"The very same fellows," writes Katz, "who dared DeLeon to come to the Fourth Convention, closed the doors to him when he arrived ... and his credentials were rejected on flimsy pretenses."
DeLeon was given the floor to state his case, and he did state it in his characteristic fashion. The "Overall Brigade" were seated all in a row on one side of the hall, a tough-looking lot. Vincent St. John was in the chair with sinister mien, wielding the gavel and everything that could be wielded to keep DeLeon out of the convention. Alongside of St. John sat Trautmann, ... [and] he, too, looked as though he had traveled all the way from Seattle by freight train.[427]
"Such remarks as 'I would like to get a punch at the pope' (meaning DeLeon) were overheard in the hall among the 'Overall Brigaders'." "DeLeon told them whither they were drifting—to Shermanism, to Anarchy, to the movement's destruction."[428] DeLeon's speech in defense of his right to a seat in the convention was published in the Industrial Union Bulletin (October 10, 1908) under the title, "The Intellectual against the Worker." Extracts from St. John's reply and his arguments for refusing DeLeon a seat are published in the same issue of the Bulletin under the title, "The Worker against the Intellectual." Katz says that this published version of DeLeon's speech was full of "the basest kind of misrepresentation." He further declares that the reports of the convention published in the Bulletin were "doctored."[429]
DeLeon expressed his opinion of the "Overall Brigade" very soon after the convention:
Out of this [hobo] element [he declared] Walsh picked ... the "Overall Brigade"; and to the tune "I'm a bum, I'm a bum," very much like the tune of "God wills it! God wills it!" with which Cuckoo Peter led the first mob of Crusaders against the Turks, Walsh brought this "Brigade" to the convention. Some of them ... were among the "delegates." Most of them, I am credibly informed, slept on the benches on the Lake Front, and received from Walsh a daily stipend of 30 cents. This element lined the walls of the convention.[430]
For four days the convention did practically nothing but protest credentials and debate the question whether or not the Socialist Labor party, through Daniel DeLeon, was trying to control the I. W. W. All this was a prelude to the contest over the retention of the political clause of the preamble which was fought out on a personal issue—the admission of DeLeon as a delegate. The DeLeonites accused the St. John-Trautmann group of trying to make the I. W. W. what they called a "purely physical force body."[431] The DeLeonites in turn were charged with attempting to subordinate the interests of the I. W. W. to those of the Socialist Labor party.
Justus Ebert, himself a member of the Socialist Labor party, believed that this charge was well founded. For this reason, in 1908, and some time before the fourth convention met, he resigned from the Socialist Labor party. Since that time he has been a member of the ("Anarcho-Syndicalist") I. W. W. His letter of resignation, addressed to the members of Section Kings County, S. L. P., runs in part as follows:
The Socialist Labor party believes that the political is the reflection of the economic. With this belief in mind it aided in launching the I. W. W., and protected it from the onslaughts of reaction.... The Socialist Labor party has not, however, had the courage of its convictions, ... [because] having aided in founding and protecting the economic organization that is to reflect the true political party of labor, [it] refuses to vacate the field to its untrammeled and logical development. Instead, it persists in being the political guide and mentor of the I. W. W.... The I. W. W., hampered in its growth by the illogical posture of the S. L. P., is compelled to serve notice in big black type that it has no political affiliations of any kind.... The fate of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance will be the fate of the I. W. W., if it permits an external political body to dominate its politics.[432]
Now DeLeon was at once the leader of the S. L. P. and of the political element in the I. W. W., and the anti-parliamentarians perhaps felt that the only way to get rid of what they called the "political incubus of the S. L. P." was to eliminate DeLeon and enough of his supporters to make it possible for the Wobblies from the West to carry the resolution to eliminate that fearsome political clause. They were somehow vaguely apprehensive that that phrase in the preamble which declared that the toilers must "come together on the political field" would make possible the subjugation of the I. W. W. by the Socialist Labor party. This despite the fact that the paragraph in question closes with the words: "without affiliation with any political party."
The report of the General Secretary-Treasurer expresses the position of the simon-pure industrialists of the St. John-Trautmann faction.