Workers' International Industrial Union

[1] Despite the small size of the gathering, factional disagreement was already deep within the organization and two delegates were denied their seats at the convention – including one Daniel DeLeon of New York City.

[3] For four days the convention did little more than debate the merits of the Socialist Labor Party and question of whether its intellectual leader, DeLeon, was attempting to take over and control the IWW, subverting the union's interests to those of the SLP.

[4] DeLeon's supporters responded with the charge that the ultra-proletarian St. John–Trautmann faction with trying to transform the IWW into a "purely physical force body," dismissing political action altogether.

[4] The fight took the form of an attempt by the anti-parliamentary St. John–Trautmann faction to remove reference to the word "political" from the Preamble of the IWW, a seminal manifesto of the organization.

[7] The dissident supporters of the SLP and political action immediately launched a new rival organization at a conference convened at Paterson, New Jersey on November 5, 1908.

[8] Headquarters were relocated within a few months, however, with the booming industrial city of Detroit, Michigan chosen as the new national center for the political actionists styling themselves as the IWW.

Chase of New York City was elected as the first General Secretary-Treasurer of the so-called "Detroit IWW," and a governing 5-member Executive Board similarly chosen by the Paterson gathering.

While the SLP's newspaper, The People, would serve as the official organ of the so-called "Detroit IWW" until January 1912, when a new monthly magazine called Industrial Union News would be launched.