The labor movement [says Robert Hunter] lay stunned after its brief flirtation with anarchy. The union men drew away from the anarchist agitators, and, taking their information from the capitalist press only, concluded that socialism and anarchism were the same thing, and would, if tolerated, lead the movement to ruin and disaster. Without a doubt, the bomb in Chicago put back the labor movement for years. It ... did more to induce the rank and file of trade unionists to reject all association with revolutionary ideas than perhaps all other things put together.[36]
Justus Ebert, who is now a member of the I. W. W., declares that the Haymarket affair "involved the new Socialist Labor party in a fierce discussion of the right course to pursue in the emancipation of labor."[37] Robert Hunter thinks that these riots really gave the French unionists the idea of the General Strike and thus helped to give form, first, to modern French syndicalism, and second, both by relay back to this side of the Atlantic and directly by its influence in this country, to American syndicalism in the form of the Industrial Workers of the World.[38]
Five years after Haymarket—in June, 1893—an industrial union of railway employees was organized in Chicago by Eugene V. Debs. A year later, at the time of the Pullman strike, it had a membership of 150,000. The failure of that strike, which by the way was an early example of I. W. W. tactics, broke down the union, and it passed out of existence in 1897.
The year 1893 also marks the beginning of the Western Federation of Miners,[39] which may well be ranked as the chief predecessor of the I. W. W. The coal miners had formed their national organization three years earlier. Both the coal and metalliferous miners' unions were built from the start upon the industrial type, that is, including in their membership in both cases "all persons employed in and around the mines." The Western Federation of Miners was organized in Butte, Montana, in 1893, and almost immediately affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. It separated from the Federation, however, in 1897 and, after a period of independent existence broken by alliances with the Western Labor Union in 1898 and with the I. W. W. in 1905, rejoined the A. F. of L. in 1911.
During the twelve years of the Western Federation's existence before the birth of the I. W. W., it figured in the most strenuous and dramatic series of strike disturbances in the history of the American labor movement. Swift on each others' heels came the terrors of Coeur d'Alene in 1893, Cripple Creek in 1894, Leadville in 1896-7, Salt Lake and the Coeur d'Alene again in 1899, Telluride in 1901, Idaho Springs in 1903, and Cripple Creek again in 1903-4. The Federation was—in its first decade particularly—as militantly radical as the coal miners' union was conservative. The strikes in which it has engaged have been usually marked by much disorder and violence.[40] During the Idaho Springs strike in 1903 an indignation meeting of the citizens was called for July 29th by the Citizens' Protective League—an association of mine owners and business men. At this meeting one of the local merchants said: "Moyer and Haywood are the arch anarchists of this country, along with Herr Most. I see that Moyer is coming to Idaho Springs tomorrow. I want to say that if the people allow him to land his feet in Clear Creek County they are dirty arrant cowards." Very shortly the meeting passed a resolution to deport the strikers, adjourned to the jail, demanded the prisoners, ordered out 14 of the 23 there incarcerated and deported them.[41]
There is no doubt that the terrible strike troubles during the nineties and the early years of this century had their effect in working union men up to the radically pioneering pitch. These struggles were surely the birth signs of the coming militant industrialism of the Industrial Workers of the World. Wm. D. Haywood, now General Secretary-Treasurer of the I. W. W., and Vincent St. John, for several years in the same position, were both active and leading members of the W. F. M. during its earlier years. The Federation was less scornful of politics than the I. W. W. The Western Miners were forced by the obvious connivance between the state and city governments and the mine operators, by the use of the militia for the suppression of strikes and by the abuse of the injunction, to consider the possibilities of political action along socialistic lines. At their convention in 1902 they resolved "to adopt the principle of socialism without equivocation."[42] This resolution was reaffirmed in 1903 and 1904. "We recommend the Socialist party," reads their statement in 1904, "to the toiling masses of humanity as the only source through which they can secure ... complete emancipation from the present system of wage slavery...."[43] "Let all strike industrially here and now, if necessary," runs another resolution (signed, by the way, by William D. Haywood), "and then strike in unity at the ballot-box for the true solution of the labor problem by putting men of our class into public office...."[44]
The Federation was not actually content, however, with political activity. It has been made quite evident that the economic weapon of the strike was not neglected. In addition to this the fundamental and at that time rarely discussed problem of employees' control in industry was seriously discussed. At the tenth convention, Wm. D. Haywood proposed that the Federation invest some of its money in mines, to be operated by its members for the benefit of the unions.[45] At the following meeting President Moyer proposed that the Federation secure control of and operate mines and levy assessments for the purpose.[46] The plan had to be given up at that time because the Federation just then faced unusual difficulties because of the strike confronting it. Nevertheless, this idea of industrial workers' control had its effect in impressing the miners with the notion that in their union "they had an agency that could carry on and control production for their own benefit."
Some conception of the unusually radical temper of the Western Federation may be had from the Preamble to its constitution. It declares that
there is a class struggle in society and that this struggle is caused by economic conditions; ... the producer ... is exploited of the wealth which he produces, being allowed to retain barely sufficient for his elementary necessities; ... that the class struggle will continue until the producer is recognized as the sole master of his product; ... that the working class, and it alone, can and must achieve its own emancipation; ... [and] finally, that an industrial union and the concerted political action of all wage workers is the only method of attaining this end.
For these reasons, the Preamble concludes, "the wage slaves employed in and around the mines, mills and smelters have associated in the Western Federation of Miners."[47]