid so much at the door of the "union" scab, realized that the latter did not scab on his fellow union-men because he enjoyed it. He was forced to be a union scab because his craft had a contract—an agreement with the employer. Craftism is what it is, because it involves a separate binding agreement for each trade. These, being contracted independently by each craft, naturally expire at different dates, so that the several crafts in any given industry can never be free to act in unison. Little reverence for these agreements was shown in the convention.

...

It is a fact [said DeLeon] that it is not the unorganized scab who breaks the strikes, but the organized craft that really does the dirty work; and thus they, each of whom, when itself (sic) involved in a strike, fights like a hero, when not themselves involved, demean themselves like arrant scabs; betray their class-all in fatuous reverence to "contracts." 2

Debs pointed to these same contracts as the cause of defeat. He cited the strike on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1888:

Some 2,000 engineers and firemen [he said] went out on one of the most bitterly contested railroad strikes in the history of the country. When they were out, the rest of the employees, especially the conductors, who were organized in craft unions of their own, remained at their posts, and the union conductors piloted the scab engineers over the line."

1

Speech at the ratification meeting, Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention, p. 577.

2 Speech at Minneapolis, July 10, 1905, on "The Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World." Published in pamphlet form under this title by N. Y. Labor News Co., 1905, pp. 26-27.

'Address on "Revolutionary Unionism," Chicago, Nov., 1905. (Published in pamphlet form under this title by C. H. Kerr Company, Chicago.)

"Union scabbery" helped to create a kind of "union snobbery." The craft idea tended to develop the idea of caste among workingmen, and the skilled were set off from the unskilled as the "aristocracy of labor." The industrial unionists emphatically declared that a true labor union must include all workers, the unskilled and migratory as well as the "aristocrats."

We are going down in the gutter [said Haywood] to get at the mass of the workers and bring them up to a decent plane of living. I do not care a snap of my finger whether or not the skilled workers join this industrial movement at the present time. When we get the unorganized and the unskilled laborer into this organization the skilled worker will of necessity come here for his own protection. As strange as it may seem to you, the skilled worker today is exploiting the laborer beneath him, the unskilled man, just as much as the capitalist is.1

But ultimately, according to Sherman, all workers-not merely the groups connoted by the term "working-class"— must be grouped in the proposed organization.

We don't propose [he said] to organize only the common man with the callous hands, but we want the clerical force; we want the soft hands that only get $40 a month-those fellows with No. 10 cuffs and collars. We want them all, so that when a strike is called we can strike the whole business at once.2

A third type condemned by revolutionary unionists was the so-called "labor lieutenant." This latter "mis-leader " of labor was the symbol of another objectionable feature of the A. F. of L., viz., the identity of interests assumption. Naturally the idea that the interests of employer and em

1 Speech at ratification meeting, Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention, pp. 575-576.

2 Ibid., p. 586. The idea of the general strike was not at all prominent at this convention, but was expressed in one resolution. Infra,

ployee are identical, is the only consistent one for an organization based on the craft idea. It is said that Mark Hanna once referred to the organizers and officials of the trade unions as the "labor lieutenants of the captains of industry."

1

The revolutionary (industrial) unionists believed that collusion existed between the tool-owners and the labor leaders of the country. It was declared on the floor of the convention that "the trade-union movement has become an auxiliary to the capitalist class in order to hold down the toilers of the land." The delegates from the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance (members of the Socialist Labor party, though not formally present as such) were especially uncompromising on this point. At the 1900 convention of the Socialist Labor party the following amendment to its constitution was adopted:

If any member of the Socialist Labor party accepts office in a pure and simple trade or labor organization, he shall be considered antagonistically inclined towards the Socialist Labor party and shall be expelled. If any officer of a pure and simple trade or labor organization applies for membership in the Socialist Labor party, he shall be rejected.2

Daniel DeLeon and the other Socialist Labor party men at the convention had absolutely no hope for the "pure and simple" union. DeLeon believed "that the that the pure and simple leaders give jobs to Socialists for the purpose of corrupting them, on the principle that the capitalist politicians give jobs to workingmen for the purpose of corrupting the working class. "The labor movement," he said "has been prostituted in this country by the jobs. . . that the capitalist politicians give to some individual workingmen.

1 Trautmann on the reasons for the manifesto, Proceedings, First I. W. W. Convention, p. 118.

2 Proceedings, Tenth Annual Convention S. L. P., p. 211.

Ibid., p. 211.