They [the decentralizers] claim they will never submit to the rule of a minority of four or five men.... They do not want to submit to the rule of the G. E. B. composed of four or five, but they will submit to the authority of the General Secretary and the General Organizer whom they want to function in the place of the G. E. B. The authority of the minority of five or seven men is something terrible, but the authority and rule of the minority of two is not so terrible.[611]
The locals of Calgary [Canada], Portland, Oregon, Seattle and Spokane, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, presented a resolution asking that "the function of the headquarters [i. e., the general administration] be reduced to a mere correspondence agency." No action was taken.[612] "We ... are working ... to overthrow this [wages] system," said a decentralist fellow-worker, "and we claim ... that the rank and file of the proletariat will have to do this themselves." The General Executive Board members, according to this delegate, "place themselves in exactly the same position over these people [the workers] and put themselves in the same [position of] unique power over them as the capitalist class."[613] Said another: "The minority in this organization is ... ruling ... today, namely, the G. E. B. I am certainly in favor of abolishing the G. E. B. I don't see any use for it. I don't see what they can do for the rank and file."[614] According to the majority report of the constitution committee (which was lost) all authority was, in the absence of the G. E. B., to be vested in the General Secretary-Treasurer and the General Organizer, both responsible to the rank and file.[615] In line with the foregoing was a resolution providing for a reduction in the per-capita tax of "mixed" locals from fifteen to five cents per month. The proponents of this resolution insisted that the "mixed" locals bore more than their share of the financial burden—that they practically supported the national organization.[616] The proposition was given extended debate and finally killed. Naturally it was opposed by the General Executive Board.[617]
This attack on the already weak central authority took the form of an attempt, first, to abolish the G. E. B.; second, to cut down the financial support of the general office; third, to abolish the convention and substitute for it the initiative and referendum; fourth, to place agitators under the direct control of the rank and file; and fifth, to make the general officers mere clerical assistants. The only real success achieved by the decentralizers in these efforts in 1913 was the introduction into the I. W. W. constitution of a provision for the initiative and referendum.[618] The introduction of the referendum feature is another illustration of the unconscious tendency to follow the lines of our political development. Note, too, that the I. W. W. referendum advocates hailed from those very states which have recently attracted attention by introducing this feature into their political structure. The I. W. W. is now much more decentralized than it was in 1905 or even 1913, and it appears to be drifting toward further changes in that direction. So far, the movement away from what little centralized power it could boast may be seen in two phases: (1) The abolition of the presidency; (2) the placing of the General Executive Board under the control of a general referendum which can be initiated at any time and upon any subject by request of not less than ten locals in not less than three different industries.
In discussing the proposed abolition of the convention, Delegate B. E. Nilsson asserted that only at the second and fourth conventions had anything worth while been done, and that in both these cases all that had been accomplished had been done against the constitution, and concluded with the statement that "this [eighth convention] has cost us over $3,000 and it isn't worth three cents."[619] Delegate Elizabeth Gurley Flynn advocated the abolition of the convention. She said that it was not genuinely representative, inasmuch as all the locals could not afford to send delegates.[620] The proposal was finally defeated. In general, the decentralizers—anarchistic advocates of the doctrine of the militant minority—found themselves decidedly in the minority, and so far unsuccessful. "Fully a hundred of the resolutions," says one prominent anarchist who attended the convention, "were progressive, favored decentralization, and were fathered, mothered, and nursed by half a dozen militants. But every radical resolution," he thought, "was either lost, laid on the table, or amended so that it was useless. The motion for decentralization was lost by three to one, as was the motion to do away with the G. E. B."[621] Another opponent of centralized authority explained how "for two long and tedious weeks they [the decentralizers] presented their ideas ... and the centralists slaughtered them by the brute force of voting power...." "The decentralizers held," lie said, "that a revolutionary movement does not depend [so much] upon votes as it does upon the recognition ... of the fact that all minorities are to have an equal voice ... with the majorities ... [because] the minority is always more militant than the majority."[622] In the same issue which carried this statement, the Voice of the People said editorially:
[The decentralization struggle in the I. W. W. is] a war between the advocates of "I am going to save myself" and those of "let me save you."... Centralization in labor unions is nothing less than government by representation, or political action. The advocates of centralization in the I. W. W. are socialists, in fact, if not in profession.... Only when they repudiate labor-union governmentalism will they become real direct-actionists.[623]
The "decentralist agitation" first assumed definite form at a conference of the Pacific Coast locals of the I. W. W. held at Portland, Oregon, in February, 1911. At this conference the eight-hours movement, plans for the establishment of agitation circuits for organizers, and—this most of all—the evils of centralized authority were discussed.[624] At this conference was established the Pacific Coast District Organization, known among the I. W. W.s as the "P. C. D. O." This organization was an interesting compromise between the idea of absolutely self-governing locals on the one side and servile locals completely controlled by a bureaucratic national machine on the other. It undertook to exercise some of the sovereign functions of "Headquarters." According to a member of the General Executive Board,
this P. C. D. O. was to have its own due stamp books, headquarters, General Secretary, General Executive Board, and paper—this paper was the [Industrial] Worker. But the P. C. D. O. made no success ... because of not having a strong enough ground to build upon in order to interest the western membership.[625]
It was believed in some quarters—especially at "Headquarters"—that the real purpose of the Western Slope constituency which organized the P. C. D. O. was to disrupt the I. W. W., or to effect a secession from the national body. Some months after the Conference above referred to an editorial appeared in Solidarity—the administration, organ. It declared that their purpose
was to disrupt the I. W. W. and form an independent organization in the West. The Conference itself proposed that the G. E. B. reduce the per capita [tax] to the P. C. D. O. to five cents and allow the locals in that district organization to buy their stamps directly from the district headquarters.... The final conclusion of the sixth convention was that such an organization as the P. C. D. O., for purposes of closer unity, localized activity and propaganda, was fully justified and should be supported, but efforts to divide or disrupt the organization as a whole would be fought to the bitter end.[626]
The administration saw in the P. C. D. O. a very subversive imperium in imperio, and when the eighth convention met, the G. E. B. issued the following statement concerning the western promoters of the P. C. D. O. idea: