The most important action of the convention was to reduce the monthly per-capita to five cents for locals and three cents to National Industrial Departments and National Industrial Unions, the idea being that the money should be controlled locally for organization purposes.[445] Steps were taken toward the publication of an official journal, temporary officials were elected to form a kind of ad interim administration, and New York City was decided upon for the location of General Headquarters.[446] Within a few months, however, the location of national headquarters was changed to Detroit, Michigan. The Daily and Weekly People served as official journal for the Detroit organization until January, 1912, when the first number of the (monthly) Industrial Union News made its appearance. C. H. Chase (New York) was General Secretary-Treasurer. The Executive Board consisted of C. H. Chase, A. J. Francis (New York), Wm. Glanz (Paterson), R. McClure (Philadelphia), C. E. Trainor (Denver), and H. Richter (Detroit). Richter is at present General Secretary-Treasurer. He was a delegate to the 1905 convention from one of the local unions of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
It is exceedingly doubtful whether the "pirates in Chicago" were really "repudiated by the I. W. W. organizations generally." The figures presented in Appendix IV, (Table A) indicated that a large proportion of the 200 locals (to take the lowest estimate) in the I. W. W. in 1907 had in some way vanished. The Chicago faction admitted that 17 locals went over to Detroit,[447] and Secretary Richter writes that when the Detroit faction was reorganized at Paterson twenty-two locals reported to headquarters.[448] During the months of November and December, 1908, the Weekly People published in its correspondence columns about a dozen letters from locals—chiefly Eastern locals—which expressly repudiated the "Chicago pirates." Both organizations sent out official referendum sheets for the votes of the rank and file of the membership on the resolutions, etc., adopted by the Chicago and Paterson conventions.[449] The writer has not learned of any definite reports concerning the returns from these referendums. It is quite certain that the Chicago group lost many locals which did not go over to Detroit, inasmuch as only 100 locals are reported for 1909.[450] Secretary Richter reports that in 1909 the Detroit I. W. W. had twenty-three locals.[451]
Now, as to the merits of the controversy. The I. W. W. set out in 1905, somewhat on the order of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, proposing to wage war on the capitalist, primarily on the "economic field," viz., in the shop, "on the job"; by strikes and boycotts, etc., but expecting to go forward, as DeLeon put it, "under the protecting guns of a labor political party." No particular party was endorsed, however, and any desire for the endorsement of any political party was specifically disclaimed. The words, "without endorsing or desiring the endorsement of any political party," were inserted at the close of the preamble in 1906, but stricken out in 1908 (or possibly 1907). The Detroit I. W. W. at first carried in its preamble the words, "without endorsing any political party," but later struck them out.[452] The western membership was especially bitter in its hostility to the Socialist party as well as the Socialist Labor party, and felt convinced that the I. W. W. was mortgaging its future in allowing itself to get into any entangling political alliances, formal or informal. The western I. W. W.s had not borrowed any theoretical criticism of the state from the French syndicalists, but the actual concrete experiences of the lower grades of workers in the western states had developed in their minds a conception of the political party (reactionary or socialistic) very similar to that of the revolutionary syndicalists of France.
Félicien Challaye, one of the intellectuals among the French syndicalists, expresses this common idea very concisely. He says that, "... le parti politique est un agrégat d'éléments hétérogènes, réunis par le lieu artificiel d'une opinion analogue: des hommes venus de toutes les couches sociales s'y condoient, échangent leurs obscurs et stériles bavardages, cherchent à associer par de louches compromis leurs intérêts antagonistes."[453]
Indeed, the Western American Wobblies looked upon the whole modern system of congressional or parliamentary government in much the same way. Parliaments, they say, are little more than clearing-houses for the exchange of "vague and sterile platitudes." In so far as they do more than this, they merely further the designs of the big business groups whom they serve as retainers. In this regard the I. W. W.s are sufficiently Marxian and they would accent with italics Marx's strictures on the "disease of parliamentarism." The Industrial Workers' feeling toward parliamentary government cannot be better described that in the words of the great Socialist. In a letter written to the New York Tribune in 1852 Karl Marx describes
that incurable malady, parliamentary crétinism, [as] a disorder which penetrates its unfortunate victims with the solemn conviction that the whole world, its history, and future, are governed and determined by a majority of votes in that particular representative body which has the honor to count them among its members and that all and everything going on outside the walls of their house—wars, revolutions, railway constructing, colonizing of whole new continents, California gold discoveries, Central American canals, Russian armies, and whatever else may have some little claim to influence upon the destinies of mankind—is nothing compared with the incommensurable events hinging upon the important question, whatever it may be, just at that moment occupying the attention of their honorable house.[454]
The I. W. W. makes the bald accusation that the political groups which make up national congresses are simply (though perhaps indirectly and adroitly) managing public affairs in behalf of the dominant economic and commercial interests of the country. To whatever degree this is true the I. W. W. is sure of its ground in declaring that parliaments are corrupt. But this no more demonstrates the inherent folly of parliamentary government than the admitted corruption—perhaps even industrial crétinism—of the industrial union proves the inherent folly of industrial unionism. There is a lamentable amount of inherited idiocy in both labor and legislative organizations. Anything in the constitution, and more particularly anything in the preamble (which I. W. W.s looked upon as a Magna Carta of the proletariat), that seemed to commit the organization to any particular political policy was a source of great uneasiness. This uneasiness was much intensified by the constantly increasing sentiment of opposition to the (political) state as it exists today, and to all forms of authority, especially centralized authority.[455] The "Overall Brigade" was the group which was most conspicuously saturated with this anarchistic feeling. These men from the West were suspicious of all parties; thought voting and legislating pleasant forms of ritual for deluding the workers; actively antagonized the craft unions, which also they considered industrial anomalies of use only as "coffin societies"; and were very doubtful about the necessity for leaders of any kind—even leaders of the Wobblies!
The eastern membership, on the other hand, more nearly approximated the State Socialist type of radicalism. They were inspired by a group of Socialist Labor party men at whose head was Daniel DeLeon. They abjured anarchy, believed in authority (and in its instruments: leaders), were disillusioned about State Socialism and spared no bitterness and pettiness in criticizing the Socialist party and its program of State Socialism and reform in general. Reform in general was to them anathema. They were revolutionary Marxists—doctrinaire to the bone—saturated with the dialectic.