The I. W. W.: A Study of American Syndicalism

by Paul F. Brissenden

FOOTNOTES:

[509] Cf. Appendix iv, Table A. The industrial distribution of fifty-nine of these is given in Solidarity (May 14, 1910) as follows:

Quarry workers	1
Bakery workers	1
Metal and machine workers	3
Building workers	8
Lumber workers	2
Public service workers	2
Hotel workers	2
Packing house workers	2
Garment workers	1
Glass workers	1
Coal miners	7
Harbor workers	1
Steel workers	5
Car builders	5
Transportation workers	1
Wood workers	1
Textile workers	1
Mixed locals	15
	59

[510] "The development of syndicalism in America," Political Science Quarterly, vol. xviii, p. 470 (Sept., 1913).

[511] Report of the General Secretary-Treasurer to the Fourth Convention, Industrial Union Bulletin, Oct. 24, 1908. For list of strikes, vide Appendix viii.

[512] Industrial Relations (Testimony at hearings). vol. ii, pp. 1460, 1461.

[513] Ninth annual meeting of the American Sociological Society, Dec., 1914. Publications, vol. ix, "Restrictions upon freedom of assemblage," p. 32.

[514] "Free, Speech Fights of the I. W. W." Report to the U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Typewritten MS., p. 20.

[515] Proceedings, p. 102, col. 1-2.

[516] San Diego Tribune, March 4, 1912 (editorial).

[517] Harris Weinstock, Report to the governor of California on the disturbances in the city and county of San Diego in 1912, p. 16.

[518] Proceedings, Industrial Worker (II), June 25, 1910, p. 3.

[519] Minutes of the Sixth Convention (Typewritten MS.), pp. 1-3.

[520] B. H. Williams, "The Sixth I. W. W. Convention," International Socialist Review, vol. xii. p. 302, November, 1911.

[521] Appendix to the Minutes, pp. 1-9.

[522] Industrial Worker (II), Sept. 28, 1911, p. 4. col. 1.

[523] See Appendix iv, Table A.

[524] Letter to the author, Oct. 13, 1911.

[525] Compiled from figures furnished by General Secretary St. John (Letter of Feb. 1, 1915).

[526] Industrial Worker, April 23, 1910.

[527] "The I. W. W., its Strength and Opportunity," Solidarity, Feb. 25, 1911, p. 3, col. 1.

[528] Since this was written its publication has been suspended by the government.

[529] From report of General Secretary-Treasurer St. John to Sixth Convention; in Appendix to Minutes.

[530] Report to the Sixth Convention. Appendix to Minutes. In appendix vi, the causes for suspension of locals are shown by individual unions.

[531] B. H. Williams, "Sixth I. W. W. Convention," International Socialist Review, vol. xii, pp. 300-302, Nov., 1911.

[532] International Socialist Review, vol. xii, p. 245, October, 1911.

[533] Cf. F. Challaye, Le syndicalisme révolutionnaire et le syndicalisme réformiste, passim.

[534] Chicago Evening World (July 13, 1912).

[535] Compte Rendu (Ghent, 1911), p. 42.

[536] Proceedings, Thirty-first Annual Convention, A. F. of L. (Atlanta, Ga., Nov., 1911), p. 29.

[537] Ibid.

[538] Ibid., p. 149. Report of James Duncan, delegate to the Budapest Conference. This report is also published in pamphlet form.

[539] Internationalist Socialist Review, Mar., 1913, vol. xiii, p. 667, col. 1.

[540] This view is presented by Harry Kelly, "A Syndicalist League" (a plea for the launching of a Syndicalist League in the United States), Mother Earth, Sept., 1912. Cf. also Foster, Wm. Z., and Ford, E. D., Syndicalism, which ably draws the distinction between the semi-anarchistic and semi-conservative syndicalism of the C. G. T. which some writers have tried to import, out of hand, into the United States, and the Industrial Socialism of the I. W. W.

[541] Mother Earth, Nov., 1912, vol. vii, p. 307.

[542] May 2, 1911 (Editorial). Reprinted in Solidarity, May 20, 1911. p. 4, col. 1.

[543] May 11, 1911.

[544] On the Firing Line, pp. 7-9.

[545] William E. Trautmann, One Great Union, p. 24. note.

[546] Syndicalism (New York, Mother Earth Publishing Assn.), p. 9.

[547] Le Mouvement Socialiste, December, 1908, vol. xxiv, p. 453.

