History of the Industrial Workers of the World

In 1918, just after the United States had entered World War I and the government charged IWW leaders with violation of the espionage law for their anti-war expressions, Robert W. Bruere wrote in Harper's Magazine that, The Industrial Workers of the World are most numerous among the migratory workers of the West; among the homeless, wayfaring men who follow the harvests from Texas across the Canadian border; among the lumberjacks who pack their quilts from camp to distant camp in the fir and pine and spruce forests of the Northwest; and among the metalliferous miners of Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, and Old Mexico.

Competent authorities estimate that about one-half of them are native Americans, and the other half men who have been uprooted by labor brokers and padrones from their native ethnic and social environments; voluntary or forced immigrants from the agricultural districts of Ireland, from the Welsh and Cornish mines, from the hungry hills of Italy, Serbia, Greece, and Turkish Asia Minor.

[3]Bruere wrote of a "pernicious system of sabotage" by railroad corporations and other business interests, creating "hobos, vagabonds, wayfarers—migratory and intermittent workers, outcasts from society and the industrial machine, ripe for the denationalized fellowship of the I. W. W."[3] Typical IWW tactics in the West were soap boxing and, where they found it necessary, the free speech fight.

[4] The most conspicuous example of these anarchistic sentiments among Western Wobblies was the Overalls Brigade, who were suspicious of all political parties; believed voting and legislating a ritual aimed at deluding workers; were antagonistic toward craft unions, referring to them as coffin societies; and, were generally opposed to leaders of any kind, even within the IWW.

[5] In the East, the IWW became the champion of ethnic solidarity and the focus of immigrant discontent, during a strike of women mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

According to Paul Brissenden, a labor historian who wrote about the IWW in 1919, the Eastern Wobblies were "revolutionary Marxists — doctrinaire to the bone — saturated with the dialectic.

He was opposed by IWW Secretary Treasurer William Trautmann, Vincent St. John, and Daniel DeLeon, head of the Socialist Labor Party, who averred that they sought to rescue the organization's stated purpose and philosophy—revolutionary working class solidarity.

The more "radical" element within the IWW — composed of those referred to as "beggars, tramps, and proletarian rabble" — specifically, those who favored direct action, some organization leaders, plus DeLeon's group — adopted a member's proposal published in the Industrial Worker which called for abolishing the office of president.

Paul Brissenden believed, however, that the issues behind divisions in the first two years were more personality than principle, complicated by intrigue on the part of individuals in the two socialist parties.

Furthermore, Bill Haywood, writing from prison in Idaho before his acquittal, emphatically condemned "Shermanism", but then chided that with a bit of diplomacy, the troubles could have been smoothed over.

Haywood would later write (in his autobiography, published in 1929), "Sherman had proved incapable, and if not actually dishonest, he had used an enormous amount of the funds for unnecessary purposes.

He supported those who were already seeking to withdraw the organization from the IWW and, in spite of the fact that Haywood and St. John were likewise officials in the WFM, Moyer was successful.

Historian Joseph Rayback traces the conservative turn of the WFM to the loss of a strike in Goldfield, Nevada, where many of the Cripple Creek miners had migrated after their defeat in the Colorado Labor Wars.

Although the 1907 convention of the Trautmann-DeLeon-St. John IWW was relatively peaceful, the earlier departures of the WFM and the Sherman crowd didn't bring an end to dissension within the organization.

While DeLeon had helped to rescue the radical character of the organization from what was alleged to be a conservative and corruptive element, his own beliefs and practices soon became an issue for those same "beggars and tramps" with whom he'd previously allied.

[23] Led by capable Wobbly organizer James H. Walsh, they traveled over 2,500 miles in their "Red Special" cattle car, ate in hobo jungles, and preached revolution in prairie towns.

They likewise didn't trust that votes counted by "some Citizens' Alliance disciple or the Mine Owners Association" could ever usher in the revolution.

[22] At the convention, DeLeon criticized the newer IWW members "for their crudities, their rawness, and their inability to perceive the more 'civilized' methods" that he had long recommended to the organization.

[emphasis added][27] At the 1908 convention, members of the IWW, led by the overalls brigade, first challenged DeLeon's credentials, declaring that he didn't actually work in the Industrial Union with which he was registered.

[28] Then they removed the Preamble language about "struggle [on] the political, as well as on the industrial field," which DeLeon had made a condition of his participation at the founding convention in 1905.

"[30] Labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky weighs in on the rejection of the SLP, DeLeon was among the first to attack the "new" IWW (on the grounds of becoming an anarchist organization) ...

But DeLeon and others misunderstood what the convention had done ... [delegates] recognized ... that political debates between socialist factions wrecked union locals and undermined labor's morale.

Hence, the Wobblies decided to keep political debate within the party, where it belonged, and to promote industrial action within the IWW, whereby workers could improve their lives.

from vast numbers of American workers who knew from experience that political action was a necessary weapon in the class struggle, and that, indeed, the existence of many unions, threatened by injunctions and other court decisions, could only be preserved by labor's effectiveness at the ballot box ... [Yet] there were still fertile fields for organizing ... [and in the following years the IWW would] bring the principles of industrial unionism to the attention of hundreds of thousands of American workers, including even many of the A.F. of L.

[41] He quotes Socialist Labor Party journalist Louis C. Fraina's evaluation of the SLP to assess that character: The S. L. P. ignored the psychology of struggling workers [he says].

The career of the so-called Industrial Workers of the World was started at the fourth convention of the I. W. W. in 1908 with the slogan: "Strike at the ballot box with an ax.

This universal organization of the workers will then displace the state, government and politics in the present sense; private ownership, privilege and exploitation will be forever abolished.

Brissenden commented in 1919 that, [The Wobblies] were able to develop great strength because they had modified their theories to the extent necessary to make some appreciable application of them to the actual conditions of economic life.

The modern IWW website describes a historical offshoot led by James Rowan of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWIU), who invoked the E-P (Emergency Program).

"[51] Archie Green attributed the decline of the IWW to the 1924 split, which was exacerbated by government persecution, and the defection of many members to the Communist Party.