"A kick in time saves nine."
"Kick your way out of wage slavery."
"Our coat-of-arms: The shoe rampant."
"A kick on the job is worth ten at the ballot-box."
"Immediate demands: Wooden shoes on all jobs."
"The foot in the wooden shoe will rock the world."
"An injury to one is the concern of all."
These tactics had been more and more talked about if not practised by the I. W. W. for several years past. Indeed, it is safe to say that the practical application of those forms of direct action which the "Wobblies" consider expedient was becoming constantly more general. When the Socialists met in convention at Indianapolis in May, 1912, the problem of the proper attitude for the Socialist party to take toward the I. W. W., and more especially toward the "direct action" propaganda, was made the occasion of a violent controversy. The discussion centered on a motion to insert a new clause in the constitution of the Socialist party providing (in Article II, Sec. 6) that "any member of the party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled from membership in the party...."[550] After a long debate the amendment was adopted by a vote of 191 to 90, and the now famous Article II., Sec. 6, became a party law.[551] During the discussion there were some quite violent criticisms made of direct action and violence. Delegate W. R. Gaylord said: "We do not want any of it. None of it! We don't want the touch of it on us. We do not want the hint of it connected with us. We repudiate it in every fibre of us."[552] Victor Berger expressed himself very emphatically on the "sabotage clause."
I desire to say [he declared] that articles in the Industrial Worker, of Spokane, the official organ of the I. W. W., breathe the same spirit, are as anarchistic as anything that John Most has ever written. I want to say to you, comrades, that I for one do not believe in murder as a means of propaganda; I do not believe in theft as a means of expropriation; nor in a continuous riot as a free-speech agitation. Every true Socialist will agree with me when I say that those who believe that we should substitute "Hallelujah, I'm a bum" for the Marseillaise, and for the Internationale, should start a "bum organization" of their own. (Loud laughter and great cheering.)[553]
It was not alone the advocacy of "direct action" which incurred for the I. W. W. the enmity of the Socialists. The latter felt that when the I. W. W. in 1908 "repudiated political action," it really declared war on the Socialist party. That party obviously could not consistently approve of the Detroit I. W. W. because that faction was really the ward of a rival political organization, the Socialist Labor party. Ernest Untermann, who was one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, said at a previous convention of the Socialist party: "When we organized the I. W. W., we hoped that it would be both a political and an economic organization.... Instead of that, from the very outside there crept in an element that made for disintegration, and today the I. W. W. has drifted back toward syndicalism."[554] He declared, moreover, that the I. W. W. deeply in debt to the Socialist party, as he intimated, had ungratefully obstructed the work of the party:
We helped the I. W. W. in its fight for free speech in Spokane and for working-class power on the coast, [he said] and yet while our speakers were collecting money [in San Francisco] ... to help the I. W. W., the fighters from the I. W. W. were on the outside of our meetings and knocking.... They sent their fighters over to Local Oakland, right across the bay, with the avowed purpose of breaking up that local and destroying the activity of the Socialist party.... I shall be true to the principle of industrial unionism, but the I. W. W. can go to hell. (Applause.)[555]
Finally the last tie that connected the I. W. W. with the Socialist party was broken when, in February, 1913, William D. Haywood was recalled from the National Executive Committee of the party.[556]
FOOTNOTES:
[509] Cf. Appendix iv, Table A. The industrial distribution of fifty-nine of these is given in Solidarity (May 14, 1910) as follows: