... Now comes every socialist agitator and every rascal who calls himself a socialist, and declares that even the arrest of the indicted men is an "outrage." That hobo gang which calls itself the "Industrial Workers of the World" calls for a "general strike" as a protest against the alleged "kidnapping" of the men who have been indicted.[542]
A few days later the Industrial Worker carried in capitals on the front page the following
OFFICIAL I. W. W. PROCLAMATION!
"Arouse! Prepare to Defend Your Class!"
"A general strike in all industries must be the answer of the workers to the challenge of the masters! Tie up all industries! Tie up all production! Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Issued Apr. 25, 1911, by the Industrial Workers of the World.[543]
When the seventh convention met in 1912 the General Executive Board declared that the MacNamara case "demonstrated beyond doubt that no legal safeguard can be invoked to protect any member of the working class who incurs the enmity of the employers by standing between them and unlimited exploitation of the workers." Furthermore, it charged that the A. F. of L. "did not come to their assistance as it should have done ... [because] the moral support guaranteed these members of the working class was practically nil so far as the American Federation of Labor was concerned."[544]
These militant utterances of the I. W. W. served to increase a growing hostility to that organization in the Socialist party. This increasing opposition was directed against the methods and tactics of I. W. W.-ism rather than against its criticism of capitalist society, its form or organization or its idea of the character of the society of the future. The Socialists objected in general to the whole philosophy of direct action, and more particularly to certain phases of direct action—viz., the use of sabotage and violence in general.
One I. W. W. official defines direct action as the "withdrawal of labor power or efficiency from the place or object of production."[545] Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist, describes it as the "conscious individual or collective effort to protest against or remedy social conditions through the systematic assertion of the economic power of the workers."[546] Professor Hubert Lagardelle, one of the intellectuels of the French syndicalist movement, explains that "Direct Action is opposed to the indirect and legalized action of democracy, of Parliament and of parties. It means that instead of delegating to others the function of action (following the habit of democracy), the working class is determined to work for itself."[547] Sabotage has been defined by the leading English Syndicalist, Tom Mann, as "the taking of advantage for personal or class gain."[548] Pouget says that "le sabotage est la mise en pratique da la maxime: à mauvaise paye, mauvais travail."[549] In its mildest form sabotage is simply the time-honored trade-union practice—restriction of output. Gustav Hervé, the editor of La Guerre Sociale, advocates its use as a kind of gymnastique révolutionnaire or training for the revolution which many socialists believe may be precipitated by the violence of the capitalists, in the guise, perhaps, of martial law. It may be convenient to think of direct action as the inclusive term. Thus it may take the form of concerted abstention from work and be simply a strike, or it may take the form of working "in a way detrimental to the boss" and be one kind of sabotage.
An interesting example of the I. W. W.'s press campaign for the methods of sabotage and direct action was furnished when in the summer of 1913 the I. W. W. locals of Los Angeles began the publication of a semi-official weekly paper called The Wooden Shoe. This name was selected on the strength of the legend that the word sabotage was coined in France when a workman with a grievance threw his sabot or wooden shoe into the machinery and so clogged it and stopped production. This kind of direct action is picturesquely advocated on the front page of each issue of this paper. Grouped around the title heading—The Wooden Shoe—are the following boxed mottoes and slogans: