VI

FORERUNNERS OF THE I. W. W.

No one has given us a deeper or truer perspective through which we may see labor's long struggle to organize than Beatrice and Sidney Webb. With exhaustive thoroughness, they show in the third chapter of their History of Trade Unionism a brief, throbbing period like that of our Knights of Labor. It is a passionate moment that fuses labor, so precisely in the spirit of our I. W. W., that we seem to be reading sentence by sentence the latest syndicalist utterance. There was breathless expectation that capitalism was doomed. It is an even eighty years since Owen and his followers proposed-almost to the last detailall that our I. W. W. now urge,-"eliminate politics, band labor together at the bottom with light dues or no dues at all, with power decentralized, the general strike, and the dream of the coöperative commonwealth." The "means of production" were, of course, to be "taken over" but "were to become the property not of the whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them. The trade unions were to be transformed into 'national companies' to carry on all the manufactures. The agricultural union was to take possession of the land, the miners' union of the mines, the textile unions of the factories. Each trade was to be carried on by its particular trade union, centralized into one 'grand lodge.””

Syndicalism at its best has got far beyond this naïve proposal that miners are alone to own and dispose of the product; that railway employees, textile workers and shoemakers are each to have exclusive possession of the industry in which they happen just then to be working. Little reflection is needed to show that this would leave us with the same old difficulties of privileged and parasitic groups. While one finds plenty of youthful Syndicalists who have not got beyond this artless conception, the more mature thought is of a “federated administration” that shall distribute unearned increment and advantage to the social whole. Here in some form is the "Grand Lodge" of Owen's days.

In contagious enthusiasm and rapidity of growth, this forerunner far outmatches anything yet accomplished by modern Syndicalism. More than four hundred thousand workers were grouped into fellowship fired with expectation of some great oncoming event. So quick was the exhaustion, that the story is one of the most pathetic in labor annals.

Of the real power of capitalistic industry, there seems to have been, even among the leaders, no slightest intimation, and quite as little sense of the law and its influence over property rights. This over-heated movement left its own priceless legacy of cooperative impulse, though with only faintest resemblance to the expected reformation.

Adequately to fill out these origins, Chartism also would claim notice. This is usually described as a political uprising and, therefore anti-Syndicalist. But it had also its outcry against politics. There was direct onslaught against actual politicians; the

same emphasis on the economic aspects-the same appeal to the entire labor mass. Disraeli's Sybil, written in this period, has a passage,1 to which I have seen several references in syndicalist sheets. It has the ring of the I. W. W. orator in every line. Hope had deserted the laboring classes: they had no confidence in any future of the existing system. Their organization, independent of the political system of the Chartists, was complete. Every trade had its union, and every union its lodge in every town and its central committee in every district.

Every engine was stopped, the plug was driven out of every boiler, every fire was extinguished, every man was turned out. The decree went forth that labor was to cease until the charter was the law of the land; the mine and the mill, the foundry and the loomshop, were, until that consummation, to be idle; nor was the mighty pause to be confined to these great enterprises. Every trade of every kind and description was to be stopped-tailor and cobbler, brushmaker and sweep, tinker and carter, mason and builder, all, all."

The next link is the "International" of the early sixties. The "General Rules" of this body throw the entire responsibility for their emancipation upon the "working classes." It is to be an economic emancipation. "Solidarity of labor" is the shibboleth.

The founder of French Syndicalism expressly acknowledges the parenthood of the International,' as

1 Quoted in Harley's Syndicalism. The words which I put in italics show the familiar economic reaction against sectional attempts to make too much of political hopes.

"Pelloutier at the Fourth Congress of the Bourses du Travail.

also does Emil Pouget.1 But for more direct light upon the I. W. W. our own recent labor history is still more useful.

In the midst of a strike, I heard a studious and conscientious journalist ask a leader busy with the strike, how one could best "book up" on the history of the I. W. W. The reply came, "Study the Knights of Labor first; most of it is there." He qualified this later, but there is quite truth enough in the hurried suggestion to merit attention. From the early thirties, labor unions had felt the weakness of isolation and there was consequent striving for such federation as would band these scattered bodies into state and national organizations. This especially appears after periods of defeat. In no industry has defeat been brought home to the workers with more tragic frequency than in the clothing trade. From these discouragements and from the brain of one of the most thoughtful men the labor movement has produced in the United States, M. S. Stephens, the "Knights of Labor" sprang. His own union among the garment workers had had a bitter history, ending at last in failure. Like Henry George, Stephens had traveled widely, spending several years on the Pacific Coast. With rare gifts for reflective observation, he turned every experience to good account. He was one of the first to see the hopelessness of labor's struggle, if dependence were placed alone on the separate craft union. His observations on this point sound like an I. W. W. orator attacking the groundwork of existing unions. He dreamed of a federation which should 1 Le parti du travail.

sweep in the millions, giving labor the "full united strength of associated manhood." In his house in Philadelphia, late in 1869, this large desire was embodied in the plan, solemnly named "The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor." "Noble" and "Holy" were soon dropped, and the Knights of Labor entered upon their work as a secret order with much ceremonial pomp, which brought its own penalties in the end. As clearly as Fourier and Marx saw the coming of the great organization in business, Stephens noted the rapid rise of these new powers that followed so swiftly after the Civil War. If capital was to have these enormous advantages, labor must secure them or be crushed. This was his problem. Every member received for instruction the following appeal:

race.

Labor is noble and holy. To defend it from degradation; to divest it of the evils to body, mind, and estate which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish, is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital; but men, in their haste and greed, blinded by self-interests, overlook the interests of others, and sometimes violate the rights of those they deem helpless. We mean to uphold the dignity of labor, to affirm the nobility of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values), and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created.

This has not the definiteness of Syndicalism as now stated. In the words, "We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital"—we have a phrasing which every I. W. W.