[548] Interview in the New York World, Aug. 3, 1913, Sec. N, p. 1, col. 8.

[549] La Confédération Générale du Travail (2nd ed., Paris, n. d.), p. 46.

[550] Vide, National Constitution of the Socialist Party (Chicago, Socialist Party, 1914), p. 2.

[551] Proceedings, National Convention of the Socialist Party, 1912, pp. 136-7. In an analysis of the vote, W. J. Ghent has shown (National Socialist, June 1, 1912) that between 67 and 75 per cent of the delegates who voted against the clause "were not proletarians."

[552] Proceedings, p. 123. col. 1.

[553] Ibid., p. 130.

[554] Proceedings, National Socialist Congress, Chicago, May, 1910, p. 281. See also Untermann, No compromise with the I. W. W., typewritten MS. (published in 1913 in the New York Call and the National Socialist).

[555] National Convention of the Socialist Party, op. cit., p. 163, col. 1.

[556] Since this chapter was written several laws have been enacted which have been more or less directly aimed at the Industrial Workers of the World. Australia led off with the "Unlawful Associations Act" passed by the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth in December, 1916. (Reported in the New York Times, December 20, 1916, p. 5. col. 2. Cf. infra, p. 341.) Within three months of the passage of the Australian Act, the American States of Minnesota and Idaho passed laws "defining criminal syndicalism and prohibiting the advocacy thereof." In February, 1918, the Montana legislature met in extraordinary session and enacted a similar statute. (These three state laws are printed in appendix x.) Vide also infra, pp. 344-6.

At Sacramento, on January 16, 1919, according to daily press reports, all of the 46 defendants in the California I. W. W. conspiracy case tried there in the Federal District Court were found guilty of conspiring to violate the Constitution of the United States and the Espionage Act and with attempting to obstruct the war activities of the Government. All of the defendants were members—or alleged members—of the I. W. W. and the case is similar to the one tried in Chicago in 1918. On January 17 Judge Rudkin is reported to have sentenced 43 of the defendants to prison terms of from one to ten years (New York Times, January 17 and 18, 1919.) The trial is reported in The Nation of January 25, 1919. Cf. supra, p. 8.

---

[CHAPTER XII]
Lawrence and the Crest of Power (1912)

The year 1912 marks the high tide of I. W. W. activity. From Lawrence, Massachusetts, to San Diego, California, these restless militants stirred the nation with their startling strike and free-speech propaganda. Reports of strikes and free-speech activities in Solidarity and the Industrial Worker show a higher frequency for both these types of industrial warfare in 1912 and 1913 than for any other corresponding period in the organization's career. During the years 1911, 1912 and 1913 there were some fifteen free-speech fights of considerable importance—more than have been staged in all the rest of its history before or since.[557] The dynamic prominence of this period is less marked for the free-speech propaganda than for the then strange and novel syndicalist strike propaganda of the I. W. W. The strike activities were, however, confined quite largely to a shorter period—1912 and 1913. As already noted,[558] the years 1909 and 1910 were more crowded with I. W. W. strike activities than any previous period. These fat propaganda and lean organizing years were followed by twelve months of a general all-round leanness which was only saved from complete sterility by about half a dozen rather lively free-speech fights. Then followed the "Wobblies'" two big years, during which more than thirty "I. W. W. strikes"[559] ran their course in different parts of the country. In Table 3 are given what facts are available concerning I. W. W. strike activities in 1912.

Overshadowing all others in importance was the gigantic strike of the textile workers at Lawrence. This great struggle set new fashions in strike methods. It Americanized the words, "sabotage," "direct action," and "syndicalism" and revealed to the hitherto ignorant public the manner and effectiveness with which these alleged French importations could be applied to an existing industrial situation. Lawrence, together with San Diego, and one or two other "free-speech" cities, really introduced the Industrial Workers of the World to the American public. The organization and its activities were known to students of the labor problem and to others who happened to be on the spot when a fight was on, but they were not known to the great body of citizens. Lawrence and the free-speech fights made the name of this little group of intransigents a household word, hardly less talked about and no whit better understood than the words "socialist" and "anarchist."

On January 11, about 14,000 of the textile operatives left their work. During the strike, which continued until March 14, this number was increased to 23,000. According to a Federal report, "the immediate cause of the strike was a reduction in earnings, growing out of the State law which became effective January 1, 1912, and which reduced the hours of employment for women, and for children under 18 years of age from 56 to 54 hours per week."[560] At the beginning of the struggle only a small minority of the operatives were organized.

