The General Executive Board specifically recommended to the convention the use of direct action as a weapon of the working class.
The only effective weapon that the workers have with which to meet this condition [runs the Board's report] is to [sic] render unproductive the machinery of production with which they labor, and have access to. Militant direct action in the industries of the world is the weapon upon which they must rely and which they must learn to use.[590]
With the growing interests of the I. W. W. in the workers in the agricultural and lumber industries came a realization of the need for some kind of a land policy. Delegate Covington Hall presented a petition which was adopted as a resolution by the convention:
Why not ... proclaim today [the resolution asks] what we will be compelled to proclaim tomorrow—a land policy? Why not base this policy on the motto of the Russian peasant, "Whose the sweat, his the land," and couple this with a new I. W. W. motto: "Whose the sweat, theirs the machines"? In other words, proclaim that we will recognize no title to machinery except that which vests its ownership in the users.[591]
The most important aspect of this convention was the sentiment which was evidenced by some of the delegates in favor of reducing the power of the national administration—the central office—often referred to in this and following conventions as "Headquarters." This agitation for decentralization was not particularly successful, but the idea was given a hearing. At the following convention a much more extended discussion took place and the subject will be resumed in connection with the discussion of that meeting.[592] At this 1912 meeting the question of decentralization came up in the discussion of a motion to give the General Executive Board jurisdiction over the calling, management and settlement of all free-speech fights. The alleged object of the motion was to restrict the number of such controversies. The "Wobblies" had been even more inclined to overindulge in free-speech fights than in strikes, and some thought this appetite might be kept in better control if it were made more difficult for locals to get support for such struggles from the national office. The motion was lost by an overwhelming majority. The vote expressed a significant reaction from the traditional I. W. W. policy of centralization. That the latter policy was still strong was indicated in the overwhelming defeat of motions to deprive the General Executive Board of its power over the strike activities of the organization.[593] The policy of the convention was centralist on strike and decentralist on free-speech fights. The editor of The Agitator, an anarchist exponent of industrial unionism, believes that this was due to the fact that the I. W. W. had had much experience of "free-speech fighting" and realized the need for local autonomy, whereas it had had limited strike experience and so had "not yet learned the danger of allowing a few men ... to control its strike activities." The writer imagines that geography was also a factor. The proponents of continued centralization of strike power were the more disciplined eastern members. The defenders of local autonomy in free-speech fights were the western "Wobblies," and the nature of their life and experience bred in them much of the anarchistic spirit of individualism.
The Socialist Labor party and the doctrinaires of Detroit thought that this convention was a very insignificant gathering. One of the DeLeonites described it: "About thirty men acting in the capacity of delegates and about a score of onlookers, leaning with their backs against the walls leisurely smoking their pipes or chewing tobacco.... This constituted the convention...."[594] It is interpreted differently by one who is with the direct-actionists at least in sympathy. He says:
It is a significant proof of the sound base of the I. W. W. philosophy that the tremendous growth of the past year has not brought with it the germ of opportunism. There was no suggestion of a desire on the part of any of the delegates to swerve from the uncompromising and revolutionary attitude of the organization; nor was there any reaching out for "respectability." Every man was a "Red," most of them with jail records, too.... All striving ... to hasten the day when "the whistle will blow for the Boss to go to work."[595]