TABLE 3.

I. W. W. Strikes in 1912 (Partial List).[561]

Local Union No.	Industry.	Location.	Strikes.	Number Involved.	Number Arrested.	Duration.	Result.
10	Electrical Supply	Fremont, O.	1	30	...	...	Lost.
161	Textile and Shoe Wkrs.	Haverhill, Mass.	2	572	60	7 weeks	Won.
169
194	Clothing	Seattle, Wash.	10	...	15	A few hrs to 2 mos.	1 lost.
327	R. R. Construction	Prince Rupert, B. C.	2	2,350	12	...	Won.
326	Laborers	Shenna Crossing, B. C.	1	...	...	...	Won.
327	R. R. Construction	Lytton, B. C.	1	5,000	300	7 months.	Compromise.
	N.I.U.F. &L. W.,[562] 72 Unions involved	Louisiana & Pac. N. W.	2	7,000	"Several hundred"	1-3 wks., 1-2 mos.	Compromise.
436	Textile	Lowell, Mass.	2	18,000	26	...	1 won, 1 lost.
557	Piano	Boston	1	200	...	5 weeks.	Lost.
20	Textile	Lawrence	5	29,000	333	...	Won.
157	Textile	New Bedford	1	13,000	...	...	...

Total strike expenditures.	No. involved.	Aggregate duration.	No. of arrests.	No. of convictions.
$101,504.05	75,152	74 weeks.	1,446	577

Up to the beginning of the strike [says the Federal report just quoted] there was little or no effective organization among the employees, taken as a whole. A few of the skilled crafts, composed principally of English-speaking workers, had their own separate organizations, but the 10 crafts thus organized had at the time of the strike only approximately 2,500 members. The Industrial Workers of the World had also some years before this established an organization in Lawrence. At the beginning of the strike they claimed a membership of approximately 1,000. They had at different times names on their rolls in excess of this number, but it is estimated by active members of the organization that at the beginning of January, 1912, there were not more than 300 paid-up members on the rolls of the Industrial Workers.[563]

This statement of the situation is borne out by Mr. John Golden's testimony before the House Committee on Rules. He said that when the strike broke out, "according to the official books of the Industrial Workers of the World, they had 287 members."[564]

During the period of the strike there were many violent demonstrations and numerous acts of violence on the part of deputies, police, and militiamen, as well as on the part of the strikers. Early in the strike, Joseph J. Ettor and Wm. D. Haywood, both I. W. W. officials, came to Lawrence and thereafter figured prominently in the conduct of the strike, preaching "solidarity," "passive resistance," "direct action," and "sabotage" as means to victory. The daily press reports of the strike greatly exaggerated the violence of the strikers and almost uniformly neglected to mention acts of violence on the other side. In the I. W. W. press the situation was reversed, and the lawlessness of the constituted authorities greatly overdrawn. A writer who is, at any rate, not sympathetic with the I. W. W. describes the strike activities. He says that shortly after five o'clock (a.m., January 29, 1912), when it was still dark, an attack was made upon the street-cars, during which the trolleys were pulled off the feed-wire, the windows smashed with chunks of ice, the motormen and conductors driven off, and the passengers in some cases not allowed to leave the cars, and in others, pulled from the cars and thrown into the streets.[565] And while conferences were still going on, according to the same authority, the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World

made a determined effort, by violence and intimidation of various sorts to prevent those wishing to resume work from reaching the mills. The endless chain system of picketing was put into force, and women ... who did not work in the mills, along with "strong arm" men, were pressed into service. Women were assaulted by men, and pepper thrown in the eyes of operatives and police officers. Early in the morning powerful men followed, threatened, and seized girls on their way to the mills, twisting their wrists, snatching their luncheons, and terrorizing them generally. During the night strangers visited the homes of the workers and threatened to cut their throats if they persisted in going to work....[566]

On the other hand, there is fairly conclusive evidence that the advent of Ettor and Haywood resulted, if not in the entire elimination of violent tactics, at least in their marked reduction and shifting of emphasis to the tactics of passive resistance. According to one who was on the spot, the riots occurred

before Ettor's organization was effected, when the strikers gathered about the mills as an organized mob and mill bosses turned streams of water upon them in zero weather. After the "blood-stained anarchists" arrived on the scene, a policy of non-resistance to the aggressions of the police and the militia prevailed.[567]

Howsoever passive the strikers may have been in their attitude to the police and the militia, they were probably quite aggressive in their campaign to win recruits to the ranks of the strikers. A Lawrence mill overseer reports that the I. W. W. strike committee[568] did it in this way:

The addresses of the men working are given to a committee. They are visited after nine o'clock at night by strangers, generally Poles: "Working today?" "Yah." (The man speaking has a sharp knife and is whittling a stick.) "Work tomorrow?" "I d'no." "If you work tomorrow, I cut your throat." "No, no. I no work." "Shake." And they shake hands.[569]

There is strong evidence of at least one attempt on the part of the business and commercial interests of Lawrence to discredit the strikers. In three places in the city a total of twenty-eight sticks of dynamite were found. The strikers declared that it had been "planted." Later a business man of Lawrence, who had no connection with the strikers, was arrested and finally tried and "convicted of conspiracy to injure by the planting of dynamite." He was fined $500.00![570]

There was great friction between the I. W. W. and the locals of other labor organizations. The Socialists and I. W. W.s accused the American Federation of Labor leaders of trying to break the strike. "All the mechanical crafts," we read in a pro-I. W. W. journal, "including engineers, firemen, electrical workers, machinists and railroaders ... remained at work, scabbing on their fellows with the full sanction ... of their officials."[571] In the face of this antagonism the rank and file of the A. F. of L. membership contributed liberally to the strike fund, giving about $11,000 to the cause of the strikers. Socialist contributions are placed at $40,000 and those of the I. W. W. local unions at $16,000.[572] The Federal investigators report that "these relief funds came from all sections of the country and average $1,000 a day throughout the strike."[573]

The Lawrence strike furnished the opportunity for some parading of the idea of a general strike. William D. Haywood, in his first speech to the strikers after his arrival in Lawrence, said: "If we prevail on other workers who handle your goods to help you out by going on strike, we will tie up the railroads, put the city in darkness and starve the soldiers out."[574] This agitation became more vigorous, however, after the strike itself and during the subsequent trial of the two I. W. W. agitators, Ettor and Giovannitti.

They were in jail at Salem, Massachusetts, at the time of the seventh I. W. W. convention in September, 1912, and the General Executive Board, in its report, threatened that unless these "fellow-workers are acquitted the industries of this country will feel the power of the workers expressed in a general tie-up in all industries...."[575]

In addition to the general strike, a boycott was demanded. Under the caption, "Boycott Lawrence," a heavily headlined announcement was printed on the front page of the Industrial Worker.[576] It ran in part:

Boycott Lawrence.... Railroad men: Lose their cars for them! Telegraphers: Lose their messages for them! Expressmen: Lose their packages for them! Boycott Lawrence! Boycott it to the limit!...

Let nothing, cars, messages, packages, mails or anything whatsoever that bears the sign, label or address of an official of the Wool Trust, or of a bank, business house, or prostituted newspaper, which favors them, or of a judge, policeman or cossack, or any one who lends the slightest aid to the mill-owners, go on its way undisturbed!

Boycott Lawrence!

Against the bludgeons of Industrial Despotism bring the silent might of the Industrial Democracy!

Boycott Lawrence!

The result of the strike was a decided victory for the strikers. The Federal government's investigators reported that

some 30,000 textile mill employees in Lawrence secured an increase in wages of from 5 to 20 per cent; increased compensation for overtime; and the reduction of the premium period from four weeks to two weeks. Also, as an indirect result of the Lawrence strike, material increases in wages were granted to thousands of employees in other textile mills throughout New England.[577]

It is a significant fact that the highest percentages of increases in wages were given to the unskilled employees. The General Executive Board of the I. W. W. reported the range of wage increases as being "from 5 per cent for the highly paid workers to 25 per cent for the lowest paid workers."[578] Moreover, there were other effects, no less important. This strike demonstrated that it was possible for the unskilled and unorganized workers (preponderantly immigrants of various nationalities) to carry on a successful struggle with their employers. It showed what latent power there is in the great masses of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, it demonstrated the power of a new type of labor leaders over the ignorant and unskilled immigrant workers. A writer who has little sympathy for revolutionary unionism says concerning Joseph J. Ettor:

This man ... steeped in the literature of revolutionary socialism and anarchism, swayed the undisciplined mob as completely as any general ever controlled the disciplined troops ... [and was able] to organize these thousands of heterogeneous, heretofore unsympathetic and jealous nationalities, into a militant body of class-conscious workers. His followers firmly believed, as they were told, that success meant that they were about to enter a new era of brotherhood, in which there would be no more union of trades and no more departmental distinctions, but all workers would become the real bosses in the mills.[579]

The Lawrence Citizens' Association reports that Ettor

avowed himself an advocate of the doctrine of "direct action," of violence, as a believer in the philosophy of force, for he proclaimed time and again ... that "he who has force on his side has the law on his side." He also advocated destroying the machinery of employers who did not grant all the demands of the strikers.[580]

The effect of the strike on the membership of the I. W. W. in Lawrence was to increase it greatly but only temporarily. Just after the strike the organizers claimed 14,000 members in Lawrence. In October, 1913, there were 700.[581] An investigator for the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations reports that they had over 10,000 members immediately after the strike.[582] The I. W. W. itself claimed 20,000 in Lawrence in June, 1912, as well as 28,000 in Lowell, and boasted that "in nearly every town in the New England states there are locals ranging from 800 to 5,000 in membership."[583] The Federal investigator referred to puts the Lawrence membership of the I. W. W. in 1914 at about 400 and says that local I. W. W. officials attribute this low figure to unemployment, but he himself thinks that other factors entered.[584] The wage increase gained was, he said, offset by the increased speed required on the machines.

This amounted to 50 per cent. Another factor was the forced scattering of I. W. W. leaders after the strike. He found in 1914 only one of eight local I. W. W. leaders who were there at the time of the strike and reports that the employers established a system of espionage in the mills.[585]

Lawrence made the I. W. W. famous, especially in the East. It stirred the country with the alarming slogans of a new kind of revolution. Socialism was respectable—even reactionary—by comparison. The "Wobblies" frankly abjured the rules under which, as they would express it, the capitalist game is played. They said: "If it serves our interests as members of the working class to obey certain accepted canons of conduct, we will obey them because it would be detrimental to our class to disobey them." Lawrence was not an ordinary strike. It was a social revolution in parvo. St. John is said to have written to Haywood, "a win in the Lawrence mills means the start that will only end with the downfall of the wage system."[586] This was a class war and the I. W. W. insists that the principle of military necessity justifies it in a policy of schrecklichkeit, at least to property, which on the syndicalist hypothesis was stolen anyway, in the beginning. The I. W. W. abjures current ethics and morality as bourgeois, and therefore inimical to the exploited proletarian for whom a new and approved system of proletarian morality is set forth. In this proletarian code the sanctions of conduct are founded on the (material) interests of the proletarian, as such. The criterion is expediency—effectiveness to one particular end, the overthrow of the wage system and the establishment of—something else—the words industrial democracy or coöperative commonwealth are commonly used in reference to that nebulous future state that all radicals see as in a glass, more or less darkly. This means that staid old New England was confronted with an organization which derided all her fond moralities. The most shocking défi of these I. W. W.s was the défi they hurled at the church. Only less so was the défi they leveled at the flag. The I. W. W. said that the church, obedient to the dictates of big business, preached to the workers a servile obedience now for the sake of a hypothetical heaven of comfort later; "ergo," they said, "the church is unethical and we abjure it for a superior proletarian ethics." It considered that the flag was being made the excuse for a jingo patriotism which made the enlargement and conquest of markets and the further exploitation of labor the end and aim of patriotism. In brief, the church and the flag are made to serve commercialism. Commercialism is evil because unjust. Therefore, its servants are, pro tanto, evil also and rightly to be repudiated.

The conflicting attitudes are well illustrated by two placards carried along Lawrence streets during the strike. The I. W. W. paraded first with, among others, a placard reading:

XX Century civilization.... For the progress of the human race we have jails, gallows, guillotines, ... and electric chairs for the people who pay to keep the "soldiers" to kill them when they revolt against Wood and other czars of capitalism.

Arise!!! Slaves of the World!!! No God! No Master! One for all and all for one!

The citizens (no reference here to the textile operatives) of Lawrence paraded their righteous indignation as follows:

"For God and Country,
The Stars and Stripes forever,
The Red Flag never.
A Protest against the I. W. W.,
Its principles and methods."

Perhaps there is no better illustration of the reaction of the great bulk of the progressive citizenship of the country to the I. W. W. strike-drama than the following editorial paragraph published during the strike:

On all sides people are asking: Is this a new thing in the industrial world?... Are we to see another serious, perhaps successful, attempt to organize labor by whole industrial groups instead of by trades? Are we to expect that instead of playing the game respectably, or else frankly breaking out into lawless riot which we know well enough how to deal with, the laborers are to listen to a subtle anarchistic philosophy which challenges the fundamental idea of law and order, inculcating such strange doctrines as those of "direct action," "sabotage," "syndicalism," "the general strike," and "violence"?... We think that our whole current morality as to the sacredness of property and even of life is involved in it.[587]

At the seventh convention held in Chicago in September, 1912, there were present forty-five industrialists; twenty-nine of these being delegates from as many regular local unions; one delegate each represented the two National Industrial Unions which were component parts of the I. W. W., viz., the Textile Workers and the Forest and Lumber Workers; seven were General Executive Board members, and seven "fraternal delegates" from the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Locals in eight states and in British Columbia were represented.[588] During the time the convention was in session, Joseph J. Ettor, a member of the General Executive Board, was awaiting trial in the Essex County jail in Salem, Mass. He wrote to the delegates that

all of the past term's progress is mainly due to the policies adopted, particularly by the sixth annual convention, and ... I feel it an urgent duty on my part to advise that as much as conditions will allow, the lines laid down by the last convention be ratified....[589]

The General Executive Board specifically recommended to the convention the use of direct action as a weapon of the working class.

The only effective weapon that the workers have with which to meet this condition [runs the Board's report] is to [sic] render unproductive the machinery of production with which they labor, and have access to. Militant direct action in the industries of the world is the weapon upon which they must rely and which they must learn to use.[590]

With the growing interests of the I. W. W. in the workers in the agricultural and lumber industries came a realization of the need for some kind of a land policy. Delegate Covington Hall presented a petition which was adopted as a resolution by the convention:

Why not ... proclaim today [the resolution asks] what we will be compelled to proclaim tomorrow—a land policy? Why not base this policy on the motto of the Russian peasant, "Whose the sweat, his the land," and couple this with a new I. W. W. motto: "Whose the sweat, theirs the machines"? In other words, proclaim that we will recognize no title to machinery except that which vests its ownership in the users.[591]

The most important aspect of this convention was the sentiment which was evidenced by some of the delegates in favor of reducing the power of the national administration—the central office—often referred to in this and following conventions as "Headquarters." This agitation for decentralization was not particularly successful, but the idea was given a hearing. At the following convention a much more extended discussion took place and the subject will be resumed in connection with the discussion of that meeting.[592] At this 1912 meeting the question of decentralization came up in the discussion of a motion to give the General Executive Board jurisdiction over the calling, management and settlement of all free-speech fights. The alleged object of the motion was to restrict the number of such controversies. The "Wobblies" had been even more inclined to overindulge in free-speech fights than in strikes, and some thought this appetite might be kept in better control if it were made more difficult for locals to get support for such struggles from the national office. The motion was lost by an overwhelming majority. The vote expressed a significant reaction from the traditional I. W. W. policy of centralization. That the latter policy was still strong was indicated in the overwhelming defeat of motions to deprive the General Executive Board of its power over the strike activities of the organization.[593] The policy of the convention was centralist on strike and decentralist on free-speech fights. The editor of The Agitator, an anarchist exponent of industrial unionism, believes that this was due to the fact that the I. W. W. had had much experience of "free-speech fighting" and realized the need for local autonomy, whereas it had had limited strike experience and so had "not yet learned the danger of allowing a few men ... to control its strike activities." The writer imagines that geography was also a factor. The proponents of continued centralization of strike power were the more disciplined eastern members. The defenders of local autonomy in free-speech fights were the western "Wobblies," and the nature of their life and experience bred in them much of the anarchistic spirit of individualism.

The Socialist Labor party and the doctrinaires of Detroit thought that this convention was a very insignificant gathering. One of the DeLeonites described it: "About thirty men acting in the capacity of delegates and about a score of onlookers, leaning with their backs against the walls leisurely smoking their pipes or chewing tobacco.... This constituted the convention...."[594] It is interpreted differently by one who is with the direct-actionists at least in sympathy. He says:

It is a significant proof of the sound base of the I. W. W. philosophy that the tremendous growth of the past year has not brought with it the germ of opportunism. There was no suggestion of a desire on the part of any of the delegates to swerve from the uncompromising and revolutionary attitude of the organization; nor was there any reaching out for "respectability." Every man was a "Red," most of them with jail records, too.... All striving ... to hasten the day when "the whistle will blow for the Boss to go to work."[595]